Inhabiting digital spaces: An informational right to the city for mobility justice

Abstract

Chinese

Space is often produced digitally before it is produced physically. This article investigates how the right to the city can be broadened to include the appropriation of digital spaces to produce ‘lived’ transportation spaces. Focussing on mobilisation against highway expansion in Dallas, Texas, we ask the following: (1) what are the mechanisms through which space is conceived, perceived, and lived through the lens of mobility justice; (2) how might claims for technical information challenge dominant transportation policies and projects; and (3) how might participants inhabit digital spaces? We conduct a qualitative analysis of transportation planning narratives, visualisations, and public comments in three documents: the Dallas City Center Master Assessment Process, Coalition for a New Dallas’ I-345/45 Framework Plan, and public survey data regarding proposed highway changes (n = 1241). Findings demonstrate how residents challenge transportation ‘needs’ as often determined in conceptual planning spaces. Further, technologies can be appropriated to produce differential spaces, which can alter the trajectory of highway projects. Challenging the legitimacy of institutionalised knowledge through the appropriation and production of digital spaces forms part of a larger claim to the right of the city.

Keywords

right to the city mobility epistemology conceptual spaces lived spaces informational right

Introduction

The right to the city (Lefebvre, 1996) provides a useful frame for analysing spatial struggles in the neoliberal city. The appropriation of physical spaces for collective use serves as dialectical openings for reimagining and enacting a more just city. However, space is often produced digitally before it is produced physically as lived infrastructure. Despite being hailed as tools for broadening participatory planning processes, data and visual technologies hold particular power in establishing legitimacy for policymakers and the public, and often reproduce capitalist urban development (Strüver et al., 2021). The use of conventional visualisation techniques such as mapping, as well as methods emerging out of a ‘new era in real-time data visualisations, models, path-finding algorithms and Pokémon’ (Madden, 2014: 479) further raises the question on whether the right to the city must now include an ‘informational right to the city’ (Shaw and Graham, 2017).

An ‘informational right’ is crucial in transportation planning where planners and engineers rely on specific technologies to conceptualise transportation spaces. In these processes, knowledge is ‘black boxed’, so residents and policymakers only have access to inputs and outcomes, raising questions regarding the relationship between epistemic and mobility justice. This article investigates how the right to the city can be broadened to include the appropriation of digital spaces to produce lived transportation spaces and ultimately, more just outcomes. Using Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, this paper addresses the following questions: (1) what are the mechanisms through which transportation spaces are conceived, perceived, and lived through the lens of epistemic and mobility justice; (2) how might claims for technical information challenge dominant transportation policies and projects; and (3) how might participants inhabit digital spaces enabled by technologies to produce lived spaces and more just outcomes?

The article utilises a case study approach focussed on mobilised opposition to highway expansion in Dallas, Texas. Metropolitan regions in Texas are well known for their sprawling cities and high car dependency. We conduct a qualitative analysis of transportation planning narratives, visualisations and public comments in three key documents: the Dallas City Center Master Assessment Process (CityMAP), a Coalition for a New Dallas’ (CND) I-345/45 Framework (Framework), and comments from 2019 public surveys facilitated by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) (n = 1241). The Dallas case study challenges assumptions about how transportation ‘needs’ are determined in conceptual planning spaces, demonstrates strategies for occupying digital spaces, and analyses whether attempts to halt the trajectory of highway projects enact new forms of citizenship and subsequently spatial justice. The Dallas case study includes a coalition of professionals, residents and other stakeholders who claim to challenge assumptions underpinning proposed highway projects through alternative methods and metrics; however, digital spatial appropriations may not necessarily lead to ‘lived’ just spaces. Our analysis suggests that future research requires a close look at the role of advocacy in mobilising alternative forms of knowledge through claims to both digital and physical spaces. By exploring how these claims are grounded in specific sites and places, and reconceptualising perceptions of residents’ needs, we argue that challenging the legitimacy of institutionalised knowledge production through digital spatial appropriations forms part of a larger claim to the right of the city.

