Transdisciplinary Impulses towards Socio-Ecological Transformation E-Book

• Herausgeber: Verlag Barbara Budrich
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: Schriftenreihe "Ökologie und Erziehungswissenschaft" der Kommission Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft (DGfE)
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 331

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung soll die Menschen zu zukunftsfähigem Denken und Handeln befähigen – angesichts von Herausforderungen wie Klimawandel, Umweltzerstörung, Verlust der biologischen Vielfalt, Armut und Ungleichheit. Wie können unterschiedliche Disziplinen diese Aufgabe wahrnehmen? In diesem Band werden wissenschaftlich interdisziplinäre Beiträge aus der Philosophie, den Sozial- und Erziehungswissenschaften um transdisziplinäre Beiträge aus Praxisfeldern (z. B Museumspädagogik, Journalismus) ergänzt. Die aktuellen Beiträge geben Reflexionsanstöße und eröffnen Denkräume, um der Komplexität der Aufgabe der sozial-ökologischen Transformation gerecht zu werden.

Leseprobe

Publication Series “Ecology and Education” of GERA’s Subdivision Education for Sustainable Development

Schriftenreihe

Helge KminekAnna GeyerMarkus B. Siewert (eds.)

Transdisciplinary Impulses towardsSocio-Ecological Transformation

Engaged Reflections – Reflected Engagements

Verlag Barbara BudrichOpladen • Berlin • Toronto 2022

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Contents

Helge Kminek, Anna Geyer and Markus B. SiewertEngaged Reflections – Reflected Engagements Introduction to the Topic and the Contributions

Jonathan MaskitUrban Mobility – Urban Discovery: A Phenomenological Aesthetics for Urban Environments

Diana HummelPopulation Dynamics and Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene

Christian StacheEducation for Sustainability as a Critical Theory of the Social Relationship to Nature

Helge KminekA Contribution from the Philosophy of Science for Education for Sustainable Development

Beer AlbersAutonomy and Second Nature: A Hegelian Account of Education for Sustainable Development

Franz Rauch, Günther Pfaffenwimmer and Renate HübnerNetworking for Sustainability in Education

Leon Fuchs, Christina Höfling and Lena TheilerESD in the Museum: The Project BioKompass. A Practical View from the Senckenberg Natural History Museum Frankfurt

Anna GeyerSustainable Development at Institutions of Higher Education – The Example of Goethe University

Georg EhringReports on Climate Change

List of Authors

Index

[7] Engaged Reflections – Reflected Engagements Introduction to the Topic and the Contributions

Helge Kminek, Anna Geyer and Markus B. Siewert

According to Goethe’s Faust (1987), the task of science is to recognise what holds the world together at its innermost core. This task is to be expanded today. Against the backdrop of the realisation that science and research are not and cannot be value-free, an awareness of their ethical responsibility for society is forming. This is all the more accurate in light of the fact that humankind – above all the Western industrial societies of the Global North – is working towards the destruction of its own basis of life. We call this the environmental question. The latest IPCC report does not give us the all-clear but rather, in this context, scientists and researchers are increasingly making it their explicit task to co-operate in handling this problem.

Furthermore, there is an increasing awareness that interdisciplinary as well as transdisciplinary boundaries between science and practice must be bridged for the purpose of progress in knowledge production and problem solving. This requirement arises in connection with the environmental question. Due to its multidimensional nature, science and research will only be able to contribute systematically to solving the problem if it engages with the practical complexities which are otherwise reduced for the sake of knowledge generation.

This means that for successfully dealing with the environmental question, (i) science and practice, viewed dichotomously, are separate but dependent on each other. Yet, if one thinks dialectically, (ii) science and practice cannot be completely differentiated. (i) In dichotomous thinking, science is characterised by the fact that, freed from the pressure to act, it can reflect on practice in an unbiased way, point out its blind spots and develop proposals for solutions. Hence, science is not and cannot be practice. On the other hand, practice faces responsibility for its actions, although it can only ever justify its decision afterwards. After all, every practice of action must always be justified and justified in retrospect. This is the case even if one announces a certain action and justification in advance. (ii) Considered dialectically, science is itself a form of practice, [8] namely when it faces its responsibility and strives to contribute to solving problems. Conversely, practice is science when the actors, within the scope of their possibilities, systematically reflect on their practice and consciously incorporate research results into their actions.

