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In so doing Ipropose that researchers need to focus their attention on two major challenges that constituteunderpinning obstacles for promoting long-term shifts in personal mobility: the

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Article Title: Personal Mobility and Climate Change

‘smart’ travel and the use of technology to enhance individual decision making In this review Irespond to these developments by arguing that researchers and practitioners need to re-frame theirunderstanding of personal mobility to consider how travel can also be understood as an embedded

SOFTWARE FOCUS

OVERVIEW FOCUS ARTICLE

PRIMER ADVANCED REVIEW

OPINION

form of practice, intimately connected to historic, economic and cultural influences In so doing Ipropose that researchers need to focus their attention on two major challenges that constituteunderpinning obstacles for promoting long-term shifts in personal mobility: the ways in which citiesare governed, designed and regulated to promote hyper-mobility rather than dwelling; and theformidable problem of reducing personal carbon emissions from a growing international tourismindustry In addressing these two challenges, I argue for a new intellectual agenda that placespersonal wellbeing at the centre of efforts to promote shifts towards low carbon mobility practices.Such (radical) shifts include reducing the demand for travel, an emphasis on dwelling, the promotion

of ‘active’ travel and ‘slow tourism’ In short, I ask why we travel so much; and why we don’t travelwell

Graphical/Visual Abstract and Caption

Changing personal mobility practices to address climate change means tackling the underpinning social, economic and cultural drivers of hyper-mobility Source: Michigan Department of

Transportation (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_131,_M-6,_68th_St_interchange.jpg )

Introduction

The association between anthropogenic climate change and transport is one that has beenhighlighted for some time by the physical and social science communities (IPCC, 2007; Chapman,

2007; Banister, 2011; Scott et al., 2012) In its most recent Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change estimated that 11% of growth in anthropogenic greenhouse emissionsbetween 2000 and 2010 was attributable to transport (IPCC, 2014) Indeed, Banister (2011) hasdemonstrated how carbon emissions per capita related to transport are globally well over the 2050required stabilisation level of below 2tCO2 (in the US: 19.45 tCO2, in the EU: 9.28tC02 and even4.07tCO2 in China) Moreover, there are frequent estimates demonstrating the role that different

types of transport mode play in contributing to climate change, in particular air transport (Chapman,2007) These figures can often be stark; for example Aamas (2013) noted that in Germany car useaccounted for 46% of transport-related emissions, whilst flying accounted for 45% of transportemissions Indeed, such emissions are clearly associated with socio-economic status, with high-income households making a greater number of trips by aircraft As such, there is clear evidence thatflying and personal car use are critical ‘vehicles’ for rising emissions, both in developed anddeveloping nations (Becken and Hay, 2007; IPCC, 2014).

However, such estimates are problematic when attempting to deeply understand the drivers ofanthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions because the transport modes onto which such estimatesare projected are merely representations of much more complex social processes (Freudendal-Pedersen, 2009) ‘Transport’ as a term includes a wide range of social, cultural and economic

activities (Rodrigue et al., 2016) and so apportioning a given set of emissions to one type of activity is

highly complex, especially when the same journey may be used to transport tourists, businesstravellers and freight Indeed, associating emissions with transport in general hides the wider impact

of transport as a producer of certain kinds of economic activity In other words, the traditional assumption that transport is simply derived demand (Rodrigue et al., 2016) takes no account of the

ways in which travel practices have been (historically) moulded and promoted through the

opening-up of inexpensive, accessible and frequent road and air transport (Barr et al., 2018) Consequently,

the connections between climate change and transport need to be understood as historicallyentwined and intimately connected with the value apportioned to mobility in daily life

Exploring what we can term the ‘personal’ aspects of mobility and climate change therefore becomes

a fruitful exercise because it enables us to begin the process of unpacking the relationship betweentransport, mobility and climate change as something which is connected to shifting social practices

(Verbeek and Mommaas, 2008; Spaargaren and Mol, 2008; Hargreaves, 2011; Shove, et al., 2010) In

so doing, this review aims to examine the ways in which transport and mobility researchers haveconceptualised personal mobility and its relationship with climate change, and the methods theyhave sought to deploy in developing theoretical insights Through such an analysis, I argue for a re-positioning of scholarship on personal mobility and climate change to take account of research fromthe new mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry; 2007; 2011), which demonstrates thatmobility is a deeply embedded social activity; as such, analyses require an intellectual reflexivity thatrecognises the contingent nature of understanding contemporary mobility patterns, includinghistoric, economic, spatial and cultural processes This matters because many academic researchersand policy makers continue to use both an intellectual and governance framework that upholds

rational, ‘smart’ and individualised decision making as the key units of analysis (Schwanen et al.,