Literature review

Right to the city and mobility justice

The longstanding interest in the relationship between transportation and equity emerges from the impacts of urban renewal, highway construction, and other discriminatory land use planning policies. For example, the construction of the Interstate Highway system in the 1960s was historically rooted in systemic racist policies utilising technical tools and methods claimed as value neutral – although the impacts on lived spaces were not. Increasingly, scholars are situating ‘transportation equity’ within a broader conceptualisation of ‘mobility justice’ (Sheller, 2008, 2018; Verlinghieri and Schwanen, 2020). In addition to critiques of transportation policies that (re)produce social and spatial inequalities along race, class, and gender lines (Bullard et al., 2004; Crane, 2007; Manderscheid, 2014; Sanchez, 2008), mobility justice scholars focus on transformative strategies such as community organising and activism that challenge state-dominated, auto-centric approaches to transportation planning (Lung-Amam et al., 2019). Mobility justice research also highlights the need for more public and collective engagements with institutional structures (Sheller, 2018) and meaningful inclusion and empowerment of structurally disadvantaged communities disproportionately impacted by transportation policy and decision-making processes (Cook and Butz, 2016; Linovski and Baker, 2023). Such research challenges the guise of neutrality in transportation equity research and policy by highlighting the ways in which gender, race, age, and other identity categories shape everyday mobility experiences (Hidayati et al., 2021). Mobility justice highlights social relations in defining distributional and procedural justice outcomes, the differential needs of urban residents, and expanding policy discourse to consider broader values in decision-making processes – that is, environmental, health, cultural and liveability concerns that may be better served through alternative mobility options (McAndrews and Marcus, 2015; Sheller, 2018).

Lefebvre’s right to the city has been applied to mobility justice through analyses of children’s right to mobility (Carroll et al., 2019), the justice implications of public transportation (Adli and Donovan, 2018; Hérick de Sá et al., 2019; Pierce and Lawhon, 2018; Verlinghieri and Venturini, 2018), and the rights of pedestrians and cyclists (Castañeda, 2020; Middleton, 2018; Scott, 2013). This literature emphasises how rights are claimed and articulated not only through explicit political participation and activism but also through the everyday occupations of urban space that prioritise social value and collective use. Right to the city aligns with Lefebvre’s (1991) theory of spatial production differentiating lived spaces from conceived and perceived spaces. Lefebvre refers to perceived space as commonsense understandings of how space should be used. For example, auto-centric spaces inherently support auto-centric uses. Lefebvre defines ‘conceptual space’ as the spaces of planners, technocrats, and engineers who produce spatial abstractions. For Lefebvre, conceptual space is purposely abstract to facilitate capitalist development. Abstractions like modelling, mapping, and other technological transformations of space flatten out and mask the diversity of users and values underpinning spatial production in everyday life. Through the conceptual production of space, urban places are parcelled, assembled, and packaged for exchange value. Auto-centric development is specifically theorised by Lefebvre to facilitate capitalist development with its singular focus on efficiency and by producing a very atomistic existence, undermining social connections between people and places (Lefebvre, 1991, 1996, 2003; Scott, 2013).

However, Lefebvre also argues that residents use spaces in ways unintended by planners and engineers. By appropriating auto-centric spaces and other transportation infrastructures for alternative uses such as children’s play, cyclovias, pedestrian activity, social movements, freeway protests, and other public purposes, users challenge perceived and conceived uses thereby creating openings for residents to reimagine infrastructural possibilities, which Lefebvre describes as ‘lived’ or ‘differential’ spaces (Martin, 2023). Lefebvre’s framework is useful for analysing articulations of mobility justice and to explore their implications for enacting just urban futures. By appropriating lived spaces, however, these spatial struggles are largely limited to appropriations of existing physical infrastructure. As Althorpe and Horak (2023) argue, struggles need to go beyond appropriation and focus on achieving normative goals such as democratic and cooperative control. Considering the increasingly dominant power of technologies for producing urban space, these interventions may be insufficient for producing transformative change.

This point is especially important considering Lefebvre’s argument that the right to the city not only includes equitable access to collective goods like transportation but also the right to decision-making processes that define the terms of that access. Attoh (2012, 2017) links the right to mobility to the right to the city by arguing that mobility is essential to public participation and political engagement. However, transportation planning’s reliance on quantitative analysis and technical knowledge presents barriers to authentic and meaningful participation leading to tokenistic participatory processes (Bickerstaff et al., 2002) which warrants further exploration for how mobility justice struggles must now include an ‘informational’ right to the city (Shaw and Graham, 2017).

Technological blackboxing, epistemic justice and informational rights to the city

Transportation planning practices continue to be dominated by instrumental rationality, scientific knowledge and technology wherein planners act as technical experts using a series of analytical steps and computer modelling to predict future transportation needs (Khisty and Arslan, 2005). Central to this process are transportation models forecasting implications of future travel demands on the capacities of existing transportation infrastructures (Ortúzar and Willumsen, 2011). Underlying assumptions and metrics used for scenarios and maps to illustrate future possibilities (Voulgaris, 2019) are black boxed through a series of quantitative analysis and computer programming (Goodspeed, 2016; Latour, 1988).