This kind of science is engaged reflection and this form of practice is reflective engagement. It is this dialectic self-understanding that the transdisciplinary contributions of this anthology have in common. Transdisciplinary Impulses towards Socio-Ecological Transformation is the product of a lecture series, which took place at Goethe University Frankfurt during the winter term of 2019/2020. It was part of a teaching project by the editors on Education for Sustainable Development within the framework of the quality teaching fund at Goethe University.

The volume starts with a contribution by Jonathan Maskit which is located in the tradition of phenomenological aesthetics. He descriptively explores whether possibilities of movement in cities enables or prevents different experiences. If one relates the contribution to the various questions concerning the design of transport infrastructure in terms of sustainability, then his philosophical contribution opens up numerous perspectives and occasions for reflection. At the same time, it indicates what philosophical reflections can contribute to the question of transformation to sustainable societies.

The humanities approach is followed by a social science contribution. Diana Hummel examines the significance of global population dynamics for sustainable development in the Anthropocene. She reconstructs different positions in this highly controversial scientific debate and exposes the “Social Ecology” approach which tries to overcome the separation of nature and the social. Her reflection leads to the question of the responsibility of science and normativity. She concludes by invoking six principles for inter- and transdisciplinary research.

In the third contribution to the anthology, Christian Stache puts forward his central thesis that a return to Marx’s critique of capitalism is necessary. For this, a critique of Donna Haraway’s approach takes on a central argumentation of demarcation. The approach is accused of putting nature and society in one, which is objectively wrong, as well as a strict dichotomy of nature and society. Only a Marxist-dialectical understanding of nature and society is appropriate. Furthermore, Christian Stache criticises the concepts of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), arguing that they lack an adequate theory of society and description of the problem, for which a return to the work of Marx is decisive. Through his critique [9] of ESD, Christian Stache’s contribution leads to the genuine contributions of educational science.

In the next contribution Helge Kminek combines issues of the Philosophy of Science and ESD. Underlying his contribution is the thesis that for the systematic further development of the debates on ESD, a science-theory informed ordering of these debates is necessary. To this end, he develops the first formal model that relates structural cornerstones to each other. The other contributions in the volume can be systematically located within this model.

Beer Albers presents a contribution to the philosophy of education and addresses whether ESD should pursue the goal of educating subjects to become mature and make autonomous reflective decisions (Bildung), or whether it should educate them to behave in a sustainable manner. Albers argues, following Hegel’s theory of education, that the tension between education and autonomy on the one hand and education and conditioning on the other hand should be dialectically mediated and resolved at a higher level.

The contribution by Franz Rauch, Günther Pfaffenwimmer and Renate Hübner proposes that communication is a central dimension for educational processes in the context of Education for Sustainable Development. This thesis is substantiated by giving an insight into the development of a network of schools, in the sense of ESD, with reference to further background theories. The article thus highlights the importance of organisational development of schools and educational institutions that want to establish, consolidate and further develop ESD.

Leon Fuchs, Christina Höfling and Lena Theiler reflect on a participatory special exhibition at the Senckenberg Naturmuseum Frankfurt with regard to the question of how museums can contribute to social change processes as places of learning for Education for Sustainable Development. For this purpose, they outline the special features of (natural history) museums as extracurricular places of learning in relation to ESD, present the practical implementation of the project and conclude with a summary of the main insights gained by the project.

Examining how sustainability can be implemented at institutions of higher education, Anna Geyer describes the onset of a sustainable transformation at Goethe University, Frankfurt. She touches upon relevant actors, initiatives and projects, thereby underlining the importance of cooperation between academic, administrative and technical staff, political bodies and students. As critical barriers are highlighted and a first-hand account on the intricacies of pushing for [10] sustainable transformations is provided, this approach may be valuable especially to sustainability actors at other institutions of higher education.

