Care moves people: complex systems and futures signals supporting production and reflection of individual mobile utopias

ABSTRACT

Futures of mobility are a pressing concern for cities addressing sustainability and climate change challenges. As cities renew their mobility systems and launch efforts to meet these targets, new sensitive qualitative methodologies are needed. This article discusses a focused mobility diary experiment that was conducted in May 2017 in Turku, Finland and its subarea, with a small set of participants. The goal of this study was to gain insights into potential developments in the city’s mobility systems and practices. This article utilises a multidisciplinary complex systems approach describing how we used the concepts of futures signals and mobile utopias as tools when analysing some prefigurative patterns in individual mobility practices. A key outcome of this methodological experimentation was the interconnections made between two research traditions and a notion of the various ways care underlies, effects, and contours the mobility practices of people–in other words, people are moved by care. This article demonstrates how with the concepts of futures signals, and mobilised utopias, we can reach the important aspirational and prefigurative practices and motivations of people, which permit us to interpret potential futures in particular urban settings characterised by daily life activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Complex systems
• care
• mobility diaries
• futures signals
• utopia as method
• future mobility

Acknowledgments

Ellinoora Leino-Richert and Hòa Nguyen contributed to the design and execution of the mobility diary study, Individuals and Futures Signals, this article is based upon. Their contributions included selecting and inviting research participants, preparing the invitation and instructions for research participants, and preparing received materials for qualitative analysis and text coding. Markku Wilenius supervised the wider research initiative on futures of mobility in Turku. This study was funded by the University of Turku as part of a larger set of studies into complexity and futures of human settlements conducted by the Futures of Cities and Communities research team (2016–2017) at Finland Futures Research Centre.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The diary study was part of a larger seven-part study on mobility systems of Turku which included a literature review, an analysis of mobility-related media and information streams, dataset mapping, interviews with mobility-related staff in the City of Turku, and participatory action research involving the production of a new vision for the City of Turku. These other studies covered the landscape, regime, and niche levels of the city’s mobility systems in terms of the Multi-Level Perspective for mapping socio-technical transitions (Geels 2002; Köhler et al. 2009). They also captured multiple viewpoints/perspectives on the city’s mobility systems such as public administrators, representations in media and information streams, and business and community leaders.