Spatial mobility and social change: the mobile and the immobile

Topics

• Governance capacity

Abstract

The shift in travel towards higher-order centres and increased trip lengths, and the fall in public transport use, appear to be in line with trends in the UK and other developed countries, and are normally ascribed to growing car ownership. Car users, through their greater mobility, are able to exercise a wider choice of destinations, in travelling further to higher-order centres in order to enjoy a greater selection of goods and services and lower prices. The non-car population, despite its lower potential mobility has adopted the same values and aspirations as its car-owning neighbours. A basic minimal level of actual mobility is essential for the enjoyment of a ‘normal’ standard of living. It is easy to identify the ‘transport-poor’ or those perhaps suffering ‘transport-induced deprivation’. These terms mean deprivation not necessarily through poverty, but through not having the transport resources to overcome the distance barrier between them and the locations of the various social and economic opportunities which would otherwise be available. Immobile groups identified were those households with no wage earners, elderly persons living alone. Most less mobile have longer family roots in the countryside and are now trapped by this immobility and associated adverse economic circumstances. The largest group with potential mobility problems are those within one-car households who are unable to use the vehicle when required. Lift-taking is a partial compensation, and there may be other co-operative arrangements with relatives and neighbours. Mobility-related problems worsened during the last view decades due to the decline of public transport particularly in remote areas.

Journal / Publisher / Institution

Sociologia Ruralis, Blackwell Publishing

Issue / Volume / Number

Vol.35, n°1, pp.24-39.

Reference to the original publication

hardcopy