Mobility and the Making of the Creative City: Neoliberal Urban Restructuring and its Impacts on Mobility, Space and Social (In)Justice

• Applicant: Gregg Culver, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 322408785

The neoliberal 'creative city' discourse has been one of the most significant urban discourses driving public policy interventions and urban restructuring in cities across the globe. However, the notion of everyday mobility practices, on the one hand, and the (re)production of mobility in cities and the politics this produces, on the other hand, have been largely overlooked in research on the creative city, even as (the reshaping of) mobility and its spaces appear to play significant roles in the making of the creative city. Thus, this project, which will be the basis for Habilitation at Heidelberg University, is investigating whether and how neoliberal 'creative city' strategies impact the production and politics of local mobility regimes, and what this means for concerns over ever-increasing social inequality. Using the empirical example of the surprising, and as of yet largely unexplained re-emergence of streetcar development projects in dozens of cities throughout the United States, this research aspires to make substantive theoretical and empirical contributions to urban, transport, and mobilities geographies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants