Intra City Mobility & Social Inequality in Cities – Amit Khanna, Founder & Design Principal at AKDA

Bengaluru, March 01, 2016: Prior to the widespread dispersion of motorized transport, cities were traversed mostly by human or animal power, limiting the number of possible journeys as well as the total trip length. Mechanized means of transport at the turn of the last century radically changed the potential reach of the average city dweller, allowing multiple and lengthier trips. In addition, these trips could be undertaken in relative comfort, sheltered from the elements and with considerable privacy. As with all new technology, automobiles were solely the preserve of wealthy, affluent city dwellers and this divide persists to the present day, with cars continuing to represent not just spatial mobility, but social mobility as well, with a ubiquitous culture of ownership aspiration. The expense of purchasing, owning, insuring and running a car is considered secondary to the essential freedom it provides – that of being able to choose the moment, the pace and the route of a journey.

The evolution of the city is closely linked with that of the car, echoed in automobile centric 20th century city planning programs around the world. As early as 1920, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, presented a model of what he called the Citrohan House, meant to be a companion to the Citroen car, equally as efficient in being a machine for living in as the car was a machine for transportation. This obsession with the car would eventually find its way into the Plan Voisin for Paris, a bold architectural statement that condensed all of human experience either into voluminous tower blocks or into speeding cars that interspersed them. As much as the Plan Voisin has since been vilified, the bulk of our modern day cities reflect that same ambition. As recently as 2014, plans for new cities in the developing world continue to advocate large thoroughfares, called arterial roads in a barely concealed metaphor to emphasize their necessity. Most large cities today consist of tall, multi purpose buildings that hug elevated freeways full of speeding cars ferrying fewer than 25% of the commuters, but determining our overall experience of the urban environment. Additionally, infrastructure spending on cities also tends to focus on alleviating congestion and increasing the speed of vehicular movement.

However, social exclusion is not limited to the results of not owning a car in the city. Public transport has also, for the most part, been limited to using the same infrastructure created for private car users. Buses, whether they are part of sophisticated state owned systems or informal aggregations of private operators, are subject to limitations of traffic congestion, expensive ridership costs and the need to walk at either ends of the journey. Although light rail systems require their own infrastructure and are far more efficient and often, sustainable, than road based systems, they are mostly inserted ex post facto, disrupting existing patterns, requiring substantial investments and like buses, needing other modes to supplement them. It can be argued that the combination of bus and light rail forms a continuum of public service transport that can readily replace private car ownership, but the density required to support these systems often only exists in more centrally located, affluent areas. There exists a fundamentally inverse linear relationship between travel and density, whereby increased density is proportional to reduced travel distance.

Inequality in cities, or the uneven distribution of resources or benefits, can stem from multiple factors related to income levels, gender, disabilities, employment, etc. Social exclusion theory is a multidimensional problem and transport systems tend to contribute in a number of ways to magnify existing inequalities. In Church et al.(2000: 198-200), seven specific categories are discussed – physical exclusion (such as the lack of disabled facilities), geographical exclusion (such as the distance to transport nodes), exclusion from facilities (such as the distance to schools, hospitals, etc.), economic exclusion (such as the high costs of travel and the impact on income), time-based exclusion (such as time-poverty for travel due to other demands), fear-based exclusion (such as the lack of safety in using public transport during night time) and spatial exclusion (such as gated communities which prevent through traffic). However, more recent literature has begun to refocus on political exclusion, where macroeconomic policies such as fiscal tightening, regressive tax policies and austerity are creating greater regional disparity and distorting patterns of investment in cities, eventually affecting employment at the peripheries.

While all of these are important factors, central to the notion of exclusion is the idea of affordability. How does someone with limited means travel across the city for employment and how much of their income can they reasonably be expected to pay for this travel? Also critical is whether they can afford to spend a significant part of their day commuting when they, more often than not, have multiple domestic roles which also require attention. The longest travel times are always associated with people from the areas of greatest deprivation. These areas, more often than not, are characterized by reduced access to transport nodes and prone to the disadvantages caused by segregation due to high speed traffic. Ironically, these areas are often juxtaposed with sites of affluence and gentrification, attributable to their proximity to the node. Further, the area is far more likely to suffer the impacts of transport such as road accidents and pollution, despite contributing the least to these impacts, since they are less likely to own a car. They are also more likely to suffer from inadequate cycling or walking facilities, further exacerbating their access to public transport. Thus, the issue of social isolation is compounded by limited mobility options, and even more so for special need groups, such as the disabled, the elderly, women and children.

Corporate Comm India (CCI Newswire)