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Society and Economic Dynamics |
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Project Group on Mobility
1996 - 2009 |
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The project group on Mobility
studies societal, organizational, and political aspects of physical
mobility and the interactions between these dimensions. Some of the
main issues are:
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the future of the “vision of mobility”:
Innovative forms of mobility with different and possibly new
kinds of vehicles in the context of new demands on
organizational change and organizational learning in the
global automotive industry. |
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causes and consequences of changes in
organizations, political regulation, and user demand in
present and future public transport in Germany and abroad. |
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the sociology of transport: systemic links
between modernity and mobility, including the change in
demand and the entrepreneurial reorganization of leisure
travel in a global perspective. |
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Literally, automobility means the capacity for
self-locomotion. This understanding of the word could subsume
practically all of classical modernism. There is a dialectic
relationship between transport, particularly motorized private
transport, and the expanded alternatives for action in modern
societies. Social individualization and the diversity and
fragmentation of life styles have consequences for the organization
of transport. In turn, quick and flexibly available means of
transport, such as the automobile, broaden the scope of an
individual's alternatives and promote social differentiation.
This interaction of social and technological developments is the
point of departure for the questions and hypotheses formulated by
the project group on mobility. This approach calls into question
cherished certainties about environmental research on transport.
Travel time and the frequency with which a given route is taken have
fluctuated for decades, and classical forms of local and
long-distance public transport cannot optimally meet individual
needs for transportation. Nor have cars lost any of their
attraction, despite their prevalence and the traffic jams in which
their users become trapped. Nonetheless, the adverse impacts of ever
increasing volume of automobile traffic clearly have to be
contained. A proactive transport policy is therefore essential. As
yet, however, the shift by which the choice of the means of
transport is to be directed away from the car and toward trams,
trains, buses and bicycles is not taking place. Appeals to use these
alternative forms of transport instead of cars are going largely
unheard, for transport in modern societies is an expression of the
individual's expanded options and even a diversifying social
practice. |
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Last change: 2009-06-30 13:04 |
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