These are the words of Mimi Sheller, a leading light in New Mobilities Turn (NMT), a dynamic humanist and social science field of study, in the recently published Handbook of Urban Mobilities. Today we must add another dimension of the elite: the ability to dispense with mobility without sacrifice.
The commuter, tourist or delivery driver who consults this handbook for practical advice will be disappointed. The book instead manifests the above field of study, in which the late John Urry was another leading figure. It also exemplifies the publisher-led expansion of the handbook concept.
The strength of NMT, which emerges in the book’s 41 thought-provoking chapters, lies in its ability to capture the interactions between mobility’s ethnographic dimensions – meaning and experience – on the one hand, and the contexts where mobility is practised – socio-technical and socio-economic systems and processes – on the other. One exciting, promising challenge will be to use this book to visualise the forthcoming climate-change adaption of cities and mobility. Will the average person be affected by the intensifying neo-liberal smartness of growing surveillance, deceptive nudging and the increasingly unequal distribution of ever-dwindling resources? Or will social movements force a capsizal, allowing old and new technologies, and old and new resources to benefit the common interest? This handbook provides no answers, nor any real questions either. In addition, it is too orientated towards the issue of accumulating knowledge, and less orientated towards opportunities for action and intervention. One illustrative example is the bias in the chapter on big data, which focuses on opportunities for better empirical descriptions, rather than on the world of digital platforms as an increasingly important political battleground.
By uncovering the diverse everyday mobility practices of the cities of the Global North, the handbook indirectly provides a valuable, sound basis for the mission of Mistra–SAMS – to transform the transport sector according to the principles of the 2015 Paris Agreement.