Mobility Injustice by Design

Mobility Injustice by Design examines the social exclusion of vulnerable people in urban spaces, revealing how millions of citizens have their ‘right to roam’ curbed by design and planning decisions made either intentionally to facilitate immobility or social exclusion, or because of a lack of awareness of the aggregated consequences.

Ole B. Jensen’s insightful volume offers a theoretically informed framework, allowing us to ‘see’ mobility injustices more clearly, consider how new knowledge can mobilize design ethics, and to think about how mobility justice be brought about. It challenges us to reassess how choices of materials, design of spaces, and implementation of technologies affords or hinders particular mobilities. It explores a way of thinking about mobility and injustice that recognises that everyone is assisted in their mobility practices and that human capacity for acting in the world is mediated by spaces, things, artefacts, and technologies. It examines the centrality of design but also that design may be working counter to the widespread cultural belief that design is in the service of ‘the good’. It locates thinking about mobilities injustice between affect, experiences, and sensations on the one hand and reason, principles, and formal rules on the other. Focussing on three realms of practice, it reveals the ways in which the design of cities and urban spaces accommodate the needs of people living as unhoused, disabled, and aged, and how these groups experience mobility injustice. Crucially, it provides insight into the potential to move toward a future, more mobility-just society on a local, national and global scale, in light of warfare, environmental- and migration crises.

Mobility Injustice by Design informs the future agenda of both critical mobilities research and the design fields and reflects on the potential for those in the arts and design to provoke public engagement in these timely issues. It is essential reading for all those concerned with the study and practice of mobilities theory, urban sociology, urban planning and design, architecture, urban geography, disability studies and gerontology.

Author Biography

Ole B. Jensen is Professor of Urban Theory at the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the deputy director and co-founder of the Centre for Mobilities and Urban Studies (C-MUS). He is the author of titles including Urban Designs for Mobile Situations, Designing Mobilities and Staging Mobilities.