Publicness of Public Transport: Socio-Material Production of Shared Mobility in Stockholm

This project is about continuity and change in the publicness of public transport since the mid-19th century up to the present day.

It aims to inform today’s policy making by qualifying taken for granted ideas about what constitutes public transport.

How do publics form in and around public transport, and how does spatial and material aspects of public transport feature in processes of public formation?

These questions are addressed through historical case studies in Stockholm related to (1) how publics are forged around contestations over new public transport routes or the abandonment of existing ones, and (2) the materially patterned interaction and production of public space on board public transport.

The project combines archive and document studies to capture stakeholder views and actions with a host of sources particularly apt to capture resident and user perceptions and interactions on board vehicles and around contested infrastructure plans and decision.

In the synthesis, the findings from the case studies of how publics are made through everyday practice are situated in existing scholarship on governance of public transport in Stockholm.

This allows for an understanding of how macro developments and in situ interactions mould into distinctive forms of publicness of public transport.

Next to academic journal articles, the project results are communicated in a policy-oriented paper, through public events at ArkDes, and Stockholm Transport Museum’s pedagogical programs.