Community Carsharing and the Social–Ecological Mobility Transition

243 Pages·2022·3.298 MB·English

by  Luca Nitschke

Community Carsharing and the
–
Social Ecological Mobility Transition
Thisbookinvestigateshowpracticesofcommunitycarsharingareinfluencing
everyday mobility. It argues that hegemonic practices of automobility are
reconfigured through practices of community carsharing, thereby challenging
capitalistmobilitiesintherealmofeverydaylife.
Throughadetailedempiricalstudyofpracticesofcommunitycarsharingand
itspractitionersintheruralregionsaroundMunich,Germany,thisbookreveals
how the practice contributes to the emergence of alternative automobile prac-
tices, meanings, identities and subjectivities. It also explores the embedding of
automobility into its ecological context, the connection of function and com-
munity in practices of community carsharing and the changing of ownership
relations through a process of commoning mobility. This reconfiguration of
everydaypracticesofautomobilitytakesplacethroughtheprocessesofeveryday
resistance, re-embedding and commoning, and ultimately results in the emer-
genceofanalternativemobilityculture,therebyfacilitatingthedisseminationof
analternativecommonsenseofcommunitycarsharing.
This book on community carsharing provides a valuable insight into car-
sharinginruralsettingsandexemplifieshowcarsharingspecifically,andshar-
ing mobilities in general, can contribute to a social–ecological mobility
transition.Theworkwillbeofparticularinteresttoscholarsandpractitioners
workinginmobilitystudiesandmobilities.
Luca Nitschke completed his Ph.D. at the Munich Center for Technology in
Society(MCTS)andNürtingen-GeislingenUniversityasamemberofthemobil.
LABDoctoralResearchGroup,fundedbytheHans-Böckler-Foundation,located
at the Chair for Urban Structure and Transport Planning at the Technical
UniversityofMunich.Heworks attheInstitutefor Social–EcologicalResearch
(ISOE) in Frankfurt. His research interests lie in the relationship between
mobilitypractices,capitalismandprocessesofchange.
HestudiedEnvironmental Sciences inBielefeldandEnvironmentalStudies
in Barcelona, Aveiro, Aalborg and New York City, and he is a founding
member of the Center for Emancipatory Technology (ZET), Basel.
Networked Urban Mobilities Series
Editors: Sven Kesselring, Nürtingen-Geislingen University, Germany and
Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Roskilde University, Denmark
The Networked Urban Mobilities series resulted from the Cosmobilities
Network of mobility research and the Taylor & Francis journal Applied
Mobilities. This three volume set, ideal for mobilities researchers and practi-
tioners, explores a broad number of topics including planning, architecture,
geographyandurbandesign.
Experiencing Networked Urban Mobilities
Practices, Flows, Methods
Edited by Malene Freudndal-Pedersen, Katrine Hartmann-Petersen and
Emmy Laura Perez Fjalland
Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities
Art, Creativity, Performance
Edited by Aslak Aamot Kjaerulff, Sven Kesselring, Peter Peters and Kevin
Hannam
Networked Urban Mobilities
Edited by Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and Sven Kesselring
Sharing Mobilities
New Perspectives for the Mobile Risk Society
Edited by Sven Kesselring, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, and Dennis Zuev
Nurturing Mobilities
Family Travel in the 21st Century
Claire Maxwell, Miri Yemini and Katrine Mygind Bach
Europe Beyond Mobility
Mobilities, Social Cohesion and Political Integration
Vincent Kaufmann, Ander Audikana and Guillaume Drevon
Community Carsharing and the Social–Ecological Mobility Transition
Luca Nitschke
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Networked-Urban-Mobilities-Series/book-series/NUM
Community Carsharing and the
–
Social Ecological Mobility
Transition
Luca Nitschke
Coverimage:GettyImages,ImageID:945210670
Firstpublished2023
byRoutledge
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andbyRoutledge
4ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninforma
business
©2023LucaNitschke
TherightofLucaNitschketobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhas
beenassertedinaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,
DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced
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Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor
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explanationwithoutintenttoinfringe.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Nitschke,Luca,author.
Title:Communitycarsharingandthesocial–ecologicalmobilitytransition/
LucaNitschke.
Description:NewYork,NY:Routledge,2022.|Includesbibliographical
referencesandindex.|
Identifiers:LCCN2022002618(print)|LCCN2022002619(ebook)|
ISBN9781032205885(hardback)|
ISBN9781032205908(paperback)|ISBN9781003264279(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Carsharing--Germany--Munich.|Automobiles--Social
aspects--Germany--Munich.|Urbantransportation--Socialaspects--
Germany--Munich.|Communitylife--Germany--Munich.
Classification:LCCHE5669.M85N582022(print)|LCCHE5669.M85
(ebook)|DDC388.4/1321--dc23/eng/20220126
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2022002618
LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2022002619
ISBN:978-1-032-20588-5(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-032-20590-8(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-003-26427-9(ebk)
DOI:10.4324/9781003264279
TypesetinSabon
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
For Jaron and Sinan
in the hope
to overcome
DMD KIU LIDT // TMO CIO LIS

