Mobility futures workshop 17th March 2009

MODE: Mobility futures in a Digital Economy

We would like to invite you to attend an ‘imagination lab’ on ‘Mobility futures in a Digital Economy’. The lab is part of the EPSRC Digital Economy funded pilot study MODE (Mobilitiy futures in a digital economy), funded by the EPSRC Innovative Media for a Digital Economy cluster.  The aim of the workshop is to generate scenarios for future urban mobility systems and to investigate possible opportunities for further research.

Current debates, and especially Dennis and Urry’s thesis in ‘After the car’ (Polity, forthcoming), suggest that the current automobility system of privately-owned, fossil-fueled vehicles is outdated. Dennis and Urry observe the development of a digital nexus system. We will discuss and generate scenarios around emerging visions for the digital nexus system, exploring a diverse range of issues in terms of what citizens/stakeholders/organisations experience and value. These could include: efficiency, sustainability, cost, safety, comfort and privacy.

The workshop will take place on

Tuesday 17th March 2009, 10:30 – 17:30
Lancaster University
Institute for Advanced Studies, IAS, Meeting Room MR3

The workshop is run by the Centre for Mobilities Research, the mobilities.lab and ImaginationLancaster.

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/cemore/

http://imagination.lancaster.ac.uk/

and part of the IMDE EPSRC Digital Economy cluster

http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/research/digital-economy

The scenario generation process will be

• facilitated - with tools and methods from social science, art & design
• inspired – by Kingsley Dennis’ and John Urry’s development of Foresight scenarios in their book ‘After the car’ (particularly their ‘digital nexus’ scenario); technologies and observations of emergent practices in the digital economy; avantgarde art and design approaches
• ‘grounded’ - through ethnographic video and interview data with stakeholders, citizens in, and visitors to Manchester
• post-disciplinary – the lab is designed to not only bring together people with expertise in everyday practice, engineering, IT, art, design, social science, economics, public policy, urban planning,  and more; but also to create opportunity, incentives, ‘anchors’ and avenues for ‘deep’ collaboration, connections, and creativity

There is only space for 25 participants. We would highly value IMDE cluster participants’ expertise and would be delighted if you could attend. Please could you let us know by 23 February, by sending an email to

matthews_gareth@hotmail.co.uk

with best wishes

the MODE research team

Monika Buscher, Daniela Sangiorgi, Julien McHardy, Gareth Matthews, Martin Pedersen, James Tomasson