Paper long abstract:

Today, the privately owned, manually driven car is challenged by rebound effects (lack of space and resources , air pollution) which arise from the success of the 'system of automobility' (J. Urry) itself, by advocates of alternative modes of transportation, and by technological, ecological and cultural developments. Alternative approaches of traffic focus on multi- and inter-modular mobility, combining public transportation, car sharing, bike use and mobile communication infrastructures into concepts and service products. By this means everyday mobility is becoming a repeatedly choice between more or less comfortable, expensive and ‚ethical' products.

By replacing the individually owned and used car with these forms of transportation the spatial arrangements of mobility shift. With customers' choice for or against a transportation device and service they decide to use an infrastructure as well as a spatial architecture. This shift is not only connected to different forms of the public and private (Sheller 2004) but represents and promotes a new type of space (Löw 2001) which spans to other dimensions like body, action, and subjectivity.

With this in mind I want to explore the spatial logics such commodities of service contain by taking a close look at specific concepts and commercial offers currently developed and brought into (German) market by municipal administrations, car manufacturers, or railroad companies. By analysing the (textually and visually) imagined use-cases as well as the exposed infrastructure I want to show empirically how a new economy of traffic is intertwined with an altered notion of space that reaches beyond traffic and mobility itself.