Is it still "cycling"? Pedelec-commuting from a social-practice-perspective

The sales of pedelecs are currently skyrocketing in Germany and in many other places. As a low-carbon means of mobility, pedelecs have the potential to make a substantial contribution to the mobility transition. This thesis employs practice theory as proposed by Shove et al. (2012) to investigate this quickly evolving phenomenon. The analysis is based on interviews with e-bike commuters which were investigated using template analysis and exploratory memos. To obtain a broad picture the practice, a maximum variance sampling strategy was carried out in two cities that vary substantially with regard to velomobility: Wuppertal and Münster. This thesis one hand presents the first encompassing account on the practice elements which commuting by pedelec is composed of. It hence contributes to the debate about the depiction of practices. Furthermore, the thesis finds that pedelec commuting should be conceptualized as a variant of velomobility and not as a variant of motoring or as an independent practice. Yet, the elements integrated in pedelec-commuting are found to clearly differ from those of cycling, so that pedelec-commuting meets the requirements of everyday life much better than commuting on non-electrified bikes. The findings of this thesis suggest several pathways to strengthening this novel practice. The capacity of e-biking to serve mundane trips can for example be supported through the normalization of the use of weather- and transport relevant materials and competences. Deeper linkages with interacting practices from other sectors, such as an integration of cycling materials (GPS-trackers) into policing practices, can also con-tribute to this goal. With regard to research, the present work offers starting points for quantifications, for example on the relative importance of single elements as well as on the characteristics of their relations among each other or with regard to typical constellations of elements

AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs

This report is the latest in a sustained effort throughout 2014 by the Pew Research Center's Internet Project to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (The Web at 25).The report covers experts' views about advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and their impact on jobs and employment

Subjectivities in motion: Dichotomies in consumer engagements with self-tracking technologies

With the rise of self-tracking technologies (STT), self-quantification has become a popular digital consumption phenomenon. Despite recent academic interests, self-tracking practices remain poorly understood, in particular, little is known on how consumers engage with STT and how such behavioural trends produce new subjectivities. This paper adopts a Foucauldian perspective of self-surveillance to explore: how do subjectivities emerge from consumer interactions and engagements with self-tracking technologies? Data were collected from twenty participants using an ethnographic research design over six months consisting of semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The findings reveal two sets of dichotomies in the way consumers engage with STT, categorised as: ‘health and indulgence’ and ‘labour and leisure’. Through these dichotomies of self-surveillance, four subjectivities emerged: ‘redemptive self’, ‘awardee’, ‘loyal’ and ‘innovator’. Our study presents subjectivities as a continual process of (re)configuration of the self, as consumers move from one dichotomy to another. At the practical level, our findings offer novel approaches to segment consumers by reviewing the different contours of consumer behaviour in their interactions with STT

Sustainable Urban Rail Trails: Designing the Cross Kirkland Corridor

This thesis is a guide to building a sustainable rail-trail, wherein I focus on invasive species removal, green pavement, and creating an inviting space with the inclusion of integrated art. When the City of Kirkland, WA purchased the 5.75 mile long section of railroad going through the city, I approached city manager Kurt Triplett to ask about his plans for the corridor. He liked the idea of aiming for a sustainable trail, so I wrote a guide to building an environmentally friendly trail based on a number of prominent readings on sustainable design

The low carbon commute: Rethinking the habits that connect home and work in Auckland and London through John Dewey’s pragmatism

