Image by Ana Clara Nunes Roberti, copyrighted.

The article Questioning Streets: On plural origins, plural uses, and plural futures, was recently published in the journal Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives. This article offers creative insights on historical and current uses of streets, as well as what could be impactful imaginaries for their future. As I previously wrote alongside Luca Bertolini, streets are epitomes of planning challenges and opportunities at the intersection between mobility and public space, and as such their future is likely to have a great impact on the future any human settlement around the world – what is possible to do and change in its space and the relations it permits. As such, then, it is key to stimulate our imaginaries for the future of this space, and to draw inspiration from as many angles as possible. In this most recent article, I do so by compiling insights from the disciplines of history, anthropology and urban and regional planning, as well as from song lyrics and literary quotes.

The article proposes that “a map of plural street themes must include, at least seven, around Access, Trade, Efficiency, Public Space, Inclusion, Worship, and Imaginaries.” For each of these, I propose a set of questions that one could ask to discover more about a (potential) street before intervening in it. In the article I furthermore clarify that “what this article calls for is decidedly not nuance. It is a call for embracing plurality; a call for circularity over linearity. A call for zooming in, and back out, to be able to zoom in again with renewed understanding. Perhaps with new concepts and categories, depending on a new situation.”

As such, this article’s message is also at the core of what the MobileWorlds project aims to do: to challenge us to think and rethink our ways of looking at mobilities – not just as a movement from A to B, but as much more than that (see also Ferreira’s book on “Mobilities in a Turbulent Era” for more on what I mean when I speak of mobilities in such a broad sense). I hope that MobileWorlds can be but a stepping stone for more of us to further explore where creative approaches in academia, practice and beyond can take us to make future mobilities just (for all humans and more-than-humans), useful, fun, perhaps sometimes challenging, and certainly diverse.

This article was incredibly stimulating and fun to write, and I hope you will experience the same reading it! It is available open access aqui.

My deepest thanks once more to Ana Clara Nunes Roberti, Andreia Arezes, e Danielle van den Heuvel for the interviews they granted me, and Ana Clara Nunes Roberti and Andreia Arezes for the photos they allowed me to use. Their work has been incredibly inspiring for this article and also beyond.

As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.