Public space on the move: Mediating mobility, stillness and encounter on a Cape Town bus

Abstract

As a public space, the environment of public transportation services is maintained by an ordered set of rules and conditions. Such rules and conditions are prescribed by law as they are in generally-accepted norms of social behaviour within public space. Through the examination of the Conditions of Carriage that govern bus transportation in Cape Town, South Africa, using Golden Arrow Bus Services, this paper seeks to highlight the myriad ways that urban public space on the move is mediated, negotiated and controlled through rules of conduct that differentiate mobile public space from its counterpart in the environment outside the bus. Understood as a mundane part of the social life of the city and its inhabitants, mobility in the form of public transportation is constituted by micro-communities whose publics are in a constant state of flux and negotiation. Using analysis of the Conditions of Carriage and an ethnographic case study of bus passengering, this paper demonstrates how the Conditions mediate the situated and lived assemblage of actors in mobile public space that is a liminal zone between inclusion and exclusion.

Public transport as public space: Introduction

“…As the work on fares in the two papers just mentioned shows, questions about public transport regulations are important in building an understanding of the publicness of public transport. Most vividly here, regulations become present in an article by Rink (2023), concerning how the Conditions of Carriage on buses in Cape Town, South Africa, mediate the assemblage of actors in public space. Written norms work as both inclusion and exclusion, providing rules of conduct defining the space inside as against the public spaces outside.…”

“…Encounters always entail diverse relations one is entangled in, moving way beyond the bodily dimension of passengering. The entire special issue brings this perspective to the fore with papers noting passengering in relation to rules (Rink, 2023; Sträuli and Kȩbłowski, 2023), urban histories and heritage (Lim and Perono Cacciafoco, 2023; Tsang, 2023), as well as urban modernisation narratives (Weicker, 2023) and so on. Gathered together in this issue, these show that by focussing on how people move around cities with public transport an extensive network of relations reveals various topics of high relevance for a wide range of urban researchers.…”

Public spaces of transport as mobile public spheres and atmospheric publics

“…A corollary of this is that our own bodies and identities are instruments of observation that will lead to different experiences, observations and interpretations of public transit as a public space. The bodies, histories and meanings that we carry with us influence not only our access to public space, but also how we interpret and tell the stories of those experiences, which in turn shapes cities and citizenship (Rink, 2023). Bovo et al (2023) argue that public transport can serve as 'insightful places to observe and understand the transformation of space and society'; it is 'an excellent lens of observation to understand how everyday negotiation of difference occurs, precisely because the space is limited and ''on the move'''.…”

“…Building on this insight it becomes clear that public transit is also an affective space of encounter and sociality that effuses variable atmospheres (from conviviality to anger and aggression), which are crucial to its potential to constellate a public sphere or not (Bissell, 2010, 2016). As Rink (2023) suggests in this special issue, there are ‘myriad ways that urban public space on the move is mediated, negotiated and controlled through rules of conduct that differentiate mobile public space from its counterpart in the environment outside’ (p. 2). While riding a bus, subway, or train may be mundane parts of the social life of a city and its inhabitants, ‘mobility in the form of public transportation is constituted by micro-communities whose publics are in a constant state of flux and negotiation’ (Rink, 2023: 3027).…”

“…As Rink (2023) suggests in this special issue, there are ‘myriad ways that urban public space on the move is mediated, negotiated and controlled through rules of conduct that differentiate mobile public space from its counterpart in the environment outside’ (p. 2). While riding a bus, subway, or train may be mundane parts of the social life of a city and its inhabitants, ‘mobility in the form of public transportation is constituted by micro-communities whose publics are in a constant state of flux and negotiation’ (Rink, 2023: 3027). Through this insight into rules of conduct, Rink (2023) shows in detail how codes of conduct embodied in official ‘Conditions of Carriage’ can ‘mediate the situated and lived assemblage of actors in mobile public space that is a liminal zone between inclusion and exclusion’ (p. 1).…”