4 January 2024

Recently, I published this commentary on Street Experiments in the Journal of Urban Mobility. It proposes a critical but constructive approach to the idea of street experiments by revisiting four critiques:

1. The “impertinence of impermanence”, alluding to the idea that when people invest time and energy and passion into changing their surroundings, they are likely to want to make lasting and significant change happen, rather than something temporary and erasable.
2. The issue of commercialization of initiatives, whether their spirit is initially commercially related or not.
3. The question of privilege, and who gets to “benefit” from and “initiate” an “experiment”, where and when.
4. The geographical bias of the locations and especially the studies about (street) experiments, mostly in the “Global North” and Latin America.

I refer you to the article itself if you are curious on how I elaborate on each of these critiques. But in this post I would like to briefly stand still on how this publication relates to Mobile Worlds. The relation is at least twofold.

First, engaging with creativity, trial-and-error, and immediate action, are inherent to the ideas and activities proposed by Mobile Worlds. The question is whether its activities should then be described or classified as experiments? It would likely align them profitably with a trend… and yet my tendency is to imagine that no, this is something different. I would rather do what is suggested at the end of the commentary: seeking out new myths, new understandings of social organization, of what humans are capable and willing to do. Trying something out, yes, but trying it with all the risk involved. A change that may not be permanent – after all, what is ever really permanent? – but significant in that moment, that will continue to change along with its context over time, but represents a deliberate choice og action. When I was first interested in the idea of street experiments it was in relation to the Minhocão, in São Paulo, Brazil, which was at the time used for car mobility during the day and as public space at night and on Sundays. What I found curious was the potential of the contrasting uses in triggering different ways of thinking and seeing what a “street” or “highway” could be. And many street experiments nowadays try to trigger just that: a different way of looking at reality. But what does the term “experiment” really do here nowadays, except provide a political rhetoric that might both make the initiative more likely to be implemented, and more likely to be swallowed up into a logic of maintaining a given status-quo, albeit from a different angle? And when the time to use the “experiment” to learn and then adjust is most frequently not given?

As a second way to relate the insights from the commentary to Mobile Worlds, I would like to seek out ways for the ideas emerging from Mobile Worlds to avoid falling into traps related to the four critiques presented in the article. Although the idea of “experimentation” in public space might in some cases inspire participants in the project to enact some of the ideas that emerge from participating in this project, I would like to remain mindful of the traps of “impermanence”, of commercialization, of privilege and of geographical bias (at local, regional and global levels). This is very ambitious, and I cannot guarantee we will succeed. However, having these four critiques laid out might help to check the project against them and do our best to avoid the more obvious traps in these regards.