Urban transport as a social construct: Theory,evidence,and analytical threads

Abstract

Chinese

This special issue emerges from the Urban Studies journal’s Critical and Conceptual Advances in Urban Studies initiative and features the development and application of a transport-as-a-social-construct framework. The collection of articles demonstrates the framework’s conceptual breadth as well as its empirical relevance across diverse geographic contexts and transport modes. We begin by outlining three conceptual articles that establish key theoretical foundations for a social constructivist understanding of urban transport, highlighting how social, cultural, and political forces both shape and are shaped by urban transport systems. We then introduce nine empirical articles organized around four interrelated thematic areas: the social construction of transport systems, the social benefits and burdens of transport, social interaction and cultural production in transport spaces, and the social and cultural determinants and experiences of travel. Beyond these thematic areas, we identify three overarching and recurring analytical threads: contestation and conflict, contingency and interdependency, and people and performativity. Our analysis highlights the generative potential of contestation and conflict in opening alternative futures for urban mobility, the context-sensitivity of transport meanings and effects, and the importance of attending to situated actors and embodied experiences in advancing a social constructivist perspective. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the breadth of theoretical and empirical contributions and asserts their significance to both scholarship and intervention.

Keywords

critical theory critical transport studies mobilities social construction urban life urban transport

Introduction

This special issue advances a conceptual shift in urban transport scholarship through the development and application of a transport-as-a-social-construct framework. While transport scholars have traditionally emphasized the technical and spatial networks and flows that prioritize the efficient movement of people and goods, we argue that this orientation obscures the social processes through which transport is experienced, governed, and planned. Recent scholarship in transport studies has begun to explore the social construction of transport systems, behaviors, and experiences by analyzing the ways in which transport systems are shaped by and, in turn, shape social structures, cultural norms, economic conditions, and the power dynamics of the societies in which they are embedded. This introductory editorial highlights how the authors included in this issue further these discussions.

Contributors to this special issue of Urban Studies responded to the journal’s multi-year Call for Papers initiative, Critical and Conceptual Advances in Urban Studies. Designed to foster theoretically ambitious and conceptually generative scholarship, our call, Urban Transport as a Social Construct, catalyzes new theoretical and empirical work, foregrounding transport systems as social constructs that are produced through and actively reproduce power relations. In total, we received 69 abstracts, roughly half of which progressed to full-article submissions.

This special issue features 12 of the accepted articles, including three conceptual articles and nine empirical articles, all of which contribute to a social constructivist understanding of urban transport. The submissions are diverse across numerous dimensions. The authors apply varied methodological approaches, drawing on both quantitative and qualitative approaches and, therefore, multiple data types. The studies cover various modes of urban transport, including urban and regional railways, tolled expressways, bus and bus rapid transit, informal transport, and pedestrian facilities and routes. The articles also display substantial international breadth across both the global north and global south, with case studies in the U.S. (Heimel, 2026; Palm and Thomas, 2026), South America (Araujo et al., 2026; Verloo and Galeano Salgado, 2026; Viana Cerqueira et al., 2026), Africa (Chen and Liu, 2026), and Asia (Chan et al., 2026; Kee and Turner, 2026; Liu, 2026). Finally, the authors are situated in diverse intellectual traditions, including urban and regional planning, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, geography, criminology, and cultural studies, exposing the inherent interdisciplinarity of transport scholarship.

The remainder of this editorial introduces each of the articles. We begin by outlining three conceptual articles that establish key theoretical foundations for a social constructivist understanding of urban transport. We then introduce nine empirical articles organized around four interrelated thematic areas, as articulated in Fan et al. (2026): the social construction of transport systems; the social benefits and burdens of transport; social interaction and cultural production in transport spaces; and the social and cultural determinants and experiences of travel. Through a close reading of the contributions, we identify three overarching analytical threads that recur across the contributions regardless of context or method: contestation and conflict, contingency and interdependency, and people and performativity. We conclude by highlighting shared concerns that characterize the articles in this issue and that are important elements of the emerging body of scholarship on the social dimensions of urban transport.