2011) In this review, I challenge this basic assumption and argue that more insightful and impactfulresearch could arise from understanding the deeply embedded nature of personal mobility, throughthree new engagements First, there is abundant evidence that personal mobility is closely linked tothe infrastructures and architectures of place; many quantitative studies have discussed therelationship between urban design and propensity to travel, but there are major new opportunities

to forge links between disciplines such as psychology, sociology and urban planning and architecture

to undertake research that explores how places can be planned for reduced mobility and enhanceddwelling Second, at the other end of the spatial scale, researchers of personal mobility urgentlyneed to engage with the growth in international tourism, particularly as developing economies fostergrowing middle classes with higher levels of disposable income Air transport is a particularly potentissue here and there is growing evidence that even when consumers attempt to use more

sustainable transport in daily life, this is overshadowed by what Cohen et al (2011) term ‘binge

flying’ Both this phenomenon and a re-invigorated interest in place leads to a third disciplinaryconnection that needs to be drawn between research on personal mobility and the broader healthand wellbeing agendas of both slower and more physically active travel It is notable that moststudies on climate change and changing travel behaviours are framed around promoting

environmental protection; yet I argue here that there are clear co-benefits to be delivered from usingthe insights and strategies deployed by health researchers to promote a positive way of both re-engaging people with place and promoting mobility practices that enhance physical and emotionalhealth In essence, what I argue for is an intellectual questioning of why we travel so much and anexploration of the physical and emotional impacts such hyper-mobility has on our societies.

The review is structured in the following way First, I provide a brief context that demonstrates theways in which the changing governance of mobility through a ‘citizen-consumer’ lens has framed thebasic assertion that we ought to be focusing on the individual as a unit of measurement and change.Second, this is exemplified through exploring the ways in which particular forms of psychologically-informed research on personal mobility and travel behaviour has emerged as a powerful academicand policy discourse This has become manifested in several key ways: through the development ofbehavioural change campaigns and the philosophy of ‘nudge’; and through the utilisation ofbehavioural theories to create the Utopian and often rationalistic visions of the smart city Third, and

by contrast, I then explore some of the intellectual critiques of individual conceptions of travelbehaviour through examining the new mobilities paradigm in the social sciences Through linkingthese to wider social, economic and historical processes, I propose three ways in which socialscientists can deploy research on personal mobility and climate change in the key fields of urbanplace-making, international travel and tourism, and health and wellbeing In so doing, I argue for afundamental change to the intellectual and political approach to addressing personal mobility andclimate change that questions the deeply held assumption that more and faster mobility is a goalworth pursuing

GOVERNING MOBILITIES

Transport policy, and by implication policy about how people should travel, has frequently beenconcerned with meeting wider political ambitions (Banister, 2008) In relation to climate change,Marsden and Rye (2010) have noted how transport policy is frequently rendered ineffective through

complex and multi-layered scales of governance However, Marsden et al (2014) point to two key

‘governance contradictions’ that they argue distort our view of personal mobility and the ways inwhich it can be reduced First, there is a long-standing frustration within transport studies about the

use of derived demand (Rodrigue et al., 2016) and ‘predict and provide’ (Goulden et al., 2014; Owens, 1995) as mechanisms for policy making As Marsden et al (2014) note, most governments

have argued that economic growth is linked to higher traffic levels and that to seek to suppress roadbuilding equates to an attack on the principle of economic growth There are both technical andphilosophical issues here Cullingworth and Nadin (2006) have highlighted that road building canproduce higher traffic volumes without the attendant rises in economic activity; but there is also aquestion of political leadership: since the 1950’s road building has been regarded as the privilegedmechanism for delivering growth in many nations (Buchanan, 1963; Banister and Stead; 2002;Banister, 2008) through predicting transport demand and largely meeting it through motor transport

(Goulden et al., 2014) This connects to broader and underlying cultural narratives of the car as a

preferred mode of personal transport (Wells and Xenias, 2015) Rajan (2006, p 113) has referred tothe car as the literal articulation of freedom in neo-liberal society, where:

“Its constitutive visual image is one of dignified convoys of individual cars…as theycollectively pursue private goals on public highways”

The car has been a crucial piece of technology that has been used to fundamentally re-shape urbanand rural landscapes, through processes of suburbanisation and freeway construction (Baldassare,1992; Kunstler, 1994; 1998; Jeekel, 2013) and this has led to a re-framing of dependencies, in whichhigher numbers of households become reliant on private motor transport for most activities(Newman and Kenworthy, 1989) In this way, I argue that many of the clear advantages of personalmotor transport have been used in a distorted way to pursue an agenda of divestment from criticalpublic transport infrastructure Accordingly, the vast majority of government policies ‘build in’ the

private motor vehicle as the mode of choice, through planning, the design of place, properties andthe allure of the car (Grindrod, 2013; Schiller and Kenworthy, 2017).

