Secessionist Automobility: Racism, Anti‐Urbanism, and the Politics of Automobility in Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract

Automobility - the centering of society and everyday life around automobiles and their spaces - is one of the most contentious aspects of contemporary urban growth debates at the local, national, and global scale. The politics of automobility is a spatial struggle over how the city should be organized and for whom. Yet there is little research on how this struggle is unfolding, and how that politics is shaping urban space. Part of this stems from the essentialization of automobility in policy and academic discourses on cities. Moving beyond essentialization, this article will explore how contentious political struggles reveal nuanced and diverse discourses and ideologies surrounding automobility and space. Focusing on what I call 'secessionist automobility'- using an automobile as an instrument of spatial secession - I examine Atlanta, Georgia's contentious automobility debate. Secessionist automobility is bound with the blunt politics of race-based secession from urban space, but also more subtle forms of spatial secession rooted in anti-urban ideologies. Implications for local, national, and global contestation of automobility will be provided. Copyright (c) 2006 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Performing Expatriate Mobilities in Kuala Lumpur

“…Consistent with the views of Simmel (1997), Urry (2007), Maxwell (2001), Henderson (2006) and Dennis and Urry (2009), for the majority of expatriates, the car was often recognized as a barrier to many of the unfavorable, and often uncomfortable, conditions other modes of travel in Kuala Lumpur could yield. Many argued that cars acted as self-contained sanctuaries (Maxwell 2001) that enabled the driver to reduce the uncomfortable climatic sensations one could often encounter in a hot, humid, and wet country such as a Malaysia.…”

“…The car has frequently identified as being crucial to enhancing daily lives and mitigating a plethora of obstacles, particularly in Western societies (Beckmann 2001;Rosen 2002;Böhm et al 2006;Henderson 2006;Furness 2007;Collin-Lange and Benediktsson 2011). Indeed, the car is often celebrated as an object that permits a variety of positive benefits such as 'convenience' (Pesses 2010), 'flexibility' (Beckmann 2001;Urry 2004), 'efficiency' (Böhm et al 2006) 'security' (Beckmann 2001), and perhaps most significantly of all, 'freedom' (Sheller and Urry 2000;Sheller and Urry 2003;Edensor 2004;Featherstone 2004;Sheller 2004;Urry 2004;Vanderheiden 2006;Huijbens and Benediktsson 2007;Farber and Paez 2009;Collin-Lange and Benediktsson 2011).…”

On the road to the in-between city: Excavating peripheral urbanisation in Chicago’s ‘Crosstown Corridor’

“…Many of its constituent districts are 'transit deserts' crossed by higher-order infrastructure but with high deficiencies between service levels and demand (Jiao and Dillivan, 2013). Displacements and disconnections mark it as a locus for the 'contingent' (Theodore, 2003) and 'parasitic' (Wilson et al, 2009) Mohl, 2003): the disastrous social and environmental consequences of their development (Gioielli, 2011;Henderson, 2006) and the political movements that successfully opposed them (Mohl, 2012;Robinson, 2011). Across postwar North America, expressways served as both functional material networks and symbolic spaces that spurred dreams of mobility, modernity, and circulation.…”

Manejando por Santiago: Explorando el uso de automóviles por parte de habitantes de bajos ingresos desde una óptica de movilidad sustentable

“…Por el otro, comúnmente las calles y el transporte público son identifi cados como áreas potencialmente peligrosas ante las cuales la imagen de seguridad y privacidad que ofrece al automóvil es ampliamente valorada. Henderson (2006) llama a este proceso "automovilidad secesionista", en el sentido de que el automóvil es utilizado como un medio para aislarse de un contexto urbano que es percibido como potencialmente peligroso y/o dañino. Especialmente en los casos de familias con niños pequeños el uso del automóvil "puede dar a los padres un sentimiento de empoderamiento en un contexto de inseguridad generalizada" (Sheller y Urry, 2000, p. 230).…”