How Mobility Systems Produce Inequality: Making Mobile Subject Types on the Bangkok Sky Train

Tim Richardson, Ole B. Jensen

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

51 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper explores a crucial aspect of sustainable mobility: the production of social inequality in mobility systems. The approach taken is to focus on how, as new transit infrastructures create alternative ways of traveling in and accessing the city, they create changed conditions for the formation of subject identities. New types of travellers are realised in the newly engineered spaces of mobility. The paper argues that this focus on these emergent mobile subject types can be useful in investigating the social inequalities that can result from the introduction of new infrastructures. This approach is illustrated in a case study of one urban transit system: the BTS Sky Train, Bangkok, Thailand. The analysis reveals the subtle hegemony of an elite mobility system that slowly becomes not only the ‘norm' but increasingly the desired mode of mobility, emphasising how mobile elites are constructed and how social inequality is materially produced.
Original languageEnglish
JournalBuilt Environment
Volume34
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)218-231
Number of pages13
ISSN0263-7960
Publication statusPublished - 2008

Keywords

  • Mobility, ,
  • Social Inequality
  • Mobile Subject

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