Neoliberalism has fundamentally altered how diverse sectors such as energy, health, and transport have come to be understood and governed. In exercising their ‘freedom of choice’ individual consumers are now held responsible for the social or environmental consequences of their decisions and actions. States have accordingly sought to intervene, influence and change the choices of citizens in a variety of spheres of everyday life. This thesis, by exploring how they understand action, demonstrates why these interventions are severely limited. It examines different approaches which have or could inform such interventions and how they theorise, research, and propose to, govern citizen’s actions. Of those considered, it argues John Dewey’s pragmatist writings, especially on habit and experience, by providing a dynamic understanding of how action continually emerges out of an individual’s interactions with their social and physical environments are particularly pertinent. The relevance of this approach for contemporary sustainability and climate change debates is demonstrated through a focus on commuting, which has become a central concern of various behaviour change agendas. The thesis draws on a range of empirical materials generated and collected through interviews, go-alongs and ethnography during fieldwork with local and migrant workers in Auckland, New Zealand and London, United Kingdom. The methodology aimed to produce a range of data on the stable and dynamic aspects of the internal and external environments, and phases, of action. These empirical materials are employed to demonstrate both the limitations of the dominant psychological and economic behavioural models and the potential of a Deweyan-inspired approach for understanding action. The thesis is structured around three associated interventions. First, the soft or libertarian paternalist concept of ‘choice architecture’ is explored. This approach it is suggested is limited in that it fails to problematize and politicise the notion of choice or account for the emergence of purposive and meaningful action. The notion of ‘habit infrastructures’ is introduced as a way of recognising how subjectivities and preferences are always conditioned but not determined by the histories and politics of physical environments and established social norms, values and ideologies, as individuals always retain the capacity to act upon the world. Second, the notion that various ‘barriers’ prevent individuals from making more sustainable choices is critiqued. The concept is too static, fixed, ahistorical and individualistic to account for the complexities of action and social change. It is demonstrated that such a framing offers little insight into why the number of year round cyclists is increasing in Auckland and London, and how regular commuter cyclists anticipate, experience, and negotiate changing weather conditions alongside a range of other everyday routines and practices. Dewey’s theory of situations is instead shown to provide a way of understanding the continuous and contingent contexts in which these experiences unfold and associated habits emerge. Third, dominant behavioural models typically conceptualise habit and thought as polar opposites. Following Dewey the thesis argues they are better understood as phases within human experience. This argument is developed by exploring how people’s commuting practices emerge out of repeated encounters with particular environments. The transition from the unfamiliar to familiar is marked by a development of new habits which alter people’s sense and experience of these environments and allow them to negotiate and adjust to changes in these contexts often with little or no thought. Dewey thus can provide a useful starting point for rethinking the relationship between habit and thought in future interventions. Given the social, economic and political uncertainties it is unlikely that existing urban infrastructures and systems will be radically reconfigured in the near future. Even if they were, history reminds us technology without accompanying social change will not be sufficient to address crises such as climate change. Behaviour change interventions, therefore, will likely remain a primary policy response to the challenges posed by increasing carbon emissions, resource consumption and demand. This thesis contends such interventions need to move beyond existing dominant behavioural models if they are to facilitate change. John Dewey, with his tenacious insistence on the situated, relational, more-than-individual and emergent character of action, provides an alternative approach which helps to reveal both the challenges and possible openings for developing a less carbon and resource intensive world

Everyday Life and Emotions of Overseas Returned Students in Shanghai, China

While return migration has become a recurring topic in geographical scholarship, very limited attention has been paid to the everyday material and/or emotional experiences of return migrants. The thesis addresses this gap through unpacking the post-study everyday lives and emotions of overseas returned students in Shanghai, China and further sheds light on the conceptualisation of return migration which has remained largely vague in existing scholarship.Based on data collected from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Shanghai from August 2018 to August 2019, this thesis explores overseas returned students’ everyday lives and emotions from the perspectives of everyday experiences of work, everyday life beyond the workplace and intimate relationships. In terms of the constitution of their everyday experiences, this thesis indicates the central role and structuring impact of work, which hints at that work is not only paid labour in office spaces, but exists in everyday life in many ways. Regarding the whole transnational/translocal journeys of participants, this thesis suggests that they continually made their present life through negotiating their previous lived experiences emplaced elsewhere and aspirations for future migration/settlement with everyday circumstances in Shanghai. The lens of everyday emotions reveals how migrants perceived their journey from overseas to China and how they employed their agency to improve daily well-being and create their own places in Shanghai.In general, return migration is a complicated, ongoing process involving multiple (changing) places at various geographical scales which returnees experienced throughout a series of life stages and under specific macro socio-economic contexts. The thesis suggests a blurring boundary between return migration and various kinds of outward migration, because a complex of identities, multiple motivations, the temporal embeddedness and the various geographical scales, which have been indicated in this researched returnee group, prevail among almost all kinds of transnational migration, rather than being unique to return migration. The most significant difference between return migration and outward migration is the attachment of a sense of home and belonging to the destination place.The exploration of return migrants’ everyday experiences not only contributes to a more comprehensive knowledge of return migration in an empirical sense; theoretically, the thesis reflects on the existing conceptualisation of return migration through unpacking the complex identities of returnees, the (trans)temporality of return migration and the sending/receiving places of return journeys. The blurring boundaries between return migration and other migrations indicated in this thesis urge researchers to think how the categorisation of transnational migration could help to advance related debates in future. <br/