A second governance contradiction has to do with the ways in which scholarship on personalmobility and climate change has predominantly been focused on understanding individual decision

making about travel mode choice (Marsden et al., 2014; Schwanen et al., 2012) This has been

characterised by the use of specific, cognitively-based psychological theories and frameworks tounderstand individual behaviour, drawing on frameworks like the Theory of Reasoned Action(Fishbein and Ajzen, 1977), Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and Schwartz’s (1977) NormActivation Model These frameworks utilise deductive scientific reasoning (Lupton, 2013) to examinethe factors that influence human decision making, focusing on the role of cognitive processes (Slovic,2000; 2010) Yet there has been growing concern in recent years within the social sciences to explorewhy this particular kind of research has become both so academically prominent, but more to the

point why it has come to dominate research and insight amongst policy makers (Pykett et al., 2016).

In addressing this concern, Marsden et al (2014, p 71) note how this “… appeal to a politically

powerful, but incoherent, discourse of individualism” constitutes part of a broader rationalisticnarrative in policy making (Owens, 2015), in which certain kinds of scientifically verifiable evidenceare privileged over others Moreover, in the case of such approaches to behavioural change, there isalso a political dimension The emergence of neo-liberal modes of governance during the 1980’s(Giddens, 1991) has led to a progressive rolling back of the state (Rose and Miller, 1992; Jessop,2002) and the development of a political philosophy that champions the small state and the

importance of market forces Indeed, Gilg (2005) and Clarke et al (2007) have argued that this has

fundamentally changed the role of government from ‘provider and regulator’ to ‘encourager andexhorter’ In this way, states must govern from a distance, meaning that the only viable route fordelivering certain policy goals, such as reductions in carbon emissions from personal mobility, is toencourage individuals to change their behaviour As evidenced by major investments in behaviouralresearch in countries like the UK (Behavioural Insights Team, 2016), national policy architectures are

being created to support behavioural change and Clarke et al (2007) have conceptualised this shift

towards individualised forms of behaviour change as the invocation of the ‘citizen-consumer’, anindividual who simultaneously embodies diligent responsibilities whilst exercising these through

choice, rather than through (regulated) necessity Moreover, Jones et al (2011a; 2011b; 2016) and Whitehead et al (2011) have demonstrated how behavioural change represents a form of

‘libertarian paternalism’: an assemblage of apparently free choice within the market economyoverseen and guided by moral narratives Within studies of personal mobility, this can be witnessedthrough the invocation of making ‘smart’ choices (Barr and Prillwitz, 2014), which have an implicitmoral weighting Such moral codes are indicative of a narrowly defined set of choices for citizen-consumers (Slocum, 2004), in which choices are highly limited, incremental and politically passive(Johnson, 2008)

Accordingly, I argue here that the governance of personal mobility in relation to climate changepresents three overlapping challenges First, there is an implicit mainstream political narrative thatmore travel is economically beneficial and that the affordances of personal motor transport faroutweigh the benefits and status of other (public and active) travel modes Second, within thisoverall narrative, only certain kinds of behavioural change are deemed acceptable or desirable;major behavioural change is not desirable because it neither fits with the economic narrative nor theideology of the small state and consumer choice Third, in these contexts, specific kinds ofpsychologically-informed modes of scientific enquiry have become a useful means through which todeploy such a political agenda, given the focus on individual cognition and the seemingly powerfulrole that identifying ‘factors’ can have in leading to small-scale policy change and the ability to

‘nudge’

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TRAVEL BEHAVIOUR

The intellectual trajectory of research on personal mobility and climate change is similar to that forother research into human behaviour (Spaargaren and Mol, 2008), in which psychology has taken thelead in deploying theoretical insights Commentaries on the role that psychology can play incombatting climate change have necessarily focused on the nature of human behavioural

contributions (Swim et al., 2011a; Whitmarsh, 2009), the disciplinary understanding of climate change and what psychology can contribute (Stern, 2011; Swim et al., 2011b), the particular psychological characteristics of engaging with climate change (Spence et al., 2012; Stoll-Kleemann,

2001), the key ‘barriers’ for mitigation (Gifford, 2011), and the potential for psychology to link withother disciplines (Spence and Pidgeon, 2009) In this way, as a broad discipline, psychology has much

to offer in contributing to inter-disciplinary understandings of climate change, the ways in whichhumans learn to cope with and adapt to change, and the likely acceptance (or otherwise) of climate-

related policies (Clayton et al., 2015) Focusing on travel behaviour within this sub-disciplinary

context, three broad approaches can be identified that seek to understand personal travel behaviour

and the factors that could be used to influence individual decision making First, Hunecke et al.

