I am starting to realize why car-town might be a good thing for me being in PhD land. I *promised* myself I would finish Urry’s Mobilities today so I could get on with it for my seminar presentation and paper due next week. However, I came into the city supposedly for a health break, and ended up breaking all the rules. I put rule 6 before rule 2 today, and between 9 AM and 1 PM, visited no less than three cafes and four friends. I traded comic books with ABTV. I saw my plants again after three months of separation and spent a lot of time re-establishing our human-plant bond. In car-town, there’s no way I could have hit half of those spots in a day.
I do I think I caught up somewhat due to my “work smart” routine. During my acupuncture session, I managed to brainstorm a set of questions to analyse Mobilities with, which can guide the rest of my readings and my presentation. Urry is a sociologist so I mainly need to redefine the concepts to shift from a predominantly human/social movement sphere to embed the human experience directly into a relationship with place/space.
- How does Urry define “mobilities” and why is his a new paradigm?
- Outline the key concepts and definitions within this paradigm.
- time, complexity, motility, networks, hybrids etc.
- How is space defined and addressed in the mobilities paradigm?
- How is place defined and addressed in the mobilities paradigm?
- How are the organization of economic activities and urban/regional development processes addressed within the mobilities paradigm?
- What are some shortcomings of Urry’s work? Can these be resolved? (complexity theory is the issue)
I think I am getting the hang of this geographic thought stuff.
