Obduracy and change in urban mobility sociotechnical ensembles involving information and communication technologies.

Abstract

Street, sidewalks, trains, bicycles, buses, motorcycles, tunnels, and bridges are the visible parts of century-old artifacts. Within the paradigm of the social construction of technology (SCOT), they also embody laws, social meanings, vested interests, politics, culture, other technologies, and contingency. Settled disputes between actors that shaped the arrangement (and eventually competition) between these transport technologies lie at the core of an urban mobility system. Over time, this system acquires stability and obduracy and changes seldom occur. Recently, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have pervaded the human and nonhuman elements that constitute the fabric of cities. As they arguably disrupt several systems, to what extent do ICTs trigger changes in urban mobility? The hypothesis presented here is that actors in research, planning, design, and policy making use ICTs to cope with obduracy in sociotechnical change related to urban mobility. Three case studies in three different contexts Combining qualitative and quantitative methods the first study describes how these actors interact with selected transport technologies before and after ICTs became pervasive. ICTs as an instrument has been used to collect, analyze, and visualize large-scale spatiotemporal data on: (i) informal motorcycle taxi rides in Jakarta (Indonesia), (ii) private car fleet speed, taxi rides, and buses in Curitiba (Brazil) and (iii) bicycle and bicycle road infrastructure in Berlin (Germany). The thesis concludes by pointing out that ICTs are not disruptive, but rather triggered malleability of urban mobility sociotechnical ensembles that previously had been quite rigid, which has been exploited by scattered actors and social groups in the private sector yet simultaneously ignored by observed actors and groups in the public sector.