Submobilities, or on the Multiple Modes of Movement in the City

Abstract

This article discusses a multiplicity of modes of urban mobilities. The idea of multiplicity refers to a culture of mobility understood as a contested field of alternative or othered to each other forms of mobility that occupy a dominant or subjected position in the field. We propose the notion of submobility that grasps processes of othering, i.e. production of various modes of movement as marginal and as a result situated “below the radar” of dominant frames in the cultures of mobilities. The notion of sub-mobility is exemplified in three case-studies. The first considers the othering of paratransit within the frames of transportation policies in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century and in Russia a hundred years later. The second analyses the fragmentation of the public transport systems and differentiation of its user groups in post-socialist Ukraine and Romania. The third case looks at the processes of normalization and othering of children’s movements in contemporary mobility systems and urban spaces.