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Public transportation and the idiocy of urban life

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  • Kafui Attoh

Abstract

This paper asserts urban transportation’s centrality to debates on ‘the public,’ the ‘right to the city’ and political mobilisation in cities. The paper begins with a re-reading of Marx and Engels’ oft-cited line in the Communist Manifesto on the ‘idiocy of rural life’. Drawing on the work of Hal Draper, who has argued that Marx and Engels used the term ‘idiocy’ as a synonym for ‘privatised isolation’, this paper pulls from two empirical studies on urban transportation to define what I conversely call ‘the idiocy of urban life’. The first case study looks at two transportation programs in Syracuse New York aimed at helping to get welfare recipients to work. The paper argues that such programs not only marked a sharp departure from the public alternative, but that they were programs that enforced the very idiocy and privatised isolation that so worried Marx and Engels. The second case study looks at the East Bay’s transportation justice movement. The paper argues that one of the organising principles of this movement is a rejection of ‘the idiocy of urban life’. The paper concludes by linking debates over ‘the public’, and struggles against urban idiocy to ongoing debates around the right to the city.

Suggested Citation

  • Kafui Attoh, 2017. "Public transportation and the idiocy of urban life," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(1), pages 196-213, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:1:p:196-213
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098015622759
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Peter Marcuse, 2009. "From critical urban theory to the right to the city," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2-3), pages 185-197, June.
    2. Stefano Moroni & Francesco Chiodelli, 2014. "Public Spaces, Private Spaces, and the Right to the City," International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR), IGI Global, vol. 3(1), pages 51-65, January.
    3. Mark Purcell, 2003. "Citizenship and the right to the global city: reimagining the capitalist world order," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 564-590, September.
    4. Margit Mayer, 2009. "The 'Right to the City’ in the context of shifting mottos of urban social movements," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2-3), pages 362-374, June.
    5. Jess Walsh, 2000. "Organizing the Scale of Labor Regulation in the United States: Service-Sector Activism in the City," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 32(9), pages 1593-1610, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Vanoutrive, Thomas & Cooper, Erin, 2019. "How just is transportation justice theory? The issues of paternalism and production," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 112-119.

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