Equitable Technologies for Smarter Urbanism: Enhancing Priority Car Parking at Western Sydney University

Relocating university campuses to Central Business Districts (CBDs) changes the way people travel to and from campus. While CBDs are often considered accessible due to the increased availability of public transport and non-motorised transit options (e.g. walking, cycling), urban locations can also lead to social exclusion and transport disadvantage for some. For example, people with disabilities and caring commitments who are dependent on private car transport to facilitate their mobility, can find it more difficult to access urban campuses when accessible parking and transport options are not readily available. In 2018, Western Sydney University opened its second city-based campus in the City of Liverpool, located in Southwest Sydney, New South Wales. With limited on-site car parking in the campuses’ basement, plans were implemented to provide staff and students with disabilities and caring commitments with priority parking. DIVVY Parking Pty Ltd was commissioned to deliver a car parking service using their app

Transformative travel : the socially mobile de/construction of reality

Physical travel has traditionally been viewed as an agent of transformation. The research conducted on this topic, however, is surprisingly narrow in scope. Few studies have attempted to look beyond a particular tourism/travel segment or discipline and most utilise a restricted range of methods and analysis. These investigations have also failed to consider the long-term impacts of corporeal travel and how changes continue to evolve over time. This study conducts a holistic and interdisciplinary exploration of transformative travel. It draws upon the experiences and observations of 78 participants (representing a wide-variety of nationalities, ages and experiences), sourced and interviewed over four years using internet-based methods, along with the researcher’s own travels through South-East Asia, West Africa and Europe. The thesis blends theoretical analysis and mobile methods with stories and visuals to capture the rich, sensual, emotive and complex nature of travel, along with building multiple layers of understanding of transformation through travel. The research finds that in a modern, mobile world it becomes increasingly difficult for individuals to distance themselves from those elements that maintain a particular way of thinking and acting. While a traveller may physically remove their body from a specific geographic location, contemporary and historic flows of people, ideas, information, objects, memories and symbols create mobile spaces, places, landscapes and identities; both familiarity and difference abound. As such, transformative travel is a complex phenomenon. Innumerable elements interact in a multitude of permutations and combinations ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ physical travel, making the delivery and prediction of particular outcomes improbable. Travel is perpetual, taking place not only corporeally, but communicatively, virtually, imaginatively and symbolically. As a result, travel, in all its forms, continually acts to construct, maintain and transform individual and collective realities. At its broadest, human travel might be conceptualised, not simply as movement from one place to another, but as a shift in conscious attention. Physical travel becomes one of many flows in the socially mobile de/construction of reality

Transformative travel : a mobilities perspective

Physical travel has traditionally been viewed as an agent of transformation. The research conducted on this topic, however, is surprisingly narrow in scope. Few studies have attempted to look beyond a particular tourism/travel segment or discipline and most utilise a restricted range of methods and analysis. These investigations have also failed to consider the long-term impacts of corporeal travel and how changes continue to evolve over time. Drawing upon a holistic and interdisciplinary study of transformative travel, this article argues that in a mobile world, it becomes increasingly difficult for individuals to distance themselves from elements that maintain a particular way of thinking and acting. While a traveller may physically remove their body from a specific geographic location, contemporary and historic flows of people, ideas, information, objects, memories and symbols create mobile spaces, places, landscapes and identities, where both familiarity and difference abound. Transformation through physical travel becomes a complex social phenomenon

Transformative Travel in a Mobile World

This book presents the re-theorization of travel and transformation through the lens of the mobilities paradigm. It explores the complexity of factors that influence the thinking and behaviors a traveler brings to a journey, how these become entwined in experiences during travel and how travel experiences may continue upon one’s return

Travels Through West Africa: A Sensual Essay

The third in a three part series of companion books to Transformative Travel in a Mobile World

The lingering moment

This chapter draws upon recent PhD research that sought to explore the notion of transformative travel – the long-term changes some individuals attribute to their physical travel experiences. From 2005 to 2010, seventy-eight participants from seventeen different nationalities reported their experiences on a purpose-built research website. These experiences were diverse, stretching from pleasure travel, to study abroad, working, volunteering, migration and even military service. A series of longitudinal interviews was conducted every two years via email to investigate the continuing transformation of participants’ lives and thinking. These interviews took place in 2007 and 2009/2010 and required participants to reflect upon previous responses (attached to the email), identify any progression of these ideas and behaviours and detail whether further transformations had occurred, not necessarily through physical travel. In addition to gathering these stories, I also engaged in a series of journeys myself – four weeks in East Timor, two months in Southeast Asia (Cambodia and Laos) and two months in West Africa (Niger, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire). The research argued that travellers do not simply physically relocate themselves to a new location, undergo a transformative experience and return home with a static, altered identity. Individuals inhabit mobile places, alive with physical, communicative, virtual and imaginative flows of people and information. Physical travel becomes just one element within this fluid landscape. This chapter, however, does not focus on transformative travel per se. Rather, it looks at those findings from the research that relate specifically to the return experience

Travels Through Cambodia and Laos: A Sensual Essay

The second in a three part series of companion books to Transformative Travel in a Mobile World

Travels Through East Timor: A Sensual Essay

The first in a three part series of companion books to Transformative Travel in a Mobile World

Investigating perpetual travel : email interviews and longitudinal methods in travel, tourism and mobilities research

Corporeal travel is deeply entwined in daily experiences, performances, sensualities, imaginings, memories, communications and mobilities (Leed 1991, Rojek and Urry 1997, Urry 2007). As such, in a liquid modern world, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between notions such as home, away, departure, arrival, return, before, during and after travel is a perpetual state of being (Bauman 2000, Urry 2007). In this context, researchers such as Urry (2007), Hannam (2009) and Mavric and Urry (2009) argue that physical travel should not be separated from other forms of mobility; courtesy of historic and contemporary mobilities, they are entangled. Corporeal travel is informed by (and informs) all other mobilities, whether they be physical, virtual, communicative and/or imaginative (Urry 2007); albeit to varying degrees, an individual is travelling before, during and after any given physical travel experience. In addition, physical travel does not end upon one's 'return' home it is continued in a variety of ways, including through photographs, objects, social relationships, roles, routines and performance and through inhabiting a fluid place (Lean 2012a). Given the growing acknowledgement of the perpetual nature of travel and its intersection with mobile lifestyles (as evidenced in this volume), there is a need for a concomitant shift in the methods used for investigating this phenomenon (Uny 2007, Buscher, Urry and Witchger 2011). Methods that can observe lived experience over an extended period need to be employed. The following chapter reflects upon methods used in an ongoing exploration of transformation through travel. Commencing in 2005, the study utilizes email interviews, in a longitudinal design, to investigate the accounts of individuals who believe they have been 'transformed' by physical travel. It explores how these corporeal travel experiences and transformations intersect with other mobilities and experiences over the respondent's life course. Drawing upon participant feedback and literature on email interviews and longitudinal research, I reflect upon my experiences using this method and provide a series of considerations for other researchers who may want to employ a similar methodological design in their own projects

Transformative travel : inspiring sustainability

Tourism can be a powerful vehicle for changing people's thinking and behavior both during travel and upon their return home. While proponents of sustainable travel are to be applauded for their work in delivering benefits to host communities, this chapter outlines a research project which argues that the concept should take a broader focus than just the destination. In order to fully realize ideals like sustainability, the industry must work toward inspiring enduring changes of behavior that ensure the health and wellbeing of the individual and their economic, sociocultural, and ecological environments. These changes of action will help deliver individual and global wellness