Conceptual contributions to urban transport as a social construct

The organization of this special issue begins with three conceptual articles that advance a transport-as-a-social-construct framework (Fan et al., 2026; Schwanen et al., 2026; Sweet, 2026). Fan et al. (2026) trace the theoretical lineage of the scholarship on the social dimensions of transport from early foundational work on accessibility as a social indicator (Wachs and Kumagai, 1973) to the more recent contributions of mobilities scholars (Cresswell, 2010; Hannam et al., 2006; Sheller and Urry, 2006) for whom power relations such as colonialism and racism are central to understanding movement as well as the systems that facilitate it (see also Wood, 2023, 2025; Wood et al., 2020). Their review offers an integrative transport-as-a-social-construct framework grounded in social constructivist thinking and critical theoretical traditions. It maps the intellectual terrain for conceptualizing urban transport as a socially constructed phenomenon across individual, collective, and systemic scales. Individual-level studies link transport to quality-of-life outcomes such as opportunity and exclusion; collective-level analyses treat transport as a site of social meaning and contestation; and systemic-level investigations examine the co-evolution of transport systems within broader social structures and power relations.

Extending from both collective and systemic approaches, Schwanen et al. (2026) observe how urban transport has emerged as a key site of contestation over freedoms. By critically examining competing conceptions of freedom, they highlight the importance of shifting from an emphasis on individualized freedom toward collective, dynamic, and non-sovereign forms of world making in order to support transport systems that are more environmentally sustainable, socially just, and conducive to collective well-being on a climate-constrained planet. Their article illustrates how contestation over transport-related concepts can serve as a productive analytical entry point for generating deeper insights into the normative assumptions, political stakes, and future directions of urban transport systems.

Sweet (2026) then importantly links theory to practice, illustrating how orienting transport planning practice around Sen’s (1995) capabilities approach could address enduring contradictions in transport planning. These contradictions arise from practical questions that transport planners routinely face, such as whether planning should prioritize opportunities or outcomes, whether travel should be understood as a good or a burden, and whether planning ought to be grounded in universal principles or context-sensitive considerations. Sweet argues that the capabilities approach, particularly its focus on freedom of access, offers a way to navigate these tensions without resolving them into false binaries.

These articles make distinct yet complementary contributions. Read in relation to one another, they interrogate the foundational assumptions that shape contemporary transport scholarship. They also demonstrate that attention to conceptual frameworks, contested ideals, and planning dilemmas enables a deeper understanding of transport as a socially embedded domain where social relations, power dynamics, and normative visions of urban futures are actively negotiated.

Empirical contributions to urban transport as a social construct

Fan et al. (2026) identify four thematic areas of scholarship that merit sustained scholarly attention and provide the organizing framework for the nine empirical articles in this special issue. The four thematic areas are:

Social construction of transport systems: Examining how biases, power structures, public involvement, and systemic inequalities shape the design and operation of transport systems, including the roles of colonialism, racism, and knowledge production.

Social benefits and burdens of transport: Investigating how transport costs, environmental impacts, and disparities disproportionately affect marginalized communities, while also assessing transport’s links to employment, health, education, and quality of life.

Social interaction and cultural production in transport spaces: Exploring transport spaces as arenas of social interaction, segregation, and cultural expression where everyday norms and creative practices unfold.

Social and cultural determinants and experiences of travel: Understanding how cultural values, social roles, and symbolic meanings shape travel behavior, preferences, and policies across diverse groups and contexts.

While all the empirical articles are theoretically informed and empirically rigorous in advancing understandings of urban transport as a social construct, they do so in different ways. The remainder of this section draws attention to each of the article’s approaches and contributions.

Social construction of transport systems

The three articles in this category consider how biases, power structures, public involvement, and systemic inequalities shape the design and operation of transport systems, including the roles of colonialism, racism, and knowledge production. Verloo and Galeano Salgado (2026), Chen and Liu (2026), and Liu (2026) address these dynamics by analyzing transport politics, power relations, and decision-making processes across diverse institutional and geopolitical contexts.

Beginning at the scale of urban planning and participatory governance, Verloo and Galeano Salgado (2026) present an ethnographic analysis of the critical and non-critical moments in the Seventh Avenue corridor improvement project in Bogotá, Colombia. Their study illustrates how street redesign becomes a flashpoint for political conflict among municipal authorities, political parties, civil servants, and citizen groups. Their analysis highlights unplanned outcomes of excluding citizens’ political actions, the importance of both critical and non-critical moments in contested planning, and the need to understand participation as an ongoing management of relational, substantive, and conflicting dynamics.

