Application to considerations of mobility

Moving now to focus on how a rights-based approach could benefit urban mobility, this section presents an overview of some of the research already conducted before concluding with possible methods of exploration for this thesis.

Despite Harvey suggesting that application of the right to the city concept to transport and mobility has been ‘curiously absent from the literature’ (Harvey 2008), some research has been undertaken. Attoh has attempted to apply the concept to transport programmes, in the case of Syracuse in the US, a city with urban sprawl, capital flight and uncertain revenue streams (Attoh 2012). He suggests that ‘whether we define the right to the city as right to public space, or a right to organise collectively, implicit in asserting these rights are questions of transportation and mobility’ because, urban transport policies set the conditions under which the transport disadvantaged can assert their right to the city. He suggests that although transport studies have looked at metrics of accessibility or mobility, these are quite narrow views of ‘rights’ when considered against Lefebvre’s work.

Attoh maintains that a lack of clarity over the nature of the rights bestowed by the right to the city remains in the literature with the focus being on ‘who ought

to have a ‘right to the city’ (Dikeç, 2005) and what the ‘right to the city’ might mean for a more democratic urban politics (Purcell, 2005)’ rather than what the right actually is (Attoh 2011, p. 669). He therefore suggests that clarity is

needed on the type of right which is at issue and whether the right to the city is ‘a socio-economic right or a liberty right, a legal right or a moral right, a prima facie right or an absolute right?’ (ibid). Attoh argues that the very concept of rights, and associated duties or responsibilities are ‘sites of struggle’ and suggests that definition is essential because;

‘while on the one hand this openness [of not defining the explicit nature of the right] may be beneficial, on the other hand it is hard to square this openness with an argument that holds that differences in

how rights are defined, and the forms they take, remain differences that matter. Within the radical openness of the right to the city, we will

surely find rights that not only collide but are incommensurable. (Attoh 2011, p. 670)

He uses as an example, Dworkin’s notion of a moral right to break the law which perhaps was not the original aim of ‘rights talk’ but underlines why Attoh believes it is important to define the rights that are embodied in the right to the city (ibid). From a transport perspective, he argues that ‘if the right to affordable transportation is merely a call for expanding the private and individual

ownership of cars, it is a right that may stand directly against a right to a clean and sustainable city’ and therefore that the ‘right to the city framework offers us little help in navigating the way forward’ (ibid, p. 675). For him, the right to the city contains an inherent conflict because different individuals and groups will use it in different ways but he suggests that perhaps there is a place for this ‘strategic fuzziness’ as it prompts a discussion between parties to seek trade-

One other study is worth a brief mention: Betancourt (2010) in his MSc thesis attempted to apply the right to the city to the Transmilenio bus rapid transit service in Bogotá. However, he used a more narrow definition of the concept: solely the right to access the activities and opportunities offered in that city. From a largely quantitative study of modal share, he found that people on low- incomes, women, the elderly, the disabled and children have, despite initial aspirations, experienced greater social exclusion as a result of Transmilenio largely because of factors such as poor service efficiency, low speed,

inadequate quality of service and lack of information provision (but with the notable exception of cost). He concludes that applying the right to the city could improve the accessibility of this network to these marginalised groups and suggests that translating the concept into policy could improve the participatory practices of decision-making to encourage a dialogue between the relevant actors including the transport operators, community representatives and government officials. Betancourt’s work is a useful study, but did little to advance the arguments.

Hence, there is an absence of rights-based analysis in decision-making for transport planning, whether adopting a ‘right to the city’ concept or not.

Thinking more broadly about how a right-based approach could address social exclusion and poor mobility, Martens’ point about assessing transport

investments on the basis of need, and not demand is a valuable. He argues that ‘the importance of mobility and accessibility in contemporary lifestyles makes the distribution of transport facilities according to the criterion of demand difficult to defend’ (Martens 2006, p7). He goes on to argue that a ‘whole new generation of models based on the criterion of need’ will need to replace the

existing models. Such a ‘need-based model’ would assess ‘to what extent the existing or future transport network is able to secure a minimal level of

accessibility for all population groups’. He advocates a standard of transport need for different population groups based on needs such as health, education, work and social contacts in order to determine the impact of any transport investment, in any need-based Costs Benefit Analysis. However, there are challenges with being too prescriptive about transport needs, which will vary by country, by city, by neighbourhood and by individual. Whilst perhaps useful to address the needs deficits of people and communities, the risk is that by using the lowest level of need as the standard, once needs are met across a

population, any investment proposed to raise the level of mobility would be seen as in addition to the base need, and therefore would become more difficult to justify.

Martens has more recently argued for a decision-making approach to include concepts of social justice into cost-benefit analyses (2012). Indeed, several authors have attempted to link social equity with transport, for example by using the Gini Co-efficient of inequality (Delbosc and Currie 2011). Many authors lament the weighty focus on quantitative data in transport planning and push for a more discursive approach to decision making. For example, Deka (2004) concluded that ‘equity planning’ has not reached the field of transport planning because by its very nature transport planning assumes a rational approach using mainly quantitative data, and uses traffic engineering and computer models that reinforce the status quo.

To illustrate the point about the restrictions of using a quantitative approach, research has been undertaken to define a social equity measure that could be used in the assessment of transport proposals. Welch and Mishra (2013) attempted to define a measure for use in transport service planning in the US where there is a federal mandate for equity estimation. They reviewed the applicability of mobility and accessibility measures to social equity; for example measures of transport supply can be based on how well a user can move about the city and access various destinations, how far households are from public transport stops and how long their journeys take them, or alternatively

measures can relate to the frequency of service at a particular node or stop, or the number of vehicle miles in a given area. While these measures could give a proxy understanding of equity, there is nothing in them about other factors that might affect a user’s experience, such as cost, quality of service, issues of safety or the other measures defined by Church et al. (2010) as elements of transport-related social exclusion (see Chapter 2). However, the equity

approach developed by Welch and Mishra (2013) was equally limited, focusing on ‘the distribution of transit-service coverage to household and employment locations’. While they, and this author recognises that analysing transport equity is a complex factor, such a quantitative approach is akin to the mapping studies discussed in Chapter 2 by Lazo (2008) in Santiago de Chile and

Bocarejo and Oviedo (2012) in Colombia, and does not address the full gamut of equity as expressed at the start of this section.

There is no further guidance in the debates above on the metrics of mobility that could be used in decision making as the focus is on public participation in

making in urban transport projects be refined to address the needs of those suffering transport-related social exclusion through a rights based approach to participation?

Using the literature review of participatory practices and combining it with the rights agenda the following Rights-Based Participation Evaluation Framework has been developed.

Table 3.1 Rights-Based Participation Evaluation Framework to evaluate a rights-based approach.

1.Engaging a cross-section of society.

Does the participatory approach give all users the right to be involved in the decision and give them an equal opportunity to voice their views?

2. Building trust Does the participatory approach seek to develop trust between the decision-makers and citizens by

undertaking small-scale interventions in the short-term? 3.Supporting the community Does the participatory approach support existing groups

and societies with resources or funding, rather than establish new systems?

4. Affecting outcomes Does the participatory approach give citizens the right to make suggestions that will be considered by the

decision-making body?

Does the exchange of information flow in both directions?

5. Transparency of output Does the participatory approach give citizens the right to access sufficient information with which to understand why the chosen solution was preferred and to commit a degree of support to its implementation?

This framework provides the basis for an analytical review of the practices and processes employed in the case study. As a result of the analysis, a revised framework is presented in Chapter 8.