The social discourse surrounding the climate emergency progressively infuses the society, transforming into both micro- and macro-social injunctions to change. Yet, society - grounded in a territorial, social, and cultural contingency - appears to resist the necessary behavioral and institutional transformations. This thesis resituates the importance of social sciences to accompany the sustainable transition, in particular in mobility practices.
In a context where the automobile system dominates culture, pace of life, other modes of transport and environmental resources, we propose five scientific productions to explore resistances to change towards more sustainable mobility practices.
In the paper "Gaps in Public Transit" (Schultheiss, 2022), we investigate how transit systems are dominated by peak hours and commuters' pace of living, and how this creates access inequities for rhythmic minorities. Transit supply is unevenly distributed (in time and space). And certain segments of the population, such as mothers, have lower levels of service and accessibility. In contrast, other segments, such as males and commuters, always find the best conditions.
In the paper "Repeatable Behavior" (Schultheiss & Kaufmann, 2023a), we explore spatial and organizational variability through a typology of modal habits. The originality of this work lies in the use of longitudinal data together with a mobility experiment (pricing and nudging). The data allows to directly test the time-space resistance to change. The results show that activity-travel predictability is not correlated with exclusive car use, questioning the supposed flexibility of cars.
In the paper "Urban proximities?" (Schultheiss, Pattaroni, et al., 2023), we examine urban interventionism. We put the proximity planning ideal of "having anything we need nearby" in perspective with residential aspirations. We find that most dwellers aspire to tranquility and calm, instead of dense, functional neighborhoods.
In the paper "Data Domotopia" (Schultheiss, Puppo, et al., 2023), we describe a survey designed to understand how people make use of, experience, and relate to home-making given the pace of their daily activities. Home-making can reveal coping strategies and resilience practices to make everyday life work, but also condition the mobility practices.
Lastly, in the paper "Uncertainties 2050" (Schultheiss & Kaufmann, 2023b), we explore various resistances originating in the techno-social uncertainties underlying the sustainable transition of urban mobility.
By using data sources of different scope and types, and adopting an interdisciplinary scientific approach, we mainly studied how social dynamics related to home-making, ways of living, modal practices, public policies, or public transit translate into micro-social, macro-social, or latent resistance to change in mobility practices. As a general result, we introduce the novel concept of agent-based resistance regimes. Resistance regimes make it possible: to take distance from the multi-scalar differentiation of resistances (micro, and broader) which are not in opposition nor hierarchical, but interconnected in the ordinary life of the homosociologicus; to situate the agent within a socio-territorial context and a biography; to piece together the logics of justification (contradictory or not) mobilized by the agent to legitimate their mobility practices; and to make sense of the reciprocal adjustments between agents and social structures.