Speaker
Description
Often, ideas, needs and objectives regarding mobility infrastructures and their development diverge between users and planners or politicians. Under what conditions do transformations of mobility systems and transport infrastructure can be carried out, especially if there is a sharp polarization to be found between different stakeholders and how do overarching tendencies of political, societal and / or economic transformation like they followed the end of the GDR and the fall of the socialist system hinder or facilitate socio-technical transformations?
This presentation will explore these questions using the example of the public transport infrastructure system of the city of Leipzig and its turbulent recent history since 1989. For Leipzig’s transport infrastructure, this period has been characterised by a process of profound change in materialities, practices, technologies and ideologies that I conceptualise as a “twofold transformation”.
Between 1990 und 2001, two phases of change, each driven by different actors pursuing different goals, followed each other dependently: First, a shift in mobility practices of Leipzig’s citizens after the “Wende”, which turned away from public transport and towards cars had a significant impact on the infrastructure system of urban (public) transport. This development, an unintentional, non-teleological, rather spontaneous and unregulated “transformation from below”, was followed by a targeted set of transformative measures initiated by the city administration, urban planning department and infrastructure operators. This led to a second (partial) transformation “top down”. Together they resulted in a profoundly different urban transport system with regard to technologies, technical infrastructures, practices and ideologies compared to the system before 1989.
Both processes of change were fiercely contested and accompanied by discursive disputes between different stakeholder groups such as users, environmental activists, city administrators and politicians that mainly derived from West Germany.
For this presentation, I will refer to my dissertation on the transformation of urban infrastructures of the city of Leipzig between 1980-2000. I will make use of own conceptual conclusions on transformations of infrastructures and enrich these theoretical conclusions with empirical findings.
Biography
Laura Marie Höss is a research fellow at the Institute of History at TU Darmstadt and alumna of the RTG KRITIS. She studied history at LMU Munich and Universidad de Salamanca (Spain) and holds a Master's degree in Historical Urban Studies from TU in Berlin, where she has worked in the field of participatory urban planning before returning to academia. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies and Historical Urban Studies with a special interest in urban infrastructures. Her dissertation on the transformation of public transport and energy infrastructures in the city of Leipzig from 1980 – 2000 is to be published in the course of this year.