While Verloo and Galeano Salgado (2026) focus on local participatory politics, Chen and Liu (2026) shift attention to transnational infrastructure development and its power asymmetries. In their study of the frictions in the construction of the Nairobi Expressway, Chen and Liu (2026) trace how the introduction of a foreign-financed, toll-based expressway generated sustained tensions between Chinese state-owned enterprises, Kenyan authorities, and informal matatu transit (minibus) operators. These conflicts involve protests, strikes, and everyday acts of resistance, revealing how mobility is socially constructed through power struggles.

Extending this analysis from contemporary conflict to long-term institutional effects, Liu (2026) examines the politics of private railways in Tokyo through a historical institutionalism framework. This approach demonstrates how historically reinforced arrangements enable private operators to profit from non-transport-related activities, normalize land speculation, and limit services to less populated areas thereby privileging financing over subsidy. For Liu (2026), such arrangements are now entrenched. By foregrounding path dependence and institutional reinforcement, the article shows how historical institutionalism can deepen critical transport research and inform more reflective transport theory and policymaking.

These three articles demonstrate that transport systems are not neutral technical arrangements but products of entrenched power relations, contested participation, and historically reinforced institutions that shape whose mobility is enabled and whose is constrained.

Social benefits and burdens of transport

The next two articles, Kee and Turner (2026) and Palm and Thomas (2026), address the social benefits and burdens of transport, analyzing how large-scale infrastructure projects and congestion pricing policies unevenly redistribute costs, risks, and opportunities. Drawing from the experience of individuals affected by or involved in these efforts, these authors highlight the complexity of responses and their implications for both theory and intervention.

Focusing on the everyday consequences of infrastructure delivery, Kee and Turner (2026) document how Hanoi’s first urban railway lines disrupted daily routines and livelihoods, producing both benefits and burdens for residents living along the corridors. By categorizing residents as “lucky,” “unlucky,” and “least lucky,” they illustrate how despite promises of improved efficiency, modernity, and connectivity, the projects ultimately reinforced existing inequalities and produced what residents describe as “infrastructural disappointment.”

Shifting from material impacts to discursive contestation, Palm and Thomas (2026) analyze public comments to the New York City’s Central Business District Tolling Program, exposing conflicts embedded in equity discourses themselves. Their analysis shows that both supporters and opponents mobilize competing justice frameworks to describe tolling as either a fair redistribution of costs or an undue burden on already disadvantaged groups. They assert that equity is best understood as a contested concept rather than a shared normative principle.

These two articles reveal how transport justice is shaped not only by how costs and benefits are distributed but also by how lived experiences and competing equity claims are produced, interpreted, and contested through transport policy and practice.

Social interaction and cultural production in transport spaces

The next two articles by Viana Cerqueira et al. (2026) and Heimel (2026) contribute to the literature on social interaction and cultural production in transport spaces by treating infrastructure and everyday mobility practices as sites of social meaning, encounter, and collective life. Both articles document processes and spaces of transport place making that are often overlooked in conventional transport research.

Focusing on how everyday movement produces social spatiality, Viana Cerqueira et al. (2026) analyze urban centralities in Bogotá and Belo Horizonte as socially constructed through mobility practices rather than solely through density or agglomeration. Using traditional travel survey data and two indices to identify both the spatial clustering of trip making and the social groups and transport modes associated with them, they show that while obligatory travel remains concentrated in traditional urban centers, diverse mobility practices generate distinct “local centralities” in outlying neighborhoods. These findings challenge traditional center–periphery frameworks and highlight how mobility practices actively construct urban centralities beyond planned cores.

Shifting from mobility patterns to intentional cultural intervention, Heimel (2026) examines the Arts in Transit Project, a community-involved effort to select public artwork for nine new rail stations in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1980s. Her analysis reveals how community-involved and conflict-laden processes of artwork selection and installation at rail transit stations open up the possibility of “doing infrastructure otherwise.” The intentional practices of inclusion and negotiation in Boston’s Art in Transit Project offer an alternative form of infrastructure visibility that reinforces the subjecthood and agency of residents, artists, and transit users, making transit infrastructure a site of solidarity and collective urban life.

These studies reveal how transport spaces are not merely functional corridors but socially and culturally produced environments where mobility and everyday interactions shape urban life.

Social and cultural determinants and experiences of travel

Finally, Chan et al. (2026) and Araujo et al. (2026) focus on the social and cultural determinants and experiences of travel, examining how sex, ability, identity, and social norms shape embodied mobility experiences. The studies contribute to the larger body of literature on travel behavior, identifying new factors that importantly shape the travel experience of two often vulnerable population groups—travelers with non-visible disabilities and women.