(2007) have highlighted the vital role of studies focusing on ‘pro-environmental behaviour’, in whichthe goal for researchers has been to explore the determinants of individual sustainability relatedbehaviours, frequently defined by travel behaviour researchers as avoiding car use and reducing airtravel (ECMT, 2004; EEA, 2007) Studies with a focus on pro-environmental behaviour have often

utilised Stern et al.’s (1999) Value-Belief–Nom (VBN) Theory and Schwarz’s (1977) Norm Activation

Model (NAM), which focus on particular constructs: the VBN integrates the role of environmental

dimensions of value scales like the New Ecological Paradigm (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1978; Dunlap et al., 1992), whilst the NAM highlights the role of awareness of consequences and ascriptions of

responsibility in activating personal norms to change behaviour Critically, these approaches assume

a morally-based motivation for engaging in certain kinds of behaviour, i.e that reducing car use andswitching to lower carbon transport modes is a deliberate attempt to act in pro-environmental way

A second category of research has relied considerably on scholarship informed by cognitivepsychological reasoning, which focuses specifically on the ways in which individuals processinformation and the role of elements such as memory, perception, thinking, reasoning, language and

learning (Lachman et al., 2015; Neisser, 2014) Lanzini and Khan’s (2017) meta-analysis of 58 primary

research studies of travel mode choice illustrates the widespread use of cognitive models in

psychology to examine travel behaviour (Line et al., 2012), including Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned

Behaviour (TPB), which incorporates the role of attitudes, social norms and perceived behaviouralcontrol in influencing behavioural intentions Beyond the TPB, research focusing on situational orcontextual factors frequently addresses just one or two elements and examines these in specificdetail, for example the relative role of extrinsic and intrinsic factors (Schoneau and Muller, 2017),

demographics (Line et al., 2010) household composition and domestic context (Vincent-Geslin and

Ravalet, 2016), the influence of facilities and urban infrastructure design (Larsen and El-Geneidy,2011), residential location (Srinivisan and Ferreira, 2002), and the role of social norms in encouraging

the take-up of new behaviours (Wang et al., 2015) Of particular note has been the aligned

development of research that has attempted to explore the embedded nature of travel behaviour

and the challenges of shifting daily habits (Verplanken et al., 1997; Verplanken and Aarts, 1999), a

stream of work which is now recognising the critical role of consumption settings in shaping habits(Kenyon and Lyons, 2013) and the ways in which habits might be altered through ‘moments ofchange’ (Prillwitz and Lanzendorf, 2006)

A third strand of research has further developed these insights in attempts to explore travelbehaviour through the lens of segmentation (Barr and Prillwitz, 2012) This research traditionemerges from attempts to change behaviours through greater levels of insight into the characteristics

of populations and the kinds of factors that influence defined segments Research in this field hasutilised techniques such as factor analysis and cluster analysis (Anable, 2005; Barr and Prillwitz,2012) to identify key groups and their demographic, behavioural and attitudinal characteristics

Segmentation approaches vary significantly both in terms of the basis for segmentation (e.g.behaviour, attitudes) and the statistical techniques applied Most approaches within social sciencehave utilised ‘frequentist’ approaches (which explore the number of participants in a study withparticular characteristics), but researchers are now beginning to examine the role of dynamicsegmentation, in which Bayesian probabilistic approaches are used to examine the probability of agiven individual being in one segment or another (Gill, 2015)

