Contemporary urban settings can rely on inedited opportunities for everyday mobility. Paradoxically, thanks to infrastructure and digital technologies our territories are more and more connected, while our societies appear to be more divided than ever. The new, endless mobilities opportunities are not enough to facilitate the interactions between people and places; rather, the divide between the urban and the rural is once more relevant, showing opposite attitudes – rational or emotional – towards ongoing social changes. Everyday mobility provides in fact differentiated opportunities to participate in social life, according to varied urban populations. The paper aims to investigate how to face urban mobility according to its impact on the opportunities available to individuals. Access to opportunities is crucial both to improve personal well-being, both to provide those conditions that increase the attractiveness and the competitiveness of a territory. In metropolitan areas, the issue acquires a specific relevance, given that their urban and rural parts show very different performances in terms of access to significant services and opportunities. Access emerges thus as a relevant guiding principle when evaluating the urban mobility strategies of metropolitan areas, helping to consider which infrastructures and services contribute more to support individual opportunities. To explore this issue and its specific inflection in metropolitan areas, the paper investigates an emerging new urban-rural divide, as expressed by mobility and access to urban opportunities in metropolitan areas (section 2). Emerging practices highlight new forms of mobility as well as inedited ways of participating in urban life (section 3). Consequently, new evaluative and operational approaches for urban mobility planning and policy are required (section 4), especially to understand how everyday mobility can contribute to development in increasingly divided societies (section 5).

Access to urban opportunities: Mending the urban-rural divide in metropolitan areas

G. Vecchio
2017-01-01

Abstract

Contemporary urban settings can rely on inedited opportunities for everyday mobility. Paradoxically, thanks to infrastructure and digital technologies our territories are more and more connected, while our societies appear to be more divided than ever. The new, endless mobilities opportunities are not enough to facilitate the interactions between people and places; rather, the divide between the urban and the rural is once more relevant, showing opposite attitudes – rational or emotional – towards ongoing social changes. Everyday mobility provides in fact differentiated opportunities to participate in social life, according to varied urban populations. The paper aims to investigate how to face urban mobility according to its impact on the opportunities available to individuals. Access to opportunities is crucial both to improve personal well-being, both to provide those conditions that increase the attractiveness and the competitiveness of a territory. In metropolitan areas, the issue acquires a specific relevance, given that their urban and rural parts show very different performances in terms of access to significant services and opportunities. Access emerges thus as a relevant guiding principle when evaluating the urban mobility strategies of metropolitan areas, helping to consider which infrastructures and services contribute more to support individual opportunities. To explore this issue and its specific inflection in metropolitan areas, the paper investigates an emerging new urban-rural divide, as expressed by mobility and access to urban opportunities in metropolitan areas (section 2). Emerging practices highlight new forms of mobility as well as inedited ways of participating in urban life (section 3). Consequently, new evaluative and operational approaches for urban mobility planning and policy are required (section 4), especially to understand how everyday mobility can contribute to development in increasingly divided societies (section 5).
2017
Urban mobility, Accessibility, Metropolitan Areas, Infrastructures, Opportunities
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11311/1039667
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