Sep 12, 2019 / Research Seminar # 2 / Citizen-led Transport Justice
Citizen-led Transport Justice: The case of Melbourne
Presented by Crystal Legacy, Chaired by Kim Dovey
What does the generation of an alternative politics look like in the vexed arena of planning for future urban transport? The urban sociologist Mini Sheller (2018) in her new book Mobility Justice: The politics of movement in the age of extremes calls for the establishment of a new mobility commons. In seeking to challenge the politics of privatisation and exclusion that has come to characterise the production of urban space, Sheller laments that there is a need to transition away from claims of just transport, and even spatial justice, towards claims of mobility justice in a way that engages with the actually existing politics of people’s movement. In this paper I move in rhythm with Sheller’s call for a new politics of mobility. I do this by exploring how everyday citizens, in an ordinary neoliberal urban planning context such as Melbourne, relate their local challenge of transport injustice to the politics of formal transport planning. Drawing from interviews with citizen campaigners and critical participatory action research, including observational analysis in citizen led campaigns directed at proposed multi-billion dollar toll-road projects in metropolitan Melbourne between 2013 and 2018, I capture how passion, emotion and counter-rationality is asserted to generate new pathways for political participation into the politics of planning future transport. I demonstrate that the politics of transport and the politics of participation must be observed together to expose the potentialities of a new mobility politics; one that sees people and their participation at its core.
Sept 12, 1 to 2 pm
Japanese Room, Melbourne School of Design
No RSVP required.