Technological blackboxing undermines epistemic justice, which relates to whether the production and integration of knowledge and information in decision-making is fair, inclusive and equitable. For example, residents and often policymakers do not know what is being measured, or the assumptions underpinning transportation models. Many models are built on assumed home-to-work commuting patterns that exclude the experiences of the structurally disadvantaged, who are also disproportionately non-white, public transit users, cyclists, and walkers (Barajas, 2021; Blumenberg, 2009; Lee et al., 2018; Purifoye, 2020; Rogalsky, 2010). Consequently, blackboxing of travel behaviour assumptions as individualised, rationalised, and aggregated leads to infrastructure that effectively isolates populations not only from transportation access but also from sites of public decision-making (Attoh, 2017: 197). Understanding technological blackboxing and what kinds of data are used in the visualisations of highway projects is especially critical for epistemic and mobility justice.

This is especially critical as the production of transportation infrastructure takes decades to plan before it materialises into projects. By the time citizens and stakeholders are presented with modelled scenarios, projections, and maps through typical deliberative processes, possible (and likely exclusionary) futures have already been predetermined (Timms, 2008). Therefore, epistemic and mobility justice requires a more transparent articulation as to which knowledge is dominant and a reconfiguration as to who is perceived as having expertise (Linovski and Baker, 2023; Nostikasari and Casey, 2020; Vigar, 2017). Centring and valuing lived experiences as ‘lived expertise’ (Lowe et al., 2023) wherein information on (im)mobility is included in the co-production of transportation knowledge is critical for understanding and addressing barriers. Mobility justice therefore requires the inclusion of diverse actors into decision-making (Jones and Lucas, 2012; Karner et al., 2020; Karner and Duckworth, 2019) not only to examine historical exclusion of needs and experiences, but also to integrate diverse lived expertise.

The inclusion of diverse lived expertise is a prerequisite to an ‘informational right to the city’ (Shaw and Graham, 2017), especially considering the rise of AI, machine learning, and the Internet of Things in planning and development, which further exacerbate technological blackboxing. Epistemic and mobility justice requires an understanding of these modes of technification in spatial practices (Gudmundsson, 2011; Kitchin and Dodge, 2007; Tironi, 2015) and how they produce both geographies of exclusions and sites for political action. While maps, spatial visualisations and other technologically mediated spaces have always been part of transportation planning – digital spaces are now much more pervasive and entangled with everyday lives, serving as sites for envisioning alternative futures (Serin and Irak, 2022). Challenging Lefebvrian assumptions that digital spaces are inherently conceptual requires a reframing of technologies and digital spaces as livelier participants in the production of lived space. To explore how digital lived spaces can be translated into decisions for action, we investigate how data and other digital visualisations of highway projects are produced by both state and non-state actors, and their potential for producing conceived, perceived and lived spaces. We argue that challenging the legitimacy of institutionalised knowledge production by occupying the conceived spaces of technical planners and engineers is a critical component in a larger claim to the right of the city.

Methodology

We utilise a case study approach to investigate specific spatial production mechanisms in infrastructure planning, in the context of contested highway construction/removal scenarios in Dallas, Texas where the need to repair I-345 led to public opposition and advocacy. We investigate how I-345 is produced as a conceptual space through state-centric modelling assumptions, indicators, processes, and visualisations of future possibilities. We explore how non-state actors engage in the appropriation and occupation of digital spaces to challenge conceptual spaces. We ask whether this occupation of digital spaces materialises into lived spaces, and does it claim a right to the city?

Data collection and coding process

We conduct a qualitative analysis of key transportation planning narratives, visualisations and public comments in these documents: (1) the CityMAP report developed by TxDOT in consultation with the city of Dallas analysing the feasibility and impacts of different highway scenarios (Texas Department of Transportation [TxDOT], 2016); (2) I-345/45 Framework plan (Toole Design Group, 2021) and associated online content commissioned by the CND which builds upon and challenges CityMAP assumptions, metrics and analyses; and (3) data from public surveys facilitated by TxDOT (n = 1241), obtained through a Freedom of Information Act record request (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Agencies, documents, and stakeholders.

