Understanding Mobilities for Designing Contemporary Cities

This book collects contributions from a cycle of seminars on “mobilities, policy and projects” organized by the PhD course in Urban Planning, Design and Policy (UPDP), Politecnico di Milano and the PhD course in Urban and Local European Studies (URBEUR), University of Milano Bicocca.

The book’s emphasis book is on exploring the study of spatial mobilities, in particular to understand how spatial mobilities diversify uses of cities and generate different rhythms, life practices, conflicts in urban spaces, and unexpected and unplanned uses.

The book is organized in four parts, which focus on the relationships that affect mobility and the capacity to analyse, plan and design contemporary cities. Furthermore, many of the essays show practical results from diverse experiences.

The first part, called “Mobilities and the transformations of contemporary cities”, introduces the concept of mobility as a complex system of socioeconomic and spatial interactions. Moreover, it addresses the new views of mobilities and the new mobility scenarios for cities.

The next part, “Mobility practices, policy and project”, explores how infrastructures are linked to a co-evolution of cities, society and technical networks, and to the development of individual strategies of mobility. This part also analyses different projects and practices of mobilities, tackling issues such as the use of car in everyday life and its impacts on public space; the transformation of landscapes by new infrastructure projects; the combined use of different means of transport and communication in order to deal with dispersed activities; and the consequences of the new mobility behaviours for the relationship between people and territory.  

Part three, “Mobilities, Inequalities and conflicts”, focuses in the inequalities and conflicts related to mobility practices and projects, as the growth of mobility has profound implications for the dynamics of social inequality and social exclusion.

The last part, “Mapping Mobility practices”, emphasizes different quantitative approaches and data sources for analysing and mapping mobility and urban practices.

Book note prepared by Lina María Rosales