Hi, and welcome everybody to the online course on alternative mobility narratives. The next couple of weeks we are going to, together with you, explore how different mobility narratives influence our way of thinking around mobility in the street. It's good to be here. This course will consist of seven sections of which this is the first introduction chapter, from which the second chapter will introduce you to the idea of homo-economicus. From there, the next four will present some alternatives to think about the way that we move and mobility. Finally, we end off with an assignment that will invite you to think about your conventional views of how mobility takes place and try to rethink and re-learn what mobility could be in the future. Why don't we quickly go through what inspired you to start this course and what is the importance of mobility language, since that is the title of this chapter. Yes. Really for me it's a very fascinating subject because it underlies all our thinking to already become aware of that, we become aware that how we talk about things actually influences a lot of what we see and don't see. For me, the most inspiring starting point for this came from the book by James Scott,1998, which is called Seeing Like a State. In that book, James Scott explains to us how we tend to simplify reality and we actually have to simplify reality, because otherwise, how would you manage it? Especially as a state or as a large owner of things, you have to manage things. To do that, you have to simplify, and language is the form through which we do that, so we simplify things. How important this is, is shown by him in an example on the forest. Jim Scott talks about how the forest actually, if you think about the forest is this million-year old, complex structure with all kinds of complex feedback loops in it. A forest because of that is also catering for a large number of different goals. It's a habitat for small animals, for instance. It's a place for flora and fauna. It allows us to have this root. Then he tells us in the late 18th century, this forest seen through the lens of what is called scientific forestry. Scientific forestry was looking at the forest through the lens of wood production and nobody was questioning that because wood was an important source of fuel, it was an important building product, so it became very important for owners of forests to look at how can we improve the production value of our forests. That led to what we now know as the production forest, forest that got simplified into that language we chose to speak about it. The forest became seen through the lens and language of wood production. As a result, over the centuries, it became the simplified production for us with all trees in the same line, because of that it lost many of the functions that the original forest had. It lost a lot of functions for small animals, for instance, for bees, for small livestock, birds, they didn't have a habitat anymore in the forest. The same thing happens with mobility in our streets. Once a very complex domain, 100 years ago we decided to look at it through the lens of traffic engineering. That's the starting point of this course. Streets or highways. Streets or roads. Do you have an opinion on that? Where is the dividing line? Because for me the idea of streets is something vibrant, something small, human- scaled. Then as you moved on a continuum the next would be roads and highways is where we think of as a place where it's completely car-dominated. Do you have any thoughts on the way that even that language alone could be used in this course and how it's problematic? When we talk about mobility narratives throughout the course, and we talk about language, the professional language, but also these kinds of underlying variables that we find important, the underlying worldview, the underlying goals and objectives. The starting point here is that, as Richard Sennett describes very well, the street originally was this complex thing, but it was literally the space between buildings. It wasn't owned by a domain and there was no experts that designed it until 100 years ago, it became dominated by motorized traffic. Then we had to develop a language to think about that and that language really focused on throughputs and vehicles, and then words came like highways, roads, streets, and other things we talk about. I have a question for you, and this one has to do with the way that we perceive the world because as we move through these blocks, in a way, it's viewing the street and traffic in different ways, from different perspectives. One of the key parts of being human is being to focus on one perspective, our visual system is trained towards just a few degrees of foveal vision, where we can see things clearly. I was wondering, do you think our mind works in the same way? Yeah, I really think it does. We talked a little bit already about how we have to simplify the world and how language and narratives help us to do that, but indeed, the narrative that we choose makes us focus. It's the flashlight that makes us focus on something and one view of the object that's in front of us, and while we know that this object is much more complex. Because it makes us focus on certain things, it presents itself as a certain way of looking at this complex object. It makes us lose the things that are happening in the peripheral view and the same will happen. This is the visual element of it, but cognitively, does the same. Language makes us focus on certain elements of a complex phenomenon while ignoring the things that are in peripheral. All the idea of this course is that throughout practicing ourselves by changing our perspectives and the art of re-languaging and dancing with paradigm, just another [inaudible] goes in, helps us to get a better understanding that this complex thing, mobility, can actually be seen from different angles. All of these angles adds to our understanding of this full complexity. That's really good to hear. I think that has a lot to say, both about the way we are as humans as I said, and also about the way we approach things in terms of our institutions. We tend to view things in terms of departments and disciplines. Actually, this example behind is interesting, it's a school yard that's being built. You convinced the neighborhood that instead of being in the domain of traffic engineers, now, its landscape architect is working on. Yeah. We have here schoolyards, but at the same time, it's very complex visual phenomenon. At the first moment when this was introduced, the question that was central here, the language and the narrative was, how can we get children through this school environment in a safe way to the entrance of the school, through this landscape where there's structure. Then the best solution was to build this kids in right zone so that we have a loop of traffic and that nobody has to turn their garments, which is best solution, the best possible answer to that question. More flow. Yeah. Better flow and safer for everybody. Its best answer to the question, how to get children safely through a guard by it. But we went to the Alderman and used the different narrative. We change the narrative and said, "Hey, what if we ask a different question?" The question is, what is the role of cars in the environment where children will grow up in the coming 40-50 years? That's really led to a completely different answer. The answer was, well, that role should be minimized because we actually want this place to be a place safe, green, spacious, where children can autonomously or safely develop and play. Because the change in narrative, the same object, the very complex thing, we walked around it. We watched this from the other side. This is something that I really hope that you as a student will also be able to do throughout the course without making the mistake of thinking that one perspective it's actually better than the other. But we do hear throughout the course, is to develop the art of seeing with different perspectives and hopefully adding a bit more understanding of the full complexity. With that, shall we take a walk and introduce them to the next six chapters? That's an excellent idea. As promised, we are going to take you on a walk and introduce you to the next five blocks of the course, and what's the first block that we're starting with? The first block we are focusing on the mainstream narrative that underlies all our thinking around mobility as society. It is called mobility as disutility. In economics term that focuses on the idea that being underway is something negative, and we want to be assumed as we want to be at either A or B, and everything in between needs to be minimized. That leads us, for instance, to the central concept of our policies of travel time savings. The block after that, the first counter narrative? The first counter narrative that we chose is mobility as a necessity. The idea developed by Antonio Pereira, a doctor from Portugal and he actually developed this idea that being immobile, being in a place is a value in itself. That makes us really focused very differently on being mobile and being underway. The one after that is narrative number 3. Yeah. In that narrative number 3 is common immobility and common immobility really takes us to a different perspective, because it starts from the idea that mobility is something that belongs to all of us. It's a common, it's not something that's an individual thing, but it's actually something that you give meaning to also a society as a whole. It makes the street the place where society develops. Next after that, we have narrative number 4. Yes. That's my favorite one. Its mobility as play. The idea that we are underway as humans and that we develop ourselves there, its a self-actualization process. Being underway, walking through public space is helping us as individuals to develop as people. Excellent. Then that brings us to the final narrative, which is? That's mobility as social interaction. Again, it builds a bit on the fourth one. Mobility as social interaction focus not on the individual, but on the social element like meeting each other and negotiating with each other in public space. For instance, for the right of way, actually leads to very interesting ideas of how mobility is helping us to develop trust, to also function as society. Again, it shifts our view on what mobility can be. There you go. That's what you can expect in next five blocks of the course. We hope to see you in the next lesson. Yeah.