The anthology ends with a contribution by Georg Ehring. Ehring is head of the economy and environment editorial department of the radio station Deutschlandfunk. He reports on his experiences of journalistic work on climate change and reflects on the question of what good journalism should look like in view of the dangers posed by unrestrained climate change.

The environmental question is the question of our time. At the last G20 meeting and COP26 conference in Glasgow, it must have become obvious to all participants – policymakers, non-governmental organizations and activists, business representatives, scientists – that a response is overdue, and that we are in dire need of action. Even though (almost) all agree on the problem, it is still heavily contested how to define, negotiate and implement the necessary solutions. In the meantime, the possibilities for successful counter-actions are shrinking. The contributions collected in this anthology address the environmental question from very different angles but share a common core: a call for engaged reflections and reflected engagement at various levels of society. In doing so, it is our hope that the collected essays help us towards a better understanding of the underlying structural intricacies, shed light on its tensions, point towards valuable lessons and even propose solutions to address the environmental question.

Writing a book is always a team effort, and we are grateful for all the support and help we received. We would like to thank Goethe University Frankfurt for the financial support through its teaching grant scheme which allowed us to organise a module on “Education for Sustainable Development by and at the Goethe University,” which this lecture series was part of. A special thanks goes to all the wonderful colleagues who participated in the lecture series and then continued their work as authors for this anthology. Holding the book in your hands, we hope that you see it as we do: as the fruit of a very productive and collegial collaboration. Our gratitude also goes to all the students and the wider public who participated in the events of the lecture series in the winter term of 2019/2020 – the last pre-Covid semester where lectures in person were still taken for granted. Finally, a very big thank you to Simone Blandford for her final proofreading of the book manuscript and to Franziska Deller for her support from the publisher Barbara Budrich. And last but not least, [11] Markus B. Siewert and Anna Geyer would like to express their gratitude to Helge Kminek who put the anthology together. And Helge Kminek thanks Anna Geyer very much for finding last formal errors and corrections in the bibliographies. Our project started in 2019 driven by the motivation to engage in deeper reflections and reflect on our engagement with how to work and live more sustainable at Goethe University in Frankfurt. This book is the product of this truly interdisciplinary journey.

Frankfurt & Munich, January 2022Helge Kminek, Anna Geyer and Markus B. Siewert

Goethe, Johann W. von (1987 [1808]): Faust, part one. Translated by Nicholas Boyle. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Urban Mobility – Urban Discovery: A Phenomenological Aesthetics for Urban Environments1

Jonathan Maskit

1. Introduction

In “Can Cities be Both Natural and Successful?” W. S. K. Cameron argues that the “contemporary [environmental] challenge is not to renounce [cities], but to redeem them” (Cameron 2012: 42). This paper follows Cameron’s lead, although I take things in a rather different direction. Cameron’s paper reflects recent trends in environmental philosophy, particularly in environmental aesthetics and environmental justice. After several decades focused largely on nature, many scholars have shown a growing concern for what we might call human environments (Lawson 1995; Carlson & Berleant 2007; Menser 2013; Maskit 2016). While I recognize that both “natural” and “human” are contested terms, I wish only to distinguish here between the sorts of environments that people unreflectively treat as natural, e.g., wilderness areas, and those we treat unreflectively as human, e.g., cities (Stefanovic & Scharper 2012 explicitly problematizes this distinction). Whether there are or are not ontological, metaphysical, or other significant differences between natural and human environments is not my concern in this paper; my focus is how we experience an environment. My method is thus phenomenological or aesthetic, or, to be more accurate, phenomenologically aesthetic.