Urban walking: perspectives of locals and tourists

Urban planners and architects have done extensive research on walk ability: what it means and how it correlates with urban design and quality of life of the locals, however, it has been hitherto neglected from the aspect of tourism studies. Many cities worldwide are or tend to be walkable as this leads to more sustainable and prosperous communities. In addition, walking-friendly environments greatly cater for leisure and tourism, as in many cities, walking is an integral part of tourist experience. Therefore, tourism industry can be of tremendous help for the city authorities in understanding walkers' needs and experiences. Taking into account both the locals and tourists, this research sought to: (1) determine the most frequently utilized modes of transportation in Novi Sad in Serbia and Koper in Slovenia; (2) assess thier reasons for walking and perception of the quality of pedestrian infrastructure; and (3) evaluate the psychometric properties of the questionnaire designed for the purpose of this study. The results show that the great majority of respondents walk in these two cities. The locals walk primarily to achieve physical fitness, whereas tourists walk primarily to explore the urban spaces. This makes more space for tourism as it combines a competitive supply able to meet visitors' expectations with a positive contribution to the sustainable development of cities and well-being of their residents. Furthermore, this study contributes to emphasizing walking as a sustainable form of mobility in urban environment and can be the impetus for profiling Novi Sad and Koper as walking-friendly cities

Physical activity and urban living : a mixed methods analysis of how urban form influences walking in Scotland

Despite the importance of regular physical activity for maintaining health, large proportions of the population are sedentary or inactive, presenting a considerable challenge to public health. It is argued that the best way to increase the activity of those who are least active is through encouraging more everyday activities such as regular walking. There is a large body of research demonstrating that more walkable urban characteristics such as high density, mixed land use, better connections and closer destinations, are positively associated with walking. However, questions remain about the nature of the environment-walking relationship. Critics of walkability suggest that the detected association may be due to spatial difference rather than behavioural change. The aim of this study is to explore how neighbourhood environment is related to walking and physical activity in Scotland. There are three research objectives: firstly to ascertain whether there is an association between urban form and physical activity in Scotland, secondly to evaluate the effect of neighbourhood selection and thirdly to provide a meaningful account of these relationships. The study uses mixed methods, with semi-structured interviews being the main research component. A special version of the Scottish Health Survey (N>36,000) is used to create a logistic regression model for predicting habitual walking, showing that walkability significantly predicts variations in habitual walking. Analysis of the City Form data corroborates these findings showing that residents of inner city areas are more like to walk or cycle. For the qualitative investigation, residents were recruited who had recently (<3 years) moved into one of the three case study areas in Edinburgh: Dalry, Restalrig and Corstorphine. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 residents, exploring accounts of relocation, neighbourhood use and attitudes toward being active. 12 participants also completed an accelerometer and diary exercise. The findings highlight how neighbourhood relocation is contingent on resources, life events and life stages. Self-reported activity and the accelerometer data illustrates how mundane walking can significantly contribute to overall physical activity attainment. Corresponding with the quantitative analysis, participants from walkable neighbourhood report walking more regularly. However, some participants are more active than others regardless of neighbourhood environment. In conclusion the evidence supports the viability of developing more walkable neighbourhoods to increase physical activity in the Scottish population. Furthermore it is argued that future research could better conceptualise walking as an ambient activity: something enjoyed as part of, rather than incidental to, everyday life