Moving Towards Mobility Justice: Challenges and Considerations for Supporting Advocacy

In response to climate change and continued urbanization, urban transportation systems around the world are undergoing transitions to promote lower-emission vehicles, public transit, biking and walking. However, mobility is a complex issue that raises important questions of social justice as a result of its connections to numerous aspects of everyday life and the broader social and political contexts. Drawing on interviews with transportation advocates across Canada, we identify four ways in which the design and use of existing mobility tools and technologies perpetuate mobility injustices, and deepen the divide between urban planners and the public. Looking across these arguments, we note path-dependence in transportation knowledge infrastructures as a common barrier to mobility justice advocacy that can be difficult to recognize or overcome. Finally, we consider tactics that research in HCI and CSCW might pursue as part of efforts to unsettle path-dependence and reorient transportation planning towards mobility justice.