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Purpose
– This paper aims to describe global trends and policy responses with respect to the social sustainability of urban mobility which, put simply, refers to whether the benefits and costs of transport and travel services (mobility) and the spatial organisation of facilities and services (accessibility) are equally and equitably distributed in a society or community. Considering urban transport provision from a social sustainability framework raises critical issues of policy goals and purpose, not least of which is the consideration that policies aimed at stemming or reducing urban mobility should not accentuate existing inequities and inequalities in accessibility. It also raises issues of reshaping urban decision-making structures to better integrate the end-user, where the end-user includes both those who are presently included in mobility and accessibility provision and, most importantly, those who are presently and have been previously excluded.


Design/methodology/approach
– Comprehensive research into the global policy literature and urban practice around socially sustainable urban mobility under the auspices of an international agency.


Findings
– The databases and methodologies around social sustainability have not been sufficiently developed to permit ready operationalisation. The use of electronic technology and user feedback – which such technology makes possible – has not been adequately harnessed to develop the necessary methodologies for the measurement of social sustainability with respect to urban mobility.


Research limitations/implications
– The development of improved social sustainability methodologies will increase the probability of the building of pro-poor infrastructure.


Practical implications
– The development of improved social sustainability methodologies will proved improved frameworks for evaluating the social responsibility of transport options.


Social implications
– The development of participatory methodologies and evaluatory frameworks will lead towards more cohesive and better integrated cities, that is more socially sustainable cities.


Originality/value
– This paper makes the case that the participatory research necessary to the evaluation of transport projects, schemes and networks as socially sustainable has not yet been undertaken. It brings together a set of global evidence to make the case that current discussions of the social sustainability currently take place in an evidence and policy vacuum.

The affluent worker study has held sway as one of the most important works, if not the most important work in British sociology over the last decade. Its findings remain unchallenged in the literature to date. Many analyses of industrial behaviour, political behaviour, family behaviour and "community" behaviour take the findings as the starting point of their investigation. For British sociology the findings of the Affluent Worker have foundation status. This paper sets out to fault the claims of prototypicality and typicality made for the affluent workers of Luton by the study team.

1. Does mobility have a future? / John Urry -- 2. Mobility and transport disadvantage / Julian Hine -- 3. Structures of encounterability : space, place, paths and identities / Frances Hodgson -- 4. Perspectives on young people's daily mobility, transport and service access in Sub-Saharan Africa / Gina Porter.[et. al]. -- 5. Research on mobility and lifestyle : what are the results? / Konrad Gotz and Kay W. Axhausen -- 7. Connected, computed, collective : smart mobilities / Monika Buscher.[et. al] -- 8. Technology fix versus behaviour change / Glenn Lyons -- 9. The impact of differences in commuting duration on family travel and activity patterns in the London and Paris regions / Peter Jones.[et. al] -- 10. Transport and social exclusion : where are we now? / Karen Lucas -- 11. What we do whilst driving : towards the driverless car / Eric Laurier and Tim Dant -- 12. Configuring commuters' accessiblity to multimedia mobile services : the case of bluetooth 'augmented' advertising in the Paris metro / C. Licoppe and C. Levallois-Barth -- 13. Young people, mobility and the environment : an integrative approach / Colin G. Pooley -- 14. Sustainabole mobility and mobility justice : towards a twin transition / Mimi Sheller -- 15. Transport history, the usable past and the future of mobility / Colin Divall -- 16. Aviation and ethnicity : an under-investigated area / Fione Raje -- 17. Bridging the mobility gap : the role of ITS / John D. Nelson and Paulus T. Aditjandra -- Epilogue. The mobility of the sick : perferse organisational premises in the transport arrangements of the contemporary national health service / Margaret Grieco.

This book brings together the leading authors currently working at the intersection of social sciences and transport science and offers rich consideration of the issues, practices and structures of multiple mobilities. It seeks to not only draw attention to many new areas of research and investigation relating to mobile live, but also to point to new theories and methods by which such lives have to be researched and examined, theories and methods which contributors here are themselves developing and enhancing.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Questioning Fluidity -- 2. Insights from Empirical Research -- 3. Re-thinking Spatial Mobility -- 4. Mobile, therefore Free? -- 5. The Use of Speed Potentials -- 6. What Inequalities? -- 7. The Production of Context -- 8. Conclusion: Towards a Network Solidity? -- Bibliography -- Index.

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to provide conceptual provocation in the context of collective expertise on the identification of time‐space constraints – a conceptual provocation that pushes understandings of routines and practices and the tensions that exist around schedulability and social efficiency when the collective dimension of all social action is ignored by social policy, be it in the developing or developed context.Design/methodology/approachThe article examines time‐space constraints in three distinctive environments – low‐income children in urban Ghana, women's space in the North West Frontier province of Pakistan and low‐income elderly sick within the National Health system of the UK. A case study approach is taken.FindingsThe analysis draws attention to the impact of mobility constraints on dignity and social functioning in policy environments that maximise rather than address and redress such constraints.Research implicationsA time‐space constraint approach leads towards more fundamental practices of process investigation rather than a parading of apparent patterns of outcomes, and this in turn leads towards a practice of process correction. There are significant policy implications from this research.Originality/valueIdentifying time‐space constraints represents a woefully neglected element of the development discourse, and it is time for the correction of this neglect with detailed analysis of time‐space constraints across the range of social action. This paper addresses this.