Restricted Mobilities: Access to, and Activities in, Public and Private Spaces

Abstract

Privatization of public spaces in the contemporary city has increased over the past few decades, but only a few studies have approached this trend from a mobility perspective. Therefore, this article seeks to make a contribution to the field by exploring two Australian examples of private spaces in the city, gated communities and shopping centres, through the ‘mobility’ lenses. The article illustrates how different mobility systems enable and/or restrict public access to private–public spaces, and it points out that proprietary communities create an unequal potential for human movement and access in the city. The main argument in the article is that many mobility systems enable specialization of places that are targeted at a special section of the population. This means that various forms of mobilities (e.g. automobility, virtual mobile communication technologies) not only create new opportunities for urban life, but also serve as one of the most critical components in the production of new exclusion and stratification. In conclusion, the article therefore suggests that future urban research and planning also need to apply the mobility perspective in order to understand the mechanisms between flows of movement and the understanding fixed spaces in the cities, and how different mobility systems play an important role in sustaining the exclusiveness that often characterizes private/public spaces. Likewise, from a mobility perspective, the specific consequences that the proprietary communities have on the surrounding communities seem to be an important further question for research and planning.

Notes

… residential areas with restricted access in which places which are normally public spaces are privatized. They are security developments with designated perimeters, usually walls or fence, and controlled entrances that are intended to prevent penetration by non-residents (Blakely & Snyder, 1997:2).

Urry defines mobility systems in the following way:

[…] they provide ‘spaces of anticipation’ that the journey can be made, that the message will get through, that the parcel will arrive. Systems permit predictable and relatively risk-free repetition of the movement in question. Systems enable repetition. In the contemporary world these systems include ticketing, oil supply, addresses, safety, protocols, station interchanges, websites, docks, money transfer, inclusive tours, luggage storage, air traffic control, barcodes, bridges, timetables, surveillance and so on (Urry, 2007:13).

Various ‘forms of mobilities’ refer here to the new mobilities paradigm (Urry, 2000, 2007; Cresswell 2006; Jensen, 2013). This new mobilities paradigm places mobilities at the heart of understanding how the society is produced and reproduced, and in this respect, the position not only focuses on one single form of mobility, but on various forms of mobilities (Urry, 2000). In particular, this refers to Urry's five forms of mobilities: corporeal travel of people (which also includes means of transport), the physical movement of objects, imaginative travel, virtual travel and communicative travel (Urry, 2007:47). Today, such various forms of mobilities and the complex assemblage between these different mobilities are fundamental components of understanding and exploring modern urban life (Urry, 2007; Jensen & Lassen, 2011).

The phenomenon of gated communities in Australia started in the 1980s. In particular, retirement villages are often gated to provide the residences in the village with a sense of security (Gleeson & Low, 2000).