A stroller ethnography of mobilities design

This paper explores a neglected mode of mobility through an ethnographic study of pram strollers in Copenhagen. I illustrate the analytic advantages of using the recent mobilities design turn to explore how pram strolling is conditioned by material designs and experienced through affective atmospheres, embodied practices and social encounters. The pram is approached as a significant, yet largely overlooked, everyday object that affords urban mobility, and in the creative vein of mobilities design, the paper experiments with a new style of visual ethnography to help unravel the consequential properties and experiential effects of urban surfaces. In this process, I relate pram mobility to questions of urban accessibility issues and discuss urban design interventions, not as transient inconveniencies, but enduring predicaments for wheeled-based mobility in the contemporary city.