In order to avoid the apparently unsolvable puzzles posed by Cartesian scepticism, Husserl famously invoked the epochē, the phenomenological reduction, setting aside both the world’s ontological status and questions thereabout. One might imagine that I am doing something similar here, [14] although not, as Husserl had, to open up the space of transcendental consciousness for investigation. Rather, I wish to proceed in a more embodied way, following the method developed by Alfred Schütz, investigating how we, as embodied beings, can encounter a particular sort of environment: the city (Schutz & Luckmann 1973 and 1989; Maskit 2017). In particular, I investigate how different transportation technologies can foster or hinder our experiences of the city. In brief, this paper offers a phenomenological aesthetic account of our technologically mediated experiences of the urban environment. While there is a continuing interest in phenomenology as a method in environmental philosophy, most work in this area has concerned itself with natural environments (Bannon 2016, Donohoe 2017). Amongst environmental and everyday aestheticians, there is an ongoing interest in built environments, although most of the work in this field has not been particularly phenomenological (some exceptions: Berleant 2007; Sepänmaa 2007; Bonsdorff 2007).

Inspired by Kant’s Copernican turn, although with narrower ambitions, I will pursue a phenomenology of human bodies in motion. I make no claims about introducing a second Copernican turn in philosophy or even in phenomenology. I hope only to provide an account of how being in motion, and being in motion in different ways, shapes our experience of the environment through which we move.

The goal of this paper is not, as might seem to be the case, merely descriptive. While description, phenomenological or otherwise, is certainly valuable, it is here put in service of a larger argument about the aesthetics of urban life. That argument, although more implied than developed in this paper, forms part of a larger investigation into the aesthetics of sustainable living, whose goal is to argue that a less energy- and resourceintensive form of life can, at least in certain circumstances, be both ecologically more sustainable and more humanly fulfilling. This larger project reflects an issue Cameron briefly took up in his paper on natural cities, where he argued that a city such as Bonn, Germany is liveable precisely because it is a dense, walkable city with a robust public transit network (Cameron 2012: 45).

The paper begins (II) with a framework for considering mobility from the standpoint of phenomenological everyday aesthetics. This framework suggests a tetrad of triads, in each of which the third term is a sort of Aufhebung of the first two. I then (III) suggest a typology of different forms of urban mobility. This typology distinguishes between private and public [15] forms of transportation as well as between faster and slower modes. I next (IV) suggest a trio of factors that play into how we experience an urban environment while moving through it. This begins my application of the framework developed in (II) to the typology developed in (III). Next (V) I continue to apply the framework of experience and the trio of factors to the typology of transportation modes to show the ways in which each of them can foster or hinder an aesthetic experience of the urban environment. I conclude (VI) with some reflections on what has been left out or overlooked in this analysis.

2. Mobility and Phenomenological Everyday Aesthetics

What constitutes an aesthetically fulfilling daily life? This would seem to be a question beyond answer. When dealing with art or the beauty of nature, practicing aestheticians may insist that there’s something to Kant’s antinomy of taste: judgments of taste occupy some peculiar middle ground between pure subjectivity (de gustibus non disputandum est) and pure objectivity. Yet, when it comes to the everyday we are likely to lean more towards the former pole of the antinomy than the latter. It seems difficult to say that people ought to enjoy the sorts of food, drink, sporting events, style of clothing, or even style of life that I do. Subjective preference and culture seem to play overwhelming roles in these cases (Saito 2007; Light & Smith 2005; Leddy 2012).

Perhaps the problem could be phrased more formally: rather than ask what particular experiences constitute an aesthetically fulfilling everyday life, we should ask whether aesthetics matters in everyday life at all and, if so, if there are non-aesthetic aspects to life that shape its aesthetic possibilities. It seems strange to insist that a fulfilling life must include opera, landscape paintings, formal dance, or haute cuisine. It is equally strange to insist upon folk music, street art, line dancing, or tacos. Preference for any of these things seems at minimum culturally specific and may even be entirely subjective. Yet cultures and individuals do have preferences for these sorts of things and these preferences seem largely aesthetic. If a life is pursued, at least in part, for aesthetic reasons, then we must say that aesthetics matters even when no art is involved. That is, it seems that aesthetic experience is important to many people, although [16] perhaps not all, at least if we have a sufficiently broad understanding of aesthetics.