Accordingly, within the field of travel behaviour research, cognitive psychological approaches attempt

to use deductive reasoning and mostly quantitative approaches to examine the process of decisionmaking and the factors that influence behavioural outcomes The epistemological basis for thisapproach to understanding mobility has been challenged in other parts of the social sciences (seesection 5), but it is critical to recognise the profound political impact psychology has had on the ways

in which policy makers attempt to promote sustainable mobility through behavioural change

campaign (Jones et al., 2013), to which the review now turns

DEVELOPING ‘SMART(ER)’ MOBILITIES

The utilisation of individualised frameworks for understanding travel behaviour has provided thebasis for two contemporary trajectories of research and interaction with policy makers in the last tenyears, focusing on the ways in which individuals can be persuaded or ‘nudged’ (Thaler and Sunstein,2008) to change their behaviours The first has sought to utilise cognitively-based psychological

theories alongside concepts drawn from commercial marketing to form what has been termed social marketing French et al (2009) demonstrate that social marketing is the application of commercial

marketing logic through three lenses: behavioural insights, segmentation and the development of anappropriate marketing mix Andreasen (2006) highlights the application of such logics to thepromotion of different consumption practices, emphasising the positive nature of change (asopposed to traditional negative messaging associated with behavioural change) This has beenregarded as especially effective in health promotion in countries such as Canada, the USA, the UK

and Australia (Gordon et al., 2006; Hastings et al., 2007; National Social Marketing Centre, 2007), but has gained prominence within the sustainability and mobilities field in recent years (Shaw et al.,

2014) Politically, social marketing has become particularly prominent amongst governments indeveloped nations, where there is a neatly fitting narrative about continuing but different forms of

consumption (Barr et al., 2011) Indeed, its application has become embedded in central government initiatives in various contexts, such as the UK Government’s Framework for Pro-environmental Behaviours (DEFRA, 2008) and the UK Department for Transport’s (Thornton et al., 2011) Transport Choices segmentation model

These ideas have been crystalised through commentaries on one of the most influential publications

of the last decade: Thaler and Sunstein’s (2008) Nudge, which has outlined the potential for utilising

cognitive psychology and related sub-disciplines (such as behavioural economics) for realising a wide

range of environmental and social goals Nudge is founded on the notion that subtle alterations in

‘choice architecture’ can promote changes in habitual behaviours, defined thus:

“…any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable waywithout forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives To count

as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid Nudges are notmandates Putting the fruit at eye level counts as a nudge Banning junk food does not”(Thaler and Sunstein, p 8)

Nudge has had a major impact on cementing the links between psychology and behavioural

economics and policy making in the Anglophone world, as evidenced most notably by the UKGovernment’s funding and support for the Behavioural Insights Team (2016, p 6), which has arguedthat:

“The use of behavioural and experimental approaches to address social challenges isdeveloping in scale, complexity and ambition…there can be no doubt that they are bringing apractical and powerful new lens to policy challenges – no longer just in the UK, but acrossthe world”.

This notion of ‘experimental’ approaches is now being aligned to a second and seemingly much moreglobalised narrative of behavioural change, which connects to the ways in which behavioural insightscan be used in the development of so-called ‘smart cities’ (Kitchin, 2015) The smart cities agenda is arapidly evolving socio-technical field in academic research (Kitchin, 2016) and at one level canostensibly be viewed as an attempt to capitalise and derive efficiencies from the major increases indata collection, storage and connectivity afforded by the Internet and sharing platforms However,the smart cities agenda is fundamentally characterised by a particular kind of vision of what cities(and by implication places) should look and feel like, and how people ought to behave in them:

“The premise of a smart city is that by having the right information at the right time, citizens,service providers and city government alike will be able to make better decisions that result

in increased quality of life for urban residents and the overall sustainability of the city”

(Khansari et al (2013, p 46).

I argue here that this approach towards the re-making of urban (mobility) space has twofundamental implications First, notions of smart cities are imbued with the same kinds of logics thatunderpin the behavioural economics of nudge, namely that there is a measurable, empirical logic tobehaviour and that this can be controlled to achieve particular goals or even technologically utopiandesires, in the case of smart cities Examples of ‘modelling’ mobility behaviour therefore come to thefore and highlight the role of being able to ‘intervene’ and ‘model’ behaviour for specified outcomes,such as changing driver behaviour or reducing car use (Stankovic, 2014) Here the language of urbanmobility ‘solutions’ is invoked, where integrated congestion management can be achieved throughpooling data, manipulating infrastructures and therefore influencing behaviours (Engaged SmartTransport, 2015) In this way, corporate proponents of the smart city contend that:

“The science of cities will enable improved perception, better prediction, superior riskmanagement and enhanced decision-making” (City Science, 2016, n.p.)

This kind of logic is emblematic of the experimentalism now being deployed in many cities andtowns, in which human subjects are enrolled in urban experiments that seek to explore howtechnologies and people interact (Bulkelely and Castan Broto, 2013) This leads to a second keyimplication, which is that smart mobilities, aligned to the notions of ‘perception