When Design 'tells you off': futuring mobility injustice and vulnerable citizens

We live in a culture where design most often is positive by default. Design is a catchy (some even think sexy) term, and designers are interesting people with high levels of creative inputs to both culture and economic growth. However, there is also another side to this story. Street-sleepers are told off by spikes, leanings benches, and steel frames, senior citizens are prevented from moving through the city due to car-centric algorithms prioritizing only very fast walkers (or cars), and disabled persons struggle to move into buildings, cross the street, or simply to engage in civic life in the urban spaces. When all this happens within the realm of the city it is related to design. Design that excludes, that tells someone off. Either intentionally as in the case of most anti-homeless design or as an ‘unintended consequence of design’ as in some instances of mobility injustice hitting seniors or disabled persons. The ‘city’, even though it can be hard to define, is immanently related to design as it can be seen as a giant artefact and assemblage of things, people, technology, spaces etc. The city is ‘made’! This ‘human-made-ness’ of the city means that is has been designed, that it is an artefact, that is has been crafted, and thus that it is contingent (i.e. it could be different). But is also means that when someone is ‘told off’ in the city, by the city, it is a material mediation of power and normativity that tends to be hidden, forgotten, or naturalized. This paper discusses when design is responsible for exclusion, telling people off, and what that has of repercussion for mobility justice and injustice. The presentation engages in a discussion of how futuring for just and sustainable mobility may be contemplated without telling off vulnerable citizens