Agency	Document	Key stakeholders mentioned in the document
Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT)	CityMAP, 2016	Elected officials and professional staff for the State of Texas, the City of Dallas and Dallas County. Representatives of agencies such as the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), advocacy groups, institutions, businesses, developers and private citizens.
Coalition for a New Dallas (CND)	I-345/45 Framework Plan, 2021 and CND Website	A political advocacy group including members from educational and philanthropic boards, political and community organisers, business and faith-based leaders, economic and housing experts, developers, architects, and other private citizens.
TxDOT	TxDOT public survey	Includes responses from residents, business owners, commuters, developers, employees, public officials, school officials, students, and others who participated in public meetings on 2, 3 and 5 December 2019 and via online surveys collected between 2 and 20 December 2019 (n = 1241).

As a state-sponsored planning document, we expect to find more references of traditional transportation planning tools and techniques in CityMAP. The I-345/I-35 Framework Plan was commissioned by the CND to ‘build off the work from TxDOT’s CityMAP plan and its extensive public outreach and input’ (Toole Design Group, 2021: iv). This document provides details on a range of community engagement processes with key stakeholders and residents including design workshops, individual meetings, a Reimagination Summit, and an open house charrette. Meanwhile, public comments in the TxDOT survey provide insight into how residents perceive, experience, and reimagine I-345.

From the TxDOT survey, we selected excerpts that specifically reference I-345/45 from both CityMAP and the I-345/I-35 Framework Plan. Out of 1241 total respondents, we removed those without comments and only coded comments directly related to I-345, narrowing responses to 954 individuals. We focussed on the following open-ended questions: (1) if improvements are made, what are your priorities for I-345; (2) do you have concerns with the existing configuration of I-345; and (3) what alternatives do you suggest for I-345? We identified stakeholders from the TxDOT public survey by filtering responses to the question: ‘I am interested because I am a …’ by the following self-identified options: local resident, business owner, commuter, developer, employee, public official, school official, student, and other. The ‘other’ category included respondents who selected ‘other’ as their answer, and blank responses. Individuals who duplicated responses for more than one question were coded only once.

The collaborative coding process started with an open, theoretical coding of the CityMAP document, followed by several iterative rounds of coding culminating in the development of a codebook in Nvivo. The CityMAP is appropriate for the first stage of coding as it includes a historical context for Dallas highway development, a discussion of stakeholders involved in the deliberation of I-345′s future, an overview of the transportation planning process, and proposed scenarios of repair, removal or modification. CityMAP also contains detailed analyses of scenario feasibility and impacts illustrated by maps, graphics and other visualisations. CityMAP also contains public comments captured through their public engagement.

The coding process produced the following categories: major concerns, project goals, planning process methods, key indicators, assumptions regarding the role of transportation infrastructure and transportation users, value and limitations of its processes and indicators. We applied these codes to each constituency: TXDOT, CND, and residents, as well as how they relate to perceived, conceived, and lived spaces. Assumptions regarding the use of existing transportation space were coded as ‘perceived’, referring to spaces used according to its perceived, planned purpose (i.e. references on roads for efficient traffic flow of automobiles). Tools, processes, and visualisations were coded as ‘conceptual’, referring to abstract visualisations of spaces and its dominant narratives (i.e. including maps, graphics, associated tools, and indicators). Comments and visualisations that highlight alternative futures for transportation spaces were coded as ‘lived’, referring to the reimagining of these spaces for alternative, collective possibilities (i.e. shared roadways with multiple modes of transportation, conversion to open public spaces). We applied the code book to the other documents and visualised highest frequency codes and constructed matrices to understand the relationships between codes, categories and themes in Nvivo.

Dallas context

Dallas is one of many cities that has been impacted by the development of large-scale auto-centric infrastructure. I-345 separated downtown from Deep Ellum, a historically black, commercial neighbourhood and is surrounded by census tracts with an above regional average proportion of low-income and/or non-white residents – also aligned with characteristics of Southern Dallas residents compared to North Dallas tracts. Given that the construction of I-345 in 1973 destroyed predominantly non-white neighbourhoods in Southern Dallas, environmental justice indicators demonstrate persistent patterns of spatial inequality highlighting long-standing impacts of highway development (NCTCOG, 2020).

With the end of I-345’s lifespan, there have been calls to reimagine its future in light of new understandings of cities that challenge auto-centric development. As government officials, a Political Action Committee, advocacy groups, and the public voiced contested opinions on the highway via data, commentary, public meetings and documents, there is an increasing disconnect between the values of users and the knowledge that is produced to communicate and measure the validity of ideas (Legacy, 2018; Linovski et al., 2018). Dallas is representative of cities struggling to find the tools and the procedures to express infrastructure and transportation planning in a way that is relevant and equitable.