Building on this theme, Chan et al. (2026) explore how walking route choices are shaped by self-identity, physical impairment, and feelings of guilt among travelers. They introduce the concept of “anticipatory guilt,” showing how some travelers avoid infrastructure intended for people with disabilities, thereby revealing a previously under-examined social and psychological determinant of route selection.

Complementing this individual-level perspective, Araujo et al. (2026) examine gender-based crimes in public spaces and transport settings. Different from other studies, they find that exposure to sexually based violence is most pervasive during daylight hours and in busy areas. Their analysis draws attention to the varied role of time and location in influencing the transport experience—in this case, women’s feelings and experience of safety. Like Chan et al. (2026), this study highlights how travel experiences are deeply embodied and socially situated, shaped by both personal identity and broader social norms.

Together, the nine empirical articles reveal the central role of social relations, power structures, cultural meanings, and embodied experiences in the design, development, and impacts of transport systems. By organizing diverse empirical contributions around the four thematic areas, this special issue demonstrates the analytical value of a social constructivist framework for advancing more critical, context-specific, and justice-oriented understandings of urban transport.

Overarching analytical threads

Beyond contributing to the four thematic areas above, the articles in this special issue bring forward a set of cross-cutting analytical threads that recur across the contributions regardless of their primary topical focus or geographic setting. These threads surface repeatedly in both conceptual and empirical articles, spanning studies conducted in the global north and global south and across a wide range of transport modes and systems. Their recurrence underscores shared analytical concerns for advancing a social constructivist understanding of urban transport.

Conflict and contestation

Contestation and conflict recur as constitutive features of how urban transport systems are produced, governed, and experienced. Both the conceptual and empirical articles reveal how transport systems, meanings, and effects emerge through specific historical, geographic, and social contexts; how relationships and interdependencies lie at the core of mobility practices and experiences; and how multiple, often competing interpretations of urban transport coexist within and across cities.

The three conceptual articles are particularly attuned to concerns about conflict and contestation: Schwanen et al. (2026) focus on contested conceptions of freedom and their implications for reimagining urban transport futures; while Sweet (2026) centers on the practical dilemmas and contradictions faced by transport planners in everyday decision making; and Fan et al. (2026) draw extensively from critical theoretical traditions that highlight structural conflicts in the design, governance, and everyday experience of urban transport systems.

The empirical articles illustrate how urban transport generates conflict not only at the level of policy and planning but also in everyday life. Several of the articles describe the conflicts that individuals experience navigating hostile transport environments. These include neighborhood residents who bear many of the negative externalities of new transport infrastructure investments (Kee and Turner, 2026) and vulnerable transport users for whom the transport system fails to meet their travel needs (Araujo et al., 2026; Chan et al., 2026).

Many of the empirical articles demonstrate the constructive and productive nature of contestation, contradiction, and conflict. For example, Verloo and Galeano Salgado (2026), Chen and Liu (2026), Liu (2026), Palm and Thomas (2026), and Viana Cerqueira et al. (2026) each chronicle the political conflicts central to the planning and development of major infrastructure projects in diverse geographies. Verloo and Galeano Salgado (2026) uncover how street redesign becomes a flashpoint for political conflict among municipal authorities, political parties, civil servants, and citizen groups in Bogotá, Columbia; Chen and Liu (2026) trace the tensions between Chinese state-owned enterprises, Kenyan authorities, and informal matatu transit operators in the introduction of a foreign-financed, toll-based expressway in Nairobi, Kenya; Liu (2026) sees conflict within longer temporal horizons, illustrating how enduring power asymmetries between public authorities and private railway operators have shaped one of the world’s highest-ridership passenger rail systems in Tokyo, Japan; Palm and Thomas (2026) uncover the conflicts in instituting road tolls in mid-town Manhattan in New York City, United States; and Viana Cerqueira et al. (2026) highlight the contestation inherent to how urban space is produced and used in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and Bogotá, Columbia. They reveal, however, that such struggles do not inherently impede transport planning or development but rather open up alternative futures for urban mobility.

Heimel (2026) goes a step further by showing how community-involved and conflict-laden processes of artwork selection and installation at rail stations opened up the possibility of “doing infrastructure otherwise,” which constructively made transit infrastructure a site of solidarity and collective urban life. These articles illustrate that conflict and contestation are not peripheral but rather central and generative to how urban transport systems are debated and developed.