How then ought we account for these everyday aesthetic possibilities and experiences? One possible answer is to provide a sweeping theory of everyday aesthetics with the goal of accounting for all possible everyday aesthetic experiences. Such is not my goal. I will instead seek to make sense of the far narrower domain of everyday experience in which I am interested: the domain of urban transportation as a “medium” of urban discovery. To do so, I propose some categories or types of experience. In a Kantian spirit, my proposed characteristics are organised into a tetrad of triads. Like Kant’s table of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason, my four tetrads could be grouped into two dyads, the first “spatial” (A and B) the second “temporal” (C and D). I have scare-quoted these terms to highlight (a) that my analysis is in no way transcendental and (b) that the spatial has to do as well with human bodies arrayed in a social space, whose fabric is partially constituted out of relationships, while the temporal in this instance concerns both cognition and affect.

It is important to note that there are no claims made as to any of these categories being preferable to others. Some people are more social than others. Similarly, some prefer the familiar and the safe, while others seek out the novel and even the dangerous. One might even seek what Gilles Deleuze called a degree zero of all these things: a meditative life, perhaps (Deleuze 2004: 186).

[17] I have left out many aspects of what we might term a fulfilling life. I have made no mention of political engagement, of service, of ethics, or of duty. I make no claim that aesthetics is all that matters in life nor even that it is the most important thing. Rather, I take it to be one important part of human life. Further, while one might think that one can analytically disentangle, say, the social from the aesthetic, in practice these two are likely to be intertwined, as we see if we consider the role of food in social interaction. Perhaps it is even analytically impossible to disentangle the social from the aesthetic. Indeed, one might say that the pleasure we take in our friends is similar in kind to that we take in art or literature. Figuring out whom to invite to a party or dinner is, we might say, a sort of curatorship.

[18] 3. Modalities of Urban Mobility

If we consider the twelve categories I’ve suggested, we can see that each of them could be favoured or hindered by different material conditions. Being with family or friends requires spatial proximity. Today’s world, in which so many of us, at least of a certain class, have dispersed across the globe, often lends itself to technically mediated friendships better than to embodied encounters. On the other hand, if one is interested in the novelty of being with others, then today’s world affords us countless opportunities, again, given sufficient personal resources and opportunities.

These opportunities require both sufficient economic resources and a well-functioning technological system of travel, not to mention advances in global security and law. Rather than looking at global travel, my focus is on cities. How do different forms of urban organization, different forms of transportation, etc. shape the possibilities for everyday experience? What effect will urban planning, transportation modalities, density of building, etc. play in shaping the social, somatic, temporal-epistemic and affective character of experience? Or, to turn the question around, if there are certain characters of experience that are valued, either individually, or, more importantly, socially or even societally, how can choices about infrastructure make the lives lived in a place more likely to have more (or better) of the desired values? To put the question most broadly, what might a phenomenological investigation of the aesthetics of everyday life have to add to discussions about urban planning? To answer these questions, I propose thinking of transportation modes as follows:

Private Modalities

Low-speed: walking, cycling, skateboarding, pedicabs, Segways, etc.

High-speed: cars, scooters, motorcycles, taxis, etc.

Public Modalities

Low-speed: trams, buses, etc.

High-speed: subways, trains, etc.

[19] I must make several comments before proceeding. First, my distinction between public and private is about accessibility rather than ownership. It makes no difference whether a bus is privately or publicly owned, so long as it is available to all. Similarly, a rented or borrowed car or bicycle is no less private than is one that the user owns. Second, I have assumed a city with few needs for traversing water other than by bridge or tunnel. One can easily treat ferries as an additional form of low-speed public transit, but other than those committed to kayaking and the like (low-speed private) or with access to an owned or rented motorboat (high-speed private), most of us simply won’t cross water in a vehicle to which we have exclusive access. Third, my distinction between high- and low-speed is as much phenomenological as measured. Perceived velocity is, like perceived time, highly variable. Bicycling feels much faster than driving, even though it is, in terms of distance covered, usually markedly slower, except perhaps during rush hour. My categorization combines both measured and perceived speed and has to do as much with how far one is traveling and how fast one perceives the mode to be as it does with how fast one actually gets from A to B. Finally, several of these transportation modes could be either high- or low-speed (or even in-between) depending upon the layout of the city, how many other users there are and other factors. As mentioned above, walking can, in some instances, be faster than driving. Subways could be faster or slower, depending upon how far apart stations are and other factors. Subways also have the peculiar feature of leaving us with no perceivable clues as to how far we’ve travelled. Unless one can see some of the same features – buildings, recognizable natural landmarks, etc. both from the point of origin and the point of arrival – just how far one has travelled is difficult to know without consulting a map, whether paper or electronic.

