Speaker
Description
Infrastructures are an important determinant on how the challenges of the climate crisis can be met. Mobilities with their large ecological (and social) impact in particular highly depend on various infrastructures from roads and train tracks to trans-atlantic fibre optic cables - these provide the material arrangements on which the performance of mobility practices depends.
It is clear that the reconfiguration of social practices towards social and ecological sustain-ability requires the social-ecological transformation of mobility infrastructures and con-comitant practices of infrastructuring. However, within the context of many countries of the Global North mobility infrastructures are ill-suited and sometimes even recalcitrant and thereby hinder the wide-spread adoption of sustainable mobility practices. In this contribu-tion, I will present selected empirical examples on this recalcitrant role of mobility infra-structures and processes of infrastructuring.
The first case is a real-world experiment on commuting. In this experiment we observed how the state of mobility infrastructures for sustainable commuting counteracts the uptake of sustainable commuting practices. However, by learning new competences and through the experience of new meanings it is possible to at least partially compensate for them. The second case is based on a study on the remodelling of train stations using virtual reali-ty. The virtual train station was specifically designed to reduce the infrastructural friction when changing between modes of transport. This had the effect that the train station was experienced more as an airport – a space of supposedly seamless mobility.
Both examples highlight the importance of infrastructuring practices. On one side, the concept of infrastructuring needs to expand to include the ways in which decay and ne-glect are dealt with by users of infrastructure. On the other side, practices of infrastructur-ing need to move from the sole building of infrastructures and focus more on the needs of mobile practitioners.
Biography
Luca Nitschke has been a research scientist at ISOE since November 2020. He did his doctorate on motivations and practices of non-commercial carsharing at the TU Munich as a Hans Böckler Fellow. In his work he focused on the interaction of alternative mobility practices and processes of change. Luca Nitschke completed his Master in Environmental Studies in Barcelona, Aveiro, Aalborg and New York and his Bachelor in Environmental Sciences in Bielefeld.
