mass transit

Interviews

In Search of Grand Paris: Pierre Mansat on the Eve of the June 2020 Municipal Elections

Magda Maaoui & Pierre Mansat - 26 June 2020
Magda Maaoui interviews Pierre Mansat, former deputy mayor of Paris and a founding father of “le Grand Paris” (the...
Debates

Covid-19, War, and Working-Class Neighborhoods

Pierre Gilbert & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 June 2020
The residents of France’s working-class neighborhoods, accused of exacerbating the coronavirus pandemic through...
From the Field

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Stephen P. Ruszczyk - 4 June 2019
The urban context and public transportation shape how undocumented youths move within cities. In a comparison of...
From the Field

The Leaderless Urban Social Movement as Problem and Solution

Caio Teixeira - 25 September 2018
Today, with urban uprisings driven by leaderless social movements, the future of the would-be progressive agenda...
From the Field

Dunkirk as a New “Laboratory” for Free Transit

Henri Briche & Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine - 29 June 2018
From September 2018, the public transport network in Dunkirk, France, will be free of charge for all users. Henri...
Debates

More Affordable Transit Fares

Alexis Perrotta - 26 April 2016
Low-income urban residents often struggle to afford transit fares. Seattle recently established half-fares for poor...
Debates

Streetcars Named Desire

Luc Gwiazdzinski & translated by Oliver Waine - 15 March 2016
Luc Gwiazdzinski provides an original and critical analysis of the changes affecting today’s cities and contemporary...
Debates

A flat-rate travel card for the Paris region: revolution or illusion?

Marie-Hélène Massot & translated by Oliver Waine - 6 November 2015
Fare “dezoning” in the Paris region – a key reform to mark the end of Jean-Paul Huchon’s term as leader of...
Reviews

The Dangers of Security

Médéric Martin-Mazé & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 May 2015
In Against Security, Harvey Molotch highlights – through various examples, including the New York subway, airports,...
From the Field

Social Norms and Resistance on the City Bus

Sofya Aptekar - 5 May 2015
While subways are hailed as the quintessential New York experience, with their own museum, T-shirts, and lore, the...
Essays

Transport as both a function and a facilitator of metropolitan development?

Aurélien Delpirou & translated by Oliver Waine - 12 February 2015
In Paris, Lyon and Marseille, the development of public transport is a central element of the metropolitan projects...
From the Field

In the Paris metro, hell is other people

Luke Haywood & Martin Koning & translated by Oliver Waine - 15 January 2015
In the medical field, it is not unusual for remedies prescribed to combat a particular condition to have...
From the Field

Coping with crowdedness in mass transportation

Martin Aranguren & Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 February 2014
Riding overcrowded metros, tubes or subways with dozens of strangers in varying moods is routinely viewed as a...
Essays

Could harmonised working times spell an end to the rush hour?

Emmanuel Munch & translated by Oliver Waine - 12 February 2014
Efforts to coordinate working hours across urban territories have increased in recent years. By exploring the...
Debates

The Negotiated Urbanism of Grand Paris Express

Lara Belkind - 12 June 2013
In the fragmented context of Paris’s metropolitan and regional politics, the Grand Pari(s) design consultation and...
Reviews

Free public transport: from social experiment to political alternative?

Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine - 20 March 2013
In a work combining storytelling and reflection, a local councillor and a philosopher analyse the policy of free...
Debates

The Fantastical Accounts of Grand Paris

Frédéric Léonhardt & translated by Eric Rosencrantz - 28 September 2011
After four years of ongoing debate, the French government’s Grand Paris scheme has spawned a large-scale mass...
Debates

Integrating the train into the city: some thoughts from Spain

Luis Santos y Ganges & translated by Eric Rosencrantz - 21 September 2011
Are inner-city railways condemned to form boundaries or barriers within the city? Based on a critique of the...
Debates

Grand Huit, big gamble, big problem

Jean-Pierre Orfeuil & translated by Michael Stokes - 22 December 2010
The secretary of State for the development of Paris and its region, Christian Blanc, left office in July 2010. He...

Series

Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research
New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York’s Tech Economy
Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements
Land Rights in the Urban Global South
Climate Change and Social Change
Shrinking Cities
The Resurgence of Towers in European Cities
Children in the City
The Renewed Relevance of Urban-Planning Models?

Featured

From the Field

Arts Districts Without Artists

Meghan Ashlin Rich - 23 March 2015
Numerous studies have examined gentrification’s harmful effects for low-income residents, but few examine the...
Debates

Interrupting Inequality: Crisis and Opportunity in Low-Income Housing Policy

Susan Saegert - 26 January 2015
Inequality in the United States is deeply rooted in issues of property ownership, wealth, race and class....
Debates

Kanal İstanbul: a “crazy project” serving political ambitions

Yoann Morvan & translated by Oliver Waine - 7 December 2011
The current proliferation of mega-projects in the Istanbul metropolitan area is both undeniable and impressive. The...

Other resources online

Are Homeless People “Vagrants”?

Mobile Lives Forum
The image of the “homeless person” is associated with the older figure of the wandering vagrant. In reality,...

Mobilities: The French Government Has to Back Up Its...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the field of transportation, France’s “ecological transition” is inadequate when it comes to meeting the challenges...

Twelve Discourses of Climate Delay in the Transportation...

Mobile Lives Forum
Perhaps one of the few good-news items of the 2020s is that climate denial is on its way out. In most of Europe, it...

Being a Bicycle Delivery Rider: Passion or Exploitation?

Mobile Lives Forum
In recent years, takeaway delivery has exploded, in a context where consumer practices are changing, last-mile...

Digital Nomads in the Era of the Covid‑19 Pandemic

Mobile Lives Forum
No longer deciding where you live based on where you work – that is the choice made by digital nomads, the traveling...

Personal Carbon Allowances for Travel: Is It Possible, Fair, and...

Mobile Lives Forum
Transportation is responsible for 30% of greenhouse-gas emissions in France, and this figure is constantly...
Centre national de recherche scientifique
Journal supported by the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Institute of Human and Social Sciences) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

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