4. Factors Affecting Our Experience of the Urban Environment

The speed of a transportation mode matters for other reasons than how quickly it gets us where we’re going. While we usually use transportation simply to get from one place to another, transportation itself can be experienced aesthetically in at least two ways.

First, the experience of mobility can be, as I’ve argued elsewhere, boring, thrilling, enlivening, or otherwise aesthetically engaging. The degree to which mobility is engaging depends greatly on how intentional we need to be in piloting or controlling the technology. Active forms of [20] transportation such as cycling or driving are more likely to be thrilling or otherwise engaging. Passive forms of mobility in which we are passengers tend to be more boring. These differences, however, are situational and depend to a degree on the individual. By and large, public transit does not require much attention from us, freeing us up to work, sleep, chat, or otherwise engage with others and our surroundings. By contrast, we might find cycling to work to be an entirely pleasurable experience, even if nothing particularly exciting happens on any particular day (Maskit 2017).

Second, and this is where the focus of this paper lies, different modes of transportation offer different aesthetic possibilities for encountering the city through which we move. Transportation can open a city up to us, a phenomenon we might term, after Heidegger, techno-unconcealment, or it can hide that city from us in techno-concealment. Three factors matter to make these possibilities real: (1) speed, (2) the ability to survey one’s surroundings and (3) ease of interruption. In discussing these three aspects, I will keep in mind what I above termed the temporal-epistemic character of experience. That is, I take it that speed, the ability to survey one’s surroundings and ease of interruption all play roles in whether and how we are able to experience the environment through which we move as familiar or novel. In particular, I am interested in how these three factors make possible the discovery and exploration of novelty.

Speed. I sorted various transportation modalities above by how quickly they get us from one place to another, although I also suggested that this notion of speed is intended to capture both measured velocity and the experience of speed. While speed is often associated with efficiency, to do so emphasizes the teleological aspects of transportation over the experiential. It is certainly true that if one’s only goal is to get someplace, then getting there faster is probably, all-in-all, a good thing. However, if one’s goal is to discover where one is – to experience the place or see what it has to offer – then speed is not necessarily an ally. Whether from the windows of a car or the windows of a train, our surroundings pass us by (a strange turn of phrase – we are the ones who are in motion) so quickly that we often have a hard time discerning what we’re seeing. If we add to this velocity the need to pay attention that accompanies many private transportation modes, then our ability to perceive our surroundings, at least if we are driving rather than being a passenger, may well be sharply reduced.

By contrast, slower modes of transport move one more slowly (obviously!), thus providing more time to look around. Trams move more slowly than trains and stop more often, providing riders more time to figure out what they are seeing or even where they are. Walking, cycling and the like, although they require one to pay attention to where one is [21] going, because they happen more slowly, permit one also to look around, even while moving. While a bicyclist may not be able to look away from the road for any longer than a driver, because they are moving more slowly they can survey their surroundings more carefully.