Contingency and interdependency

Both conceptual and empirical contributions in this special issue demonstrate that understanding urban transport as a social construct requires close attention to contingency and interdependency. The meanings and effects of transport systems emerge through historically- and geographically- specific conditions; they are constituted through relational interdependencies among actors, institutions, and material arrangements; and they sustain multiple, often competing, interpretations within and across cities.

Within the conceptual articles, themes of contingency and interdependency surface through their analysis of traditional approaches to transport and mobility. Schwanen et al. (2026) argue that mobility freedom is historically and geographically contingent, emphasizing the plurality and duality of freedom conceptions—such as negative versus positive freedom, individual versus collective freedom, freedom framed before or since the climate emergency, and freedom understood as given versus generated. Sweet (2026) similarly underscores the historical contingency of transport planning motivations, showing how planning priorities have shifted over time from their roots in late 19th-century town planning through an early 20th-century focus on accommodating mass automobility to subsequent shifts toward travel management in the 1960s and 1970s, multimodality in the 1980s to the 2000s, and since then an increasing emphasis on accessibility planning. Fan et al. (2026) outline the diverse strands of scholarship that examine the social dimensions of urban transport, showing how a social constructivist perspective emerges from and responds to a range of contingent historical and contemporary conditions including rapid urbanization, climate change, persistent disenfranchisement and exclusion, rapidly aging societies, and widespread disruptions such as the rise of authoritarian regimes and major technological shifts.

Empirical articles in this special issue further advance these theoretical reflections. Chen and Liu (2026) explicitly draw on urban assemblage theory to conceptualize transport infrastructure as contingent and relational, continuously produced through interactions among material, institutional, technological, and social elements. In much the same way, Verloo and Galeano Salgado (2026) apply critical moments theory and method to reconstruct stakeholder groups’ narratives and identify turning points activated by stakeholder interactions in space and time. Several contributions adopt methodological approaches that emphasize the historical development, timing, and sequencing of events to illuminate how transport systems and practices become path dependent over time. Heimel (2026) draws on archival and historical materials. Chen and Liu (2026) reconstruct a sequence of key periods to examine successive policy decisions, governance arrangements, and infrastructure investments surrounding the Nairobi Expressway. Liu (2026) employs a historical-institutionalist lens to trace three historical stages of power asymmetry (i.e. contestation, asymmetry, and hegemony) in the politics of private railways in Tokyo.

Other contributions further deepen the analytical concern with contingency by examining the situational character of infrastructure itself (Araujo et al., 2026; Chan et al., 2026; Chen and Liu, 2026; Kee and Turner, 2026; Palm and Thomas, 2026). These articles conceptualize transport disadvantage as an outcome contingent on design choices, governance arrangements, and everyday use. They document how rail projects (Liu, 2026), expressways (Chen and Liu, 2026), congestion pricing regimes (Palm and Thomas, 2026), bus systems (Verloo and Galeano Salgado, 2026), escalator and staircase access (Chan et al., 2026), and even urban centrality (Viana Cerqueira et al., 2026) operate as forms of transport disadvantage and/or infrastructural violence by redistributing harm, risk, and exclusion onto marginalized populations. At the same time, Heimel (2026) depicts how infrastructure—in this case rail stations—can be designed to produce desirable social effects. Similarly, Chen and Liu (2026) show how Nairobi’s informal matatu system may partially counter infrastructural neglect by enabling access, flexibility, and livelihood opportunities where formal systems fall short. These contributions show that transport infrastructure effects are plural, uneven, and context dependent, shaped by local political economies, social relations, and lived mobility practices.

People and performativity

A third cross-cutting analytical concern running across the articles in this special issue is a sustained focus on people and performativity. Across both theoretical and empirical contributions, the articles highlight the diverse actors whose everyday lives are shaped by and who shape urban transport systems. The people-oriented approach is evident across the conceptual articles. Fan et al. (2026) note that early scholarship on the social dimensions of transport explored the transport disadvantages experienced by underserved and marginalized communities, with a particular attention to women, low-wage workers, older adults, children, and immigrants. This people-centered orientation continues to shape contemporary research and is evident across the four thematic areas articulated in their article. Schwanen et al. (2026) offer a critical examination of the concept of freedom, an inherently humanistic concept tied to human dignity, self-actualization, and the conditions under which people are able to live meaningful and flourishing lives. Sweet (2026) likewise grounds his study in Sen’s capabilities approach, which centers on what people are substantively able to do and to be, reinforcing a human-centered perspective. Sweet (2026) further engages with the contradictions faced by transport practitioners—a key group of actors in urban transport.

