The goal of this article is to deepen the concept of emerging urban mobility technology. Drawing on philosophical everyday and urban aesthetics, as well as the postphenomenological strand in the philosophy of technology, we explicate the relation between everyday aesthetic experience and urban mobility commoning. Thus, we shed light on the central role of aesthetics for providing depth to the important experiential and value-driven meaning of contemporary urban mobility. We use the example of self-driving vehicle (SDV), as potentially mundane, public, dynamic, and social urban robots, for expanding the range of perspectives relevant for our relations to urban mobility technology. We present the range of existing SDV conceptualizations and contrast them with experiential and aesthetic understanding of urban mobility. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential undesired consequences from the depolitization of technological development, and potential new pathways for speculative thinking concerning urban mobility futures in responsible innovation processes.

Karachi is considered the economic hub of Pakistan, but it lacks a systematized public transport service. Although the demand-supply gap in the transport sector and the poor quality of this deregulated service affects everyone, it wreaks havoc for women, manifesting in the form of social exclusion. Men can benefit from alternative, (and sometimes cheaper) private modes of transport such as motorbikes, which are socially discouraged for women, making them dependent on their male counterparts. Despite the seriousness of this issue, there is little literature showing how women are differentially deprived of their agency due to gender disparity in society. To better understand this issue, the aim of this paper is to study the cultural foundations of transport poverty to assess their impact on women’s life opportunities. For this purpose, the experiences of women while using public transport have been analysed. The study has identified a variety of reasons why women curtail their mobility. It concludes that the social exclusion of women motivates a greater concern for their freedom of movement and that their needs be adequately reflected in transportation policies.

In recent years, philosophical examinations of automated vehicles have progressed far beyond initial concerns over the ethical decisions that pertain to programming in the event of a crash. In turn, this paper moves in that direction, focusing on the motivations behind efforts to implement driverless vehicles into urban settings. The author argues that the many perceived benefits of these technologies yield a received view of automated vehicles. This position holds that driverless vehicles can solve most if not all urban mobility issues. However, the problem with such an outlook is that it lends itself to transportation planning for automated vehicles, rather than using them as part of planning efforts that could serve urban mobility. Due to this condition, present efforts aimed at improving transportation systems should resist dogmatic thinking. Instead, they should focus on goals that keep topics such a human flourishing, sustainability, and transportation justice firmly in view.

Systems of urban transportation are largely shaped through planning practices. In transport economics, the benefits of infrastructure investments consist mainly of travel time savings calculated using monetary values of time. The economic interpretation of the value of travel time has significantly shaped our urban environment and transportation schemes. However, there is often an underlying assumption of transferability between time and money, which arguably does not sufficiently take into account the specific features of time. In this paper, we analyze the various properties of time as an economic resource using findings in behavioral economics and psychology. Due to limitations in the standard model, it is proposed that an alternative model value should be investigated in which time rather than money is the primary carrier of and the basic features of such a model are outlined. An improved understanding the nature of time as a source of utility puts us in a better position to determine what aspects of time matter. Additionally, the analysis can be applied to further develop modeling where value of time plays a significant role; such as new models for the planning of urban transport.

The concept of hospitality has seen a strong revival in the literature on migration and among pro-migrant activists. However, its meaning, its scope, and the nature of the obligations it imposes remain contested. Open-border advocates see hospitality as a moral principle of openness that should trump nationalist arguments for closure, while nationalists tap into the home analogy and compare the state to a household welcoming migrants as guests, whose stay should accordingly be temporary and marked by gratitude. Some consider hospitality a virtue that should translate into a personal responsibility to open one’s doors to others, while some politicise the concept to apply it to borders and state duties towards migrants. This paper unpacks the various literal and metaphorical meanings of the age-old concept of hospitality, and the shortcomings of its rhetorical uses. It then argues for a conception of hospitality as a principle of care towards displaced people. Hospitality alleviates ordinary obstacles that prevent a functional life in a new environment and allows for home-making practices. It is triggered by the vulnerability created by displacement, i.e., the material, emotional and political harms resulting from the loss of a home.

In this essay I explore how travel and border-crossing for abortion care constitutes a challenge to methodological nationalism, which serves to obscure such experiences from view. Drawing up field research conducted at two abortion clinics in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I also explore some implications of regarding pregnant people who travel for abortion care as a type of migrant, even (but not necessarily) if they are U.S. citizens and legal residents. Finally, I assess how this discursive shift can make important contributions to pandemic and migration ethics.

An increasingly wide array of moral arguments has coalesced in recent work on the question of how to confront the phenomenon of climate change driven displacement. Despite invoking a range of disparate moral principles, arguments addressing displacement across international borders seem to converge on a similar range of policy remedies: expansion of the 1951 Refugee Convention to include ecological refugees, expedited immigration (whether individual or collective), or, for entire political communities that have suffered displacement, even the ceding of sovereign territory. Curiously, this convergence is observable even across the distinction of interest for this paper: the distinction between arguments that proceed in the vein of reparations and arguments that reach their conclusion without invoking any reparations. Even though as a collection they appear to point in the same direction, I argue that non-reparative arguments that seek to address climate change driven displacement have several shortcomings, such that climate justice should be understood to include an indispensable role for reparations.

Many supporters of open borders argue that restrictions on immigration are unjust in part because they undermine equal opportunity. Borders prevent the globally least-advantaged from pursuing desirable opportunities abroad, cementing arbitrary facts about birth and citizenship. In this paper I advance an argument from equal opportunity to global freedom of movement. In addition to preventing people from pursuing desirable opportunities, borders also create a prone, segregated population that can be dominated and exploited. Restrictions on mobility do not just trap people in bad opportunity sets—they help create bad opportunities by isolating the negative externalities of production and foreign policy. Freedom of movement can play a vital role in spreading risks and burdens, incentivizing their mitigation. Using an analysis of feudalism, segregation, and the transnational economy, I illustrate the centrality of space and mobility, showing why freedom of movement is a necessary tool for preventing political and economic oppression.

Regardless of British colonial motives, many Indians migrated against caste/casteism across Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans. British Guiana marked the entry of Indian indentured laborers in the Caribbean in 1838. Paradoxically, thereafter religious and caste identities have risen among them. This article aims to unravel the intersectionality of religion, caste, and gender in the Caribbean Indian diaspora. Based on the recent field study in Guyana and Suriname as well as from the interdisciplinary sources, this essay examines: how brahminical deities, temples, and patriarchal institutions have re-invented caste-based asymmetrical sociality in the plantation colonies. Contrary to such re-establishment of brahminical inequalities, it argues, the castefree Indo-Guyanese religio-cultural practices foster inter-religious and inter-racial inclusive integration. And that this has led to self-transformation as well as in the making of a casteless society in the Caribbean.