City, mobility and public policy

 

mobilite

 

The overall goal of the research work, studies and assessments relating to “City, mobility and public policy” is to understand the tools available to public actors in regulating the regional and societal changes resulting from travel and mobility. – See research –

 

If mobility analysis is currently very promising in urban sociology, it is primarily because the speed potentials provided by transportation and telecommunications systems have had an important impact on societies and their spaces. These changes were largely driven by public investment in road, rail and air transportation infrastructures and, in the past 50 years, improvements in long-distance communication systems. The increase in the speed potential of these systems has been acclaimed by people who use them extensively, and often in ways different from those imagined by the designers of these systems.

 

Nowadays, individuals move faster and further, and spend more time doing so on a daily basis, marking their experience the world and how identities, once local and anchored, are becoming increasingly multiple and cosmopolitan. Low-cost travel options have also had an important impact on the economy, contributing to its globalization and changes in the modes of production. In view of this, we can no longer consider nation-states as autonomous societies vis-à-vis others, nor of regions as homogenous spaces enclosed by clear boundaries.

 

“City, mobilities and public action” aims to explore these questions more closely, by both studying the motility of individual and collective actors and identifying the levers available to public authorities to influence travel and mobility practices.