The empirical articles are especially focused on people and performativity—how women experience fear and risk while moving through the city (Araujo et al., 2026); how pedestrians—both abled and disabled—encounter barriers, exclusions, and moments of care in everyday travel (Chan et al., 2026); how informal transport operators and drivers negotiate precarity, regulation, and livelihood (Chen and Liu, 2026); and how residents living along major corridors experience infrastructure not as abstract investment but as disruption, displacement, or opportunity (Kee and Turner, 2026). Other contributions trace how institutional actors—citizen groups, planners, policymakers, and infrastructure developers—translate principles such as accessibility, efficiency, and equity into ideas and practices that materially shape whose mobility is enabled or constrained, included or excluded, and whose needs and claims are recognized or marginalized (Chen and Liu, 2026; Heimel, 2026; Liu, 2026; Palm and Thomas, 2026; Verloo and Galeano Salgado, 2026; Viana Cerqueira et al., 2026). The people-centered analytical thread highlights the importance of researching situated actors and embodied experiences as part of a social constructivist understanding of urban transport.

Concluding remarks

The strong response to this call for papers and the breadth of theoretical and empirical approaches represented in the contributions underscore the unifying and integrative potential of the transport-as-a-social-construct framework (Fan et al., 2026). The articles reveal that this framing provides a productive foundation for connecting diverse strands of urban transport scholarship. While each article advances its own conceptual or empirical agenda, collectively they contribute to a growing body of scholarship on critical transport studies.

In concluding, we reflect on the many impressive contributions in the special issue. First, the contributions engage a wide range of theoretical perspectives that span individual experiences, collective mobilities, and systemic analyses. This multi-scalar engagement highlights how transport is simultaneously shaped by personal needs and capacities, shared practices and norms, as well as broader economic, institutional, and political arrangements. Rather than privileging any single level of analysis, as a compilation the articles demonstrate the importance of examining how perspectives intersect and co-constitute one another.

Second, while the articles are grounded in specific local contexts, they collectively reflect shared global struggles. The cases unfold in a range of cities and regions and yet are shaped by common structural forces, circulating planning ideas, and interconnected political-economic dynamics. This combination of local specificity and global resonances illustrates how urban transport is embedded within a web of transnational influences and interdependencies even while they are lived, contested, and negotiated in place-specific ways.

Third, as we note in our introduction, the articles in this special issue include a wide range of methodologies and data sources. In the study of urban transport, as in the study of most social phenomena, methodological pluralism is not only appropriate but essential. Building upon the transport-as-a-social-construct framework, the study of urban transport requires diverse analytical methods, including those that move beyond conventional technical or econometric traditions. For example, Chan et al. (2026) complement their quantitative analysis with qualitative data drawn from open-ended survey responses and offer a careful reflection on the limitations of their methodological approach. Across the articles in this special issue, authors also include the use of methods that are both participatory—engage a range of stakeholders and community groups—and reflexive—require investigators to interrogate their own assumptions and biases. Researchers, like the people they study, are themselves embedded in the systems that they study—as drivers, pedestrians, transit users, planners, or residents. This embeddedness calls for careful attention to how knowledge is produced, including how research instruments, sampling strategies, and moments of observation shape what becomes visible, whose experiences are captured, and how researchers interpret their findings. Kee and Turner (2026) demonstrate this reflexive sensibility in reflecting on their positionalities as global north researchers working in Hanoi; they note how their identities, prior experiences, and relationships with the field shaped research encounters and interpretations. Such reflexivity enables researchers to critically examine how their own positionalities and assumptions shape research questions, interpretations, and findings. In a field where mobility is unavoidably and deeply lived, reflexivity is not merely an ethical commitment but an analytical necessity.

In conclusion, this special issue not only consolidates existing strands of scholarship but also charts directions for future research that are attuned to the social stakes of mobility in an increasingly interconnected and unequal urban world. Collectively, the contributions highlight the generative potential of contestation and conflict in shaping urban transport systems, the context-sensitivity of transport meanings and effects, and the importance of examining situated actors and embodied experiences in urban mobility. The development and application of a transport-as-a-social-construct framework, therefore, opens space for more reflexive, inclusive, and context-sensitive scholarship, while also offering critical insights for policy and planning interventions aimed at addressing persistent inequalities and emerging urban challenges.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Evelyn A. Blumenberg

Yingling Fan

Astrid Wood

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

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

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