Transfers

This summer a small airplane was suspended between high trees on a lane in a posh neighborhood of Amsterdam. Part of a display of contemporary art, the plane is one of Joost Conijn’s self-built contraptions in which he flew all the way to Africa, regularly reporting on his “performance” in one of the Dutch national newspapers. In Western histories of mobility, voyages to Africa—on foot, by ship, in litters carried by indigenous people, in trains, by car or motorbike, and in planes—symbolized in the popular mind an aggressive colonialism. Such trips demonstrated Western superiority as much as they involved utilitarian journeying or reconnaissance of land to be conquered. Anxious about staying aloft, Conijn mimicked in his adventures the pioneering spirit of colonial exploits while at the same time giving them a postcolonial twist. In his case, the return to Africa was a self-consciously humble venture, one that threw into comic relief assumptions of western superiority and the right to unfettered mobility. At the same time as his low-tech vehicle questioned the rationality of mass tourism in supersize Boeings, it reminded us of an era after the car began to be domesticated, when aviation promised to be the more advanced successor of individual motorized transport.

This paper urges readers to rethink the notions "mobility" and "travel" with an eye to how they may help us craft a more supple discourse of cosmopolitanism. The majority of cosmopolitanism discourses privilege mobility and travel experiences of subjects in the metropolis and sideline and downplay those of the postcolonial (and especially rural) subjects. The paper attempts to broaden the discourses of cosmopolitanism by a critical interrogation of Kant's cosmopolitan ideal and its implications for postcolonial societies. It identifies a "postcolonial moment" of cosmopolitanism that is largely ignored in mainstream analyses. This moment can be glimpsed by exploring two narratives of rural villagers who break free from their epistemic enclosures. This moment can only be fully appreciated by deploying broader conceptions of "mobility" and "travel" which capture not only these concepts' corporeal connotations, but their imaginative and virtual connotations as well.

Today most cities emphasize the construction of separate bicycle lanes as a sure path toward sustainable urban mobility. Historical evidence shows a singular focus on building bicycle lanes without embedding them into a broader bicycle culture and politics is far too narrow. Bicycle lanes were never neutral, but contested from the start. Based on comparative research of cycling history covering nine European cities in four countries, the article shows the crucial role representations of bicycles play in policymakers' and experts' planning for the future. In debating the regulation of urban traffic flows, urban-planning professionals projected separate lanes to control rather than to facilitate working- class, mass-scale bicycling. Significantly, cycling organizations opposed the lanes, while experts like traffic engineers and urban planners framed automobility as the inevitable modern future. Only by the 1970s did bicycle lanes enter the debate as safe and sustainable solutions when grass-roots cyclists' activists campaigned for them. The up and downs of bicycle lanes show the importance of encouraging everyday utility cycling by involving diverse social groups.

The coordination of transport was heavily debated in the interwar period, as mechanized road traffic for the first time posed a serious challenge to the railways as the backbone of the transport system. The main issues of the interwar period bear resemblances with current challenges for transport policy, and historical studies may improve our understanding of contemporary transport coordination. This introduction sets the stage by discussing the concept of transport coordination and its historiography.

During the interwar period, the emergence of the bus industry presented many governments with a dilemma: should they intervene in the market to establish a level playing field for fair competition between the buses and rail transport, should they protect the loss-making railways or should they take a laissez-faire approach to the developments?

At first glance, promoting fair competition or, as it was called during those days, a "co-ordination policy" seems relatively simple. The government could impose conditions on the bus industry, which regulated safety, quality, services, and allocation of the infrastructure costs in a similar way as the railways. However, an analysis of the developments in The Netherlands reveals a number of obstacles that complicated policy implementation.

Therefore, this article focuses on two questions: how did bus transport develop in The Netherlands? And what obstacles made it so difficult for the Dutch government to implement fair competition?

When new motorized means of transport, such as buses, vans, and lorries, captured part of the transport market in Belgium in the interwar period, the rail companies engaged in a political fight to restrict the new modes of road transport. Attempts were made to introduce fiscal and administrative measures aimed at limiting road transport. This coincided with an intense debate on transport policy, both in the press and in parliament. The article focuses on the discourse driving this debate. It is argued that the positions taken were motivated by economic issues, but that there were underlying cultural motivations, different perceptions of what transport should represent in the lives of the users and the whole of society. The focus on the so-called coordination debate is widened beyond the conflict between trains and vans in the 1930s, to include the conflict between automobiles, buses, and trams in the 1920s.