Contents
List of illustrations viii
Foreword ix
SVENKESSELRING
Preface xiii
1 Capitalist mobilities, sharing mobilities and the need for
reconfiguring the everyday 1
2 Empirical introduction: Investigating community carsharing 42
3 Reconstituting automobility: Changing the meanings of the car
and (auto)mobility 62
4 Re-embedding automobility: Ecological critique and counter-
hegemonic practice 90
Interlude: The collective and organizational character of
everyday life 122
5 “We do it together for us”: Community, collective identity and
social re-embedding 128
6 Commoning mobility: Community carsharing and changing
ownership 158
7 Community carsharing and the social–ecological mobility
transition 187
Index 226
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Total number of cars (dark grey) and number of cars per 100
inhabitants (light grey) in Munich for the years 2005–2020 43
2.2 Modal split for Munich and the Greater Region in the years
2008 and 2017 44
3.1 Main Street of Königsbrunn, where mobility is understandably
cumbersome without a car 74
4.1 The town center of Grafing: the catastrophe of automobility 104
5.1 Car-cleaning party in Markt Schwaben: building community
while cleaning cars 131
7.1 Aspects of the emerging alternative mobility culture 200
Tables
1.1 Aspects of the emancipatory potentialand neoliberal co-option
of sharing mobilities 16
2.1 Interviews on the different forms of community carsharing 48
2.2 Overview of all interviewees with pseudonym,
socio-demographics, form of sharing, position/relationship
within the association or arrangement, duration and car
ownership in addition to the shared car 49
2.3 Introduction to the 24 association members interviewed from
the carsharing associations 54
2.4 Overview of the possible categorizations of private carsharing 57
2.5 Introducing the 17 people in the eleven private carsharing
arrangements 58
Foreword
Sven Kesselring
Mobilityandtransportarestillthebiggestheadacheforpoliciesforsustainable
developmentandinfightingclimatechange.Sincetheearly1990shighratesof
CO and other greenhouse gasses have been emitted constantly. In European
2
countries, all other sectors such as energy, heating and agriculture have been
reducingemissionssteadily.Butnotsomobilityandtransport.
Against this background, politics, industry and civil society need innova-
tive ideas and concepts – not forgetting data and analyses – to design and
conceptualize policies that reach people’s realities and life worlds. But the
thousand-dollar question here is: Where to look for and where to find the
right approaches and entry points for climate policies that generate reso-
nances and impact on the human scale?
Within Paul Feyerabend’s philosophy of science (Feyerabend 1978) coun-
ter-intuitive thinking or the methodology of thinking outside the box, a
technique to approach social innovation and step out of long overdue path
dependencies, has emerged. For Austrian, future researcher Robert Jungk
the so-called utopian phase has become a key element of his future work-
shop methodology (Jungk and Müllert 1987). Participants are not only
allowed but even obliged to ‘fly’ intellectually as high as possible and this
has turned out to be an excellent and smart instrument to generate innova-
tive solutions – from neighborhood projects to urban renewals and indus-
trial product design. Today, trendy approaches and management tools and
methods such as agile management, design thinking and so forth are taking
advantage of these ideas. Some of them are coming bottom up from grass-
rootsinitiatives,otherseven frominsurgentactivistpolicies andmovements.
In fact, although modern societies are almost obsessed or at least pre-
occupied with discourse on innovation and invention, they suffer from a
fundamental lack of alternative ways of thinking, planning and designing
solutions and products, specifically those that meet people’s needs and
wants. They are too locked in to instrumental and, often, technocentric
thinking and acting. Angela Merkel’s once iconic words about German or
European politics as being “without alternatives” describe this mindset and
a perception of reality’s and modern societies’ potential to shape, influence
and structure their own course and futures.