Between places: producing hubs, flows, and networks

Abstract

Tim Cresswell (2001) recently suggested two causes for an upsurge of interest in `mobility': first, an increase in `empirical' mobility and, second, a new theoretical approach to mobility with a rejection of the metaphysics of sedentarism. Cultural theory, it is true, has tended to overgeneralise and underplay differences between kinds of movements, risking a celebratory tone and underplaying power relations of its production by treating it as a metaphor for consumption. However, the revalorisation of mobility is not just occurring in cultural studies but also where invocations of `spaces of flows' (after Castells, 1996) have claimed to set a new agenda for urbanm studies, where Guido Martinotti (1999) critiques sedentarist and residentialist assumptions about urban citizenship pointing to the flows of students, tourists, and commuters forming transient populations of cities' and John Urry (2000) sets a broader manifesto for a `sociology of fluids' rather than basing analysis on static units. In this piece I want to suggest we need to examine how mobility is produced through specific spaces.