Ability to survey one’s surroundings. Speed, it turns out, is of import primarily for how it affects our ability to survey the urban fabric as we traverse it. There are, however, other factors at work. All modes of enclosed transportation – cars, buses, trains, trams, etc. – provide only a limited view of one’s surroundings. Only from the front seats, if even there, can one see one’s surroundings “as they develop”. Passengers seated further back have, at best, views to right and left, meaning that the amount of time they have to figure out what they’re seeing is limited. Things become more complicated when the car or bus is on a highway, the train is on an elevated track, or, most starkly, the subway is in a tunnel. From these vantage points, one may get a view onto things one wouldn’t otherwise have: the view from a bridge or elevated railway line may let one see a park or waterfront one might have missed from street level, but more often than not one feels oneself removed from the city, perhaps unsure of where one is, and mostly unable really to see one’s surroundings. This situation is clearest with subways, which, by definition, run below the streets, through tunnels. One can see nothing as one travels, other than perhaps the occasional light or flash of electricity. Upon leaving, we often find ourselves disoriented as to where we are and what direction we are facing. Coming out of the subway, unless one already knows the station and the neighbourhood, almost always require some sort of re-orientation. Taken together, these factors lead to a disjointed or incoherent form of experience, i.e., one may not be fully aware of what one is seeing, where one is, etc.

By contrast, non-enclosed transportation modes, walking, cycling and the like, permit one to survey one’s surroundings more coherently. One can scan in all directions without one’s vision being fragmented by window frames, a roof, etc. Our other senses too, can play a larger role with these transportation modes. We can hear what is going on around us, rather than what is happening inside the vehicle; we can smell where we are; we can feel the temperature of the air. This sensory connectedness to one’s environment is only possible if one is outside, which is to say in the place where one is, rather than in a vehicle.

The ability to sense where one is, is itself part of the aesthetics of urban life. To pass through in a metal box leaves one always a bit disconnected from where one is. We might term this phenomenon transportation mediation. Counter-intuitively, my experience has been that motorized forms of urban transportation also give one a warped sense of how far it [22] is from one place to another. The simple fact of getting in a car or taking a bus or train makes things seem further away than they are. (This phenomenon is even clearer with airplanes.) It is only when one bikes or walks that one may discover how close by something is that had seemed like it was more of a journey. Just as one does not have a sense of how much work is required to, say, make mayonnaise, until one has done it oneself, one’s sense of time, space and distance only becomes clear when one moves oneself.

Ease of interruption. An additional factor to be considered is how easy it is to interrupt one’s journey if one’s interest is piqued. We see something, perhaps we don’t yet know what, from our seat on the bus or the saddle of our bicycle and, time permitting (which all too often it isn’t), we may wish to stop to investigate. Here again users of slower modes of transportation have an advantage. Pedestrians can simply stop, turn around, go back, cross the street, etc. if they see, hear, or smell something of interest. Riders of trams and buses too, can interrupt their journeys if they should happen to see a storefront, statue, or street performer they’d like to investigate further. Unlike the pedestrian, the public transit user may have to reckon with buying another ticket or waiting for the next tram or bus. These temporal or financial exigencies may be enough to discourage some exploration.

Other forms of low-speed private transportation – cycling, skateboarding, etc. – lend themselves as well, or almost as well, to interruption as does walking. Skateboarding requires only picking up the board, at which point one becomes a pedestrian. Cycling can be slightly more complicated. One can walk the bike, which may not permit access to museums, shops, or restaurants. Alternatively, one can search for someplace to lock the bicycle, which is a commitment of time, but unlike with public transit, not usually of money.

Train and subway riders, although they are, as we saw above, less likely to have reason to interrupt their journeys, can do so under the same sorts of conditions as tram and bus riders: they may have to wait or pay an additional fare. Drivers of cars, however, are particularly disadvantaged in this regard. We saw above that they are less likely to have reason to stop – they simply can’t both watch the road and visually catch novelties. If a driver does decide to stop, they now must deal with their car. Unlike the skateboard, which can simply be carried, or the bicycle, that can be walked or (often) relatively easily parked, the car often becomes all-too-present-at-hand when one decides to stop. The denser the city, the harder or more expensive it will be to park a car. The opportunity costs, whether in time or money, involved in stopping to investigate something that looked like it might be interesting are most often too high to be overcome. That is, [23] unless there is low-cost or free parking adjacent to what one wishes to investigate, most of us simply won’t bother stopping. Unlike pedestrians, cyclists and users of public transit, drivers, it turns out, are uniquely disadvantaged in their ability to explore the space through which they travel.

5. The Aesthetics of Urban Mobility

In the preceding section I discussed the ways in which different transportation modalities provide different access to the aesthetic possibilities of the city. I did so by looking at the speed of different transportation modes, the ability to survey one’s surroundings they provide, and the ease with which they could be interrupted. That is, I investigated the temporal-epistemic character of experience fostered or hindered by different forms of transportation. I argued that pedestrians, cyclists and users of other low-speed forms of private transportation are particularly well positioned to explore the city. Next come tram and bus passengers, who may, in some cases, have certain advantages, for example, in a sprawling city or one with particularly inhospitable weather. One thing I have left out of my account has been the possibility of hybrid mobility in which one combines two or more transportation modes. Public transit in many places is built to accommodate bicycles or other forms of low-speed private transportation, thus making possible a form of low-then-high-then-low speed travel. Similarly, one could set out to explore a particular neighbourhood on foot, but arrive there by public transit. Cars too can be used in this way, although one must still deal with parking as discussed above. Only in those cities that are built low to the ground and truly sprawling does a car or motorcycle make sense as a viable form of urban exploration, although it must be noted that this is possible in part because such sprawl is usually unable to support much in the way of public transit, leaving private motorized transportation as perhaps the best (or only) option. In other words, questions concerning the effectiveness of a form of transportation cannot be fully addressed without also addressing urban density and planning. Unfortunately, such issues cannot be addressed here (see section VI).

What I have not yet discussed, except in passing, are the ways in which getting around the city can itself be aesthetic. I have argued elsewhere that a complete phenomenology of mobility would need to account for both a multiplicity of transportation modes (as above), but also for a multiplicity of differences between users of transportation along axes such as age, sex, [24] sexuality, physical ability and the like. Overlapping these two matrices I looked at experiences of safety, excitement, autonomy and the like as elements of lived experience (Maskit 2017). To give a complete account of the aesthetics of transport would require something similar. One cannot expect all transportation users to have the same aesthetic possibilities or experiences. I will here give only an abbreviated account of the aesthetics of mobility using two further triads from the framework for an aesthetics of mobility I developed in section II.

Social Character of Experience. All forms of public transit entail being with strangers. One must share the space of the bus, tram, or train with those one does not know. Such public life offers aesthetic possibilities that are both positive – street performers, people-watching, the voyeuristic thrill of listening to others’ conversations – and negative – aggression, poor bodily hygiene, unwelcome comments and the like. But public transit can also offer opportunities for being with family and friends that are, because of the situation, different from possibilities to be had outside the transit environment. Because the space is public, friends and family may hesitate to have the most intimate of conversations, perhaps out of fear of embarrassment. Unlike most forms of private transportation, public transit offers a form of communal life. For example, on the way to or from a sporting event one experiences being with the other supporters of one’s team, even if they are all strangers. On the other hand, game day may well be one of the most alienating times to ride public transit for those who are indifferent or, even worse, for those who root for the visiting team.

Low-speed forms of private transportation also offer some interesting social-aesthetic possibilities. Unlike being in a car, where one is largely cut off from others and must rely on gestures and honking even to attempt communication, pedestrians, cyclists and the like share a social space with others and can, if both parties wish, engage with those others. One might set out alone and then become part of a group. But these forms of mobility are also well suited to groups made up of friends or family. While walking or riding with others may not permit the uninterrupted stretches of time that riding transit does, it provides a greater degree of intimacy, since one and one’s companions are not in a mobile space, such as a tram, but are moving through space with a constantly changing cast of strangers, none of whom will be privy to more than a snippet of conversation. Like public transit, walking, cycling and the like require that we share space intimately (although more transiently) with those we don’t know, again, for better or for worse. And, again like public transit, these forms of transportation lend themselves well to communal life. Indeed, the final approach to, or the initial exit from, a stadium, theatre, or festival is most likely to be on foot [25] (or in a wheelchair) in a space intimately shared with those strangers with whom one will share, or will have shared, some communal experience.