Coping with the costs of car dependency: A system of expedients used by low-income households on the outskirts of Dijon and Paris

Abstract

Low-income households in urban outskirts use expedients to cope with car dependency • Social networks, local resources, and reduced travel are the main expedients • Moving to less car-dependent locations is the expedient of last resort • Expedients are implemented by individuals but are collectively constructed AbstractLiving on low incomes and in a car-dependent area is often interpreted as a double burden for households, even if the two characteristics are often interdependent. While their capacity for mobility is lower, low-income households in outer suburban areas are nonetheless mobile. Their capacities in this domain should not be underestimated or overlooked. They can command a set of alternative practices or expedients to deal with car-related economic stress (CRES) by a set of resources derived essentially from spatial proximity. This article aims to present and analyse the diversity of these expedients for the case of outer suburban areas around Paris and Dijon. The analysis of mobility adjustments by low-income households is based on interviews of 45 households between 2010 and 2011.Our results show that mobility expedients make it possible for low-income households to continue to reside in car-dependent areas by reducing their trips and by using local resources and networks to lower the costs of their car dependency. The contribution of our work is to show the intensity of these practices, which create a structured and collectively or socially built alternative system to solo car use.

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Should All Cars Be Electric by 2025? The Electric Car Debate in Europe

“…Affordability in both the domestic and the transport sector is thus a critical issue, which has high political salience [68,69], as the issue of energy poverty is a key dimension of the broader energy justice paradigm [56]. Indeed, if low-income outer-suburban households are less car-deprived than urban ones, they are more likely to face another car-related transport disadvantage: car-related economic stress [70,71], defined as the "financial stress associated with owning and operating cars, and its negative consequences" [72].…”

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“…Conversely, research on transport costs should give more consideration to household agency, in order to understand how economic stress arises throughout the life course. A few studies in this special issue provide empirical insights on this point, based on both quantitative (Curl et al, 2017) and qualitative (Belton-Chevallier et al, 2017;Ortar, 2017) methods.…”

“…The workshop was held at the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds (UK) on May 20-21 2015, and was attended by 41 academics, practitioners and policy-makers. Several of the academic presentations delivered at the workshop have evolved into articles included in this special issue 1 (Belton Chevallier, et al, 2017;Mattioli et al, 2017;Nicolas & Pelé, 2017;Scheiner, 2017).…”

“…The spectrum of social science disciplines covered is wide, ranging from anthropology (Ortar, 2017) to mainstream urban economics (Coulombel, 2017). From a methodological point of view, the bulk of the articles adopt quantitative methods, but these are complemented by studies based on qualitative interviews with households and stakeholders (Belton Chevallier et al, 2017;Leung et al, 2017;Ortar, 2017), and by papers presenting theoretical overviews (Mattioli et al, 2017;Scheiner, 2017). Beyond these broad classifications, the articles show a remarkable variety of entry points to the topic, as illustrated in the next section.…”