Urban Mobility and Social Equity: An Introduction

Urban mobility plays a significant role in shaping urban form and people’s experiences in and of the city. Such a role is largely determined by both infrastructures and services for urban mobility, as well as the interactions between social actors while using them. How these infrastructures, services and interactions materialise has an impact on people’s accessibility to urban services, amenities and opportunities.

Rapid demographic growth and urbanisation processes have outpaced the capacity of governments to respond to increasing mobility demands and needs of the urban population. This lack of capacity manifests in an unequal distribution of benefits and negative externalities of transport that tend to disproportionately affect already vulnerable population groups (Jones & Lucas, 2012; Oviedo & Titheridge, 2016). As such, manifested inequality is an undeniable part of our urban realities in understanding distributional issues in urban mobility that becomes a central concern in research agendas particularly in contexts facing large social inequity. This edited volume examines how spatial and social mobilities are deeply intertwined in the reproduction of both spatial and social inequities in Latin American cities. The book focuses on Latin America as a unique setting for the critical examination of the links between urban mobility and social equity. However, recognising that these links can be underpinned by similar cultural and social drivers not tied to a fixed geography, the volume includes a chapter examining experiences of Hispanic population in the United States.