This essay examines the transition from a rail-based intercity transportation system in California in 1910 to a road/private auto-based system thirty years later, with hypotheses that the transition could be explained by either corporate and state decisions for supplying infrastructure or by public demand. The essay examines trends of automobile ownership, road investment, bus organization and service provision, intercity passenger rail service provision, and intercity rail revenues, both within California and to and from California in each of the three decades. It concludes that public preference for private automobility explains most of the transition but that unserved demand remained for fast passenger train service between the state's large metropolitan areas. Failure to serve that demand derived from California's legacy of popular disdain for the private railroad industry.

The way public transportation and highway policies are considered in tandem is determinant of how the means of transportation are used, and that policy choices have implications in the middle and long term as they forge path dependence. This paper discuss this issues, using the case of Switzerland—often considered a best-practice country in terms of coordination—to explore the obstacles encountered when transportation policies à la Swiss are "imported" to other countries.

An abandoned freight track on Manhattan’s West Side, considered by local businesses to be nothing more than an eyesore and an impediment to development, became the cause célèbre of New Yorkers in the early twenty-first century. Efforts to “save the High Line” resulted in one of the largest creations of public space in New York history. The 8.8 metertall High Line, which stretches 12 blocks between Ganesvoort Street and 20th Street, features both permanent and temporary art installations that inform visitors of their movement through space and its implication for the natural and constructed worlds. A post-industrial yearning for a more harmonious relationship between humans and the natural world can be detected in New Yorkers’ affection for the High Line. The elevated nature of this raised railroad track creates an ethereal and otherworldly sensation. The traffic below becomes an abstraction and pedestrians, always vulnerable on the streets, are lifted above the fray.

In the affluent neighborhood and diplomatic district of Chanakyapuri in New Delhi lies the Indian National Rail Museum (NRM), the only one of its kind in Asia. Sprawling over 44,000 square meters, the NRM comprises a large outdoor museum, an indoor gallery and a large Auditorium for conferences. In 2010, the museum hosted the annual meeting of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M).

More than any other recent urban film, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful (MX/ES 2010) proposes a poignant commentary on the present conditions of a multi-ethnic yet racially segregated city, which is organized by different levels of mobility. Rather than being a tragedy, tracing the last months of Uxbal, a man who, in the face of his impending death, struggles to ensure a sheltered life for his two children, Biutiful can be conceived as a cinematic critique of the city. It offers a distinct contribution to the discourse on urban mobility, since it meticulously deciphers the urban conditions of an emerging new mobility spurred by a permanent quest for adaptability: a complex, contradictory mobility I would like to call a “forced flexible mobility.” In highlighting both the unequal distribution of space and its constant re-appropriation by different ethnic and social groups, this mobility tackles the contradictory status of a “flexible human being” forced into continuous transformation.

This article makes a first attempt at outlining the place of the ongoing arab revolution in modern history, with special attention to its significance to mobility studies. taking issue with readings that emphasize the roots of the revolt in islam or the arab world, it stresses the economic background of the grievance, and specifically the elusive hope for social mobility in the countries' youth. it also highlights the crucial role of networking activities, both face-to- face and online, in creating the momentum that led to toppling of powerful regimes in Egypt and tunisia. The article seeks to demonstrate how mobility studies can highlight the peculiar challenges that both countries are currently facing. By way of conclusion, it shows how the case at hand forces us to think more about the mind of mobility, and more broadly about the ambitions and theoretical promises that the field of mobility studies should embrace.

Enda Duffy, The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism Cotten Seiler

Christopher Mauch and Thomas Zeller (eds.), Rivers in History: Perspectives on Waterways in Europe and North America Nil Disco

Heather Goodall and Allison Cadzow, Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney’s Georges River Marilyn Omerovic-Legg

Blair L.M. Kelley, Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson Jaclyn Kirouac-Fram

Frank Schipper, Driving Europe: Building Europe on Roads in the Twentieth Century Federico Paolini

Jeremy Packer, Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship Catherine Bertho Lavenir

Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod, Inventing Utopia: Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles Lawrence Culver

Vaclav Smil, Two Prime Movers of Globalization; The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines Christopher Neumaier

Christopher Neumaier, Dieselautos in Deutschland und den USA: Zum Verhältnis von Technologie, Konsum und Politik, 1949–2005 Stefan Bauernschmidt