In 2011, a group of stakeholders from Downtown Dallas Inc., created the Dallas 360 Plan and labelled I-345 as damaging to the community. As interest and awareness of state-led proposed scenarios for I-345 grew, media outlets such as D Magazine began amplifying the voices of those proposing alternative plans. Articles published in 2014 repeatedly express support for highway removal voiced by a diverse group of community leaders ranging from architecture critics to community leaders. Funding from the Real Estate Council of Dallas to perform a study determining the impacts of repairing or tearing down I-345 led to the development of TxDOT’s CityMAP report, and TxDOT public engagement meetings including an online survey in 2019. The Coalition for a New Dallas (CND) was formed to further support political candidates supporting highway removal. CND commissioned the I-345/I-35 Framework Plan (2021) to evaluate the implications of replacing I-345 with trench highways or surface boulevards.

Findings

Producing I-345 as conceived space

We define conceptual spaces as abstract visualisations including maps, graphics, associated tools and indicators, as well as dominant narratives accompanying these visualisations. In the case of transportation planning, tools often include transportation models to produce projections based on a set of quantifiable indicators such as Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT). To analyse I-345 as conceptual space, we focus on TxDOT’s CityMAP as a state-led document. The document begins with a recognition of competing interests and by envisioning a process aimed at integrating transportation with ‘shared neighbourhood goals’ and the ‘community’s vision’ to achieve ‘liveability’ and quality of life, in addition to mobility and economic development.

CityMAP offers the following scenarios for I-345: (1) modify but keep existing above-grade infrastructure; (2) reconstruct the highway below grade; or (3) entirely remove that section of highway. Each scenario includes assessments of adaptive reuse (preservation and demolition), connectivity (sidewalk infrastructure and intersections), users’ visual impact, economic development (land value, jobs, revenue, population), mobility (speed and congestion), parks and open space, project time and cost. CityMAP also presents dominant metrics as benchmarks like ‘cost of delay’ and VMT, measures of impact and a ‘stakeholder interest’ level for each dimension intended to capture ‘subjective experience’ (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Dallas CityMAP scenarios.

While CityMAP recognises the importance of incorporating lived experiences into the modelling process, in practice, these considerations are not embedded into the final analysis. CityMAP states challenges in ‘Measuring or qualifying stakeholder interest’ (Texas Department of Transportation, 2016: 67), recognising the positionality of stakeholders towards certain scenarios over others. Consequently, the following statement illustrates how the travel demand model continues to be a dominant tool in producing the transportation conceptual space:

The modeled values are calculated and aggregated from the model network in the downtown study area . . . analogous to what people experience as they travel in the real world, but the experiential travel of individuals is not always well represented by a computer model of annual average weekday traffic for an entire region, especially when projected years into the future. But, the travel demand model is objective and is the best way to compare a variety of network scenarios. (Texas Department of Transportation, 2016: 75, emphasis added)

Privileging the ‘objective’ transport model output and metrics comes at the cost of contradicting their own recognition of diverse interests, and ultimately excluding data of how people actually experience or wish to experience these spaces. This process of flattening out lived experiences is difficult to assess as scenario and performance factor visualisations are frequently punctuated with images of workshop participants discussing, drawing, and mapping. In so doing, the plan makes it seem as if deliberative processes engaging subjective interests are the most powerful drivers of the plan, rather than the technical modelling processes and processors behind the visualisations which are entrenched in power asymmetries (Bickerstaff and Walker, 2005).

Occupying digital space? Coalition for a New Dallas (re) produces I-345

CND challenges state-led proposed scenarios for I-345 and their advocacy efforts contribute to further discussions about the highway removal scenario in CityMAP. Although CND praised CityMAP as an improvement over original plans, the group commissioned the I-345/I-35 Framework Plan offering alternative data and analyses to further justify the highway’s removal, ultimately challenging the state-led planning processes. The Framework Plan argues that the first question when considering highway removal should be, ‘can the surrounding roadway highway network accommodate the additional traffic?’ It then situates the discussion around highway removal by measuring the capacity of the street network adjacent to the existing highway (see Figure 2) – challenging the assumption that I-345 is required to accommodate transportation needs and highlighting that existing streets are underutilised spaces. CND proposes alternative metrics to address the challenge of balancing regional goals (thru-traffic) with local goals (e.g. desire to utilise vacant lands, reknit the neighbourhoods, increase density). Thus, CND expands what kinds of knowledge could be included in spatial production processes and challenges what they refer to as four blind spots in traffic modelling: (1) a misunderstanding of the fundamental purpose of transportation; (2) induced demand; (3) reduced demand of density and mode choice; and (4) the impact of the internet on telecommuting thereby increasing demand for shorter trips for social and economic purposes (http://anewdallas.com/traffic.html). CND argues that blind spots lead to a narrow understanding of the function of transportation by focussing solely on increasing efficiency via increased vehicular speed rather than fostering social and economic exchange. CND then produces its own visualisations that emphasise social and economic connection at a human-based scale – all seemingly better at capturing desired lived experiences:

proper weight is not being given to considerations other than moving vehicular traffic. As we’ll demonstrate […], the 160,000 vehicles per day that use the corridor are there only because the highway is there. And both downtown and East Dallas suffer from it. Instead, we propose using metrics and priorities other than simply maintaining status quo. (Kennedy and Hancock, nd)

Figure 2.

Alternative metrics: comparing surrounding street network capacity with existing using number of vehicles/hour.

By producing alternative metrics, maps and other visualisations, CND arguably claims an informational right to the city through a challenge to dominant epistemic power. To determine whether appropriations of digital spares are ‘lived’ or ‘conceptual’, we analyse the CND’s Framework to determine its underpinning assumptions. Our coding analysis shows that compared to CityMAP, the CND Framework includes stronger narratives regarding equity. CND recognises the history of Deep Ellum, settled by freed slaves in the 1850s, and acting as a crucial part of Dallas’s expansion and prosperity. CND also discusses the historical erasure of a thriving Black community and commercial centre by the construction of the Interstate Highway System. This prominent narrative is woven throughout CND’s documents and includes discussions on environmental justice and racial equity, particularly for predominantly Black neighbourhoods in South Dallas. CND further notes how the existence of I-345 is perpetuating ‘displacement of Black culture’. CND claims the right thing to do is ‘to repair this broken bond’, and at the same time, emphasises the need for integrating land use and transportation policies, increasing public transit to downtown, and providing opportunities for community building.

However, unlike the street capacity metrics, equity is not measured or modelled. Indeed, the analysis of CND documents demonstrates that the dominant goal for highway removal is economic growth. We also find narrative patterns differentiating between presumed project beneficiaries with South Dallas residents benefitting from public transit improvements while Urban Core/North Dallas residents will presumably enjoy walking and biking infrastructure thereby naturalising, not repairing spatial divides. The CND appropriates the history and narratives regarding the role of highways in systemic racism to further justify highway removal – not to address but to potentially perpetuate inequities through a neoliberal agenda. Despite nods to equity, CND demonstrates that groups who challenge state-dominated interests still reflect elite interests such as business owners, professionals, and New Urbanists. While CND has the tools and resources to occupy digital space and produce alternatives, such appropriations may not lead to just outcomes. In this case, digital technologies are used to produce abstract, conceptual space geared for capitalist development, suggesting closer reactions between coalition and state-led interests (Legacy, 2022).

Indeed, analysis of TxDOT survey data demonstrates how some residents raise concerns regarding CND’s motivations for removing I-345, arguing that efforts are a land grab for developers rather than a strategy for reknitting neighbourhoods and improving quality of life. Some comments specifically link CND’s agenda with their use of digital technologies:

Maybe get rid of the developers who want to do away with I-345? They just see it as more land for them to develop to connect with downtown Dallas, and the citizens be damned. (Other respondent, TxDOT survey)

Work with what you have. People pushing this are extremely well funded: fancy website, drone videos, professional PR campaigns. That much money is proof that someone wants this done because they’ll make even more money. (Commuter, TxDOT survey)

I-345 as perceived space: ‘The car is king’

These challenges do not mean that all residents envision I-345 as ‘lived’ space as our analysis demonstrates that perceived space, or commonsense understandings of how residents understand and use urban space, remain quite strong. Existing infrastructures impact perceptions of use and potentially hinder alternative, ‘lived’ transportation practices (Massingue and Oviedo, 2021). Approximately 34% of comments indicate strong support for keeping the highway as is or with minimal improvements such as signage. As stakeholders describe,

No … it isn’t pretty, but it is practical and does a good job of getting vehicles where they want to go. (Business owner, TxDOT survey)

It is massive and cuts a swath through east downtown, but it is definitely practical in moving along a lot of traffic. (Commuter, TxDOT survey)

Yes, I love the idea of making Dallas a pedestrian, bike and public transit friendly place but we have a very long way to go ‘til that day. The unfortunate truth in Dallas is that the car is king. (Local resident, TxDOT survey)

Many of these comments illustrate the critical ability of infrastructure to establish its presence as a generational, reinforcing and normalising power. By regulating the movement of bodies across space, these comments highlight how infrastructure has shaped not only access to socio-economic opportunities but also people’s assumptions regarding the role and use of highway infrastructure. The reference to practicality and accommodation of existing needs signals how the production of space as the engine of economy and society includes the production of ‘inventories of what exists in space’ and ‘knowledge of space’ (Roy, 2011: 8).

Despite acceptance of existing highway infrastructure as necessary for meeting ‘needs’, our findings also highlight the negative quality of those experiences. Participants describe their interactions with I-345 as negative embodied experiences, reflecting concerns about resident safety, health and well-being:

Make it safe for pedestrians, then bicyclists, and lastly motor vehicles. Slow down the traffic. Congestion is not a bad thing if that means people get there without dying. (Other, TxDOT survey)

Make people the priority, not how many cars you can squeeze through this area. (Commuter, TxDOT survey)

Not surprisingly, public comments captured through CityMAP’s engagement sessions and the TxDOT survey show that participants’ top goals are to reduce traffic, increase accessibility to pedestrians and bikers, reconnect the grid, and increase green spaces. Thus, our analysis suggests clear contradictions between perceived and conceived space with residents drawing on lived experiences to prioritise people’s safety and experiences over auto-centric efficiency.

I-345 as lived: ‘The highway is the box we must learn to think outside of’

Beyond critiques, some respondents also connect their struggles navigating highway infrastructure as opportunities for envisioning alternative futures for I-345, thereby pointing to the production of lived spaces:

I remember when [I-345] was built so I remember the way it was before it was built. … We should have kept it that way and developed a stronger grid around it. Cities are nothing without their neighborhoods. We have sliced and diced ours in awful, greedy ways. We need to look at the future when there will be far more people and far fewer cars. The highway is the box we must learn to think outside of. (Local resident, TxDOT survey)

Approximately 65% of TxDOT survey responses offer some alternative solutions to issues they have either observed or experienced. Of those comments, 44% highly favour tearing down I-345, while 18% are unsure about the proposed scenarios but recognise the need for alternative solutions. Interestingly, some respondents specifically offer solutions for reimagining I-345 without exacerbating north/south inequities through design interventions and increasing public transit.

if we replaced 345 with the mixed-use development and parkway, we’d have one very congested zone that alienates anyone from the north or south. The central and most interesting area in Dallas would be exclusive to its immediate residents. If we’re really so concerned about stitching the neighborhoods, put some green areas underneath, improve sidewalks and lighting and for heaven’s sake, put a skatepark under that freeway because we still don’t have a good one. Dallas needs to change the way we get around and link neighborhoods but tearing down 345 will not help this. (Local resident, sic, TxDOT survey)

It’s critical that in the iteration of the study that looks at removing I-345, we identify what type of transit DART would put in place, and that we model use of bikes, scooters, that would be used to get people around in its place. (Local resident, TxDOT survey)

These comments illustrate how the development of ‘lived spaces’ may not necessarily translate into tearing down I-345. As discussed earlier, some residents express concerns linking the highway’s removal to ‘new urbanism’ and potential gentrification in an already ‘racially divided’ city. However, because the TxDOT surveys do not include race/ethnicity or income data, we cannot determine whether ‘lived spaces’ envisioned by respondents are representative of residents living in marginalised neighbourhoods. However, responses indicate support for a broader range of I-345 development futures that prioritise residents’ experiences such as accessibility, safety and quality of life over efficiency (TxDOT) and economic growth (CND).

… but Dallas stood their ground and won

Despite the contradictions evident in the Dallas case, CND’s efforts have been influential in challenging the validity of proposed highway expansions. CND contests assumptions about traffic flow, utilising data, tools and techniques to occupy state-led conceptual space. In so doing, they produce alternative possibilities for I-345, despite capitalist motives. TxDOT survey comments exhibit strong recognition of how the highway physically divides Dallas followed by desires for more walkable, connected, and multimodal spaces. While it is not possible to determine whether CND’s occupation of digital spaces influenced public opinion, the group is specifically cited as a source of knowledge.

Remove it. Although I travel it frequently, and it saves me time reaching my office from home, I would eagerly trade the time saved for a more walkable neighborhood. I’ve been studying information provided on anewdallas.com. Unlike when it was first built, there is no new economic development to be gained from rebuilding the highway. For the most part, when it was first built, much of the benefit went outside of Dallas city limits following the highways to the virgin land they unlocked. (Local resident, TxDOT survey)

CND’s efforts have also inspired other grassroots opposition to proposed highway expansion with the emergence of the ‘Stop TxDOT I-45’ coalition in Houston, suggesting that appropriating digital spaces can be used to claim an ‘informational right to the city’.

We were convinced – like so many others – that TxDOT had already won, and all we could do was submit comments and hope for the best. But we found each other. And we know now that freeways can be stopped. TxDOT proposed a similar project in Dallas, but Dallas stood their ground and won. (Stop TxDOT I-45, https://www.stoptxdoti45.com/)

Interestingly, the Houston coalition is also producing digital spaces by visualising how the expansion of I-45 would result in the seizure and demolishment of surrounding buildings – expanding the scope of the project beyond the physical infrastructural space of the highway by showing the potential displacement of residents, businesses, and community spaces. The inclusion of neighbourhood, homes, street, and property as infrastructural elements and displacement metrics similarly claims an informational right to the city, allowing citizens to assert what Shelton (2017) refers to as ‘infrastructural citizenship’ over contested transportation spaces.

Stop I-45 also connects stories and histories to infrastructural elements highlighting the diverse, lived uses associated with spaces threatened with displacement. In so doing, these digital spaces challenge epistemic authority by making visible the full costs of the project and proposing other metrics like displacement and cultural erasure. As Ortiz (2022) argues, storytelling processes – digital or otherwise – serve as collective spaces where lived expertise can be validated and included in the coproduction of knowledge, which is necessary for achieving mobility justice.

Conclusions and future directions

The Dallas case illustrates how producing digital spaces through alternative modelling techniques and metrics are key strategies for challenging state-led transportation conceptual spaces. Further, digital spaces produce new knowledge claims and strengthen mobilising efforts aligning with Lefebvre’s right to the city. However, these digital spaces are not necessarily ‘lived spaces’ that prioritise social and collective use over exchange value. Even though the CND explicitly links highway removal to addressing systemic racial inequalities and valuing lived experience, advocates use metrics to produce conceptual spaces with an overarching goal of economic growth. These findings support existing critiques of the right to the city in that appropriative spatial practices do not necessarily lead to spatial justice (Althorpe and Horak, 2023; Mayer, 2009; Purcell, 2002).

The Dallas case study illustrates the ongoing challenge to link new knowledge, data and values with institutional planning processes for achieving mobility justice. While the Dallas case appears to be more successful resulting in stalled highway development, I-345’s future remains undecided. Those supporting both highway removal and redirecting traffic to adjacent streets have challenged the state’s modelling assumptions about offered alternatives (Toole Design Group, 2021; TxDOT public survey). However, state officials continue to use computer modelled projections to make recommendations to policymakers (Goodman, 2022). Similarly, in Houston, TxDOT remains adamant on highway expansion for the prosperity of the region and the state.

Further exploration is needed on specific digital spatial strategies that effectively challenge state-led conceptual spaces. Stop I-45 points to the need for indicators that capture diverse uses, social and community values, and how such lived expertise can be made visible through a polyvocal digital storytelling approach. Deeper investigation into the Stop I-45 movement might highlight how alternative indicators and visualisations can be effectively integrated into decision-making and create openings for epistemic and mobility justice (Lowe et al., 2023).

One limitation of this study is the inability to determine demographic characteristics of the public participating in the planning process of CityMAP, the I-345 Framework, and TxDOT Survey. This study is also limited by juxtaposing the state-led CityMAP document as the main site for conceptual spaces with CND’s effort to occupy these spaces through the use of alternative metrics and visualisations. While we find overwhelming support in public comments for highway removal options that are aligned with CND’s interests, this study does not analyse whether CND’s strategies actually produce just outcomes given that I-345 decision-making is ongoing.

Further research should therefore explore the ways claims to mobility justice are enacted in specific sites and places through diverse assemblages of technologies, data, narratives, values and practices. Additionally, connecting mobility and epistemic justice is critical in understanding further impacts of large-scale infrastructure planning and projects (Khalaj et al., 2020). For example, how does mobility justice become intertwined with climate justice through localised practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and broaden resilient and sustainability frameworks? Similarly, renewed investments in infrastructure such as the passing of the 2021 Infrastructure for Investments and Jobs Act are often translated into highway expansions to accommodate future population growth. This research is especially important as AI, machine learning and immersive technologies, like virtual reality, are becoming more pervasive in planning processes potentially increasing digital divides. As such, ensuring epistemic justice in the coproduction of these digital spaces is inherent to claiming a right of the city and achieving mobility justice.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their helpful feedback.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Dian Nostikasari

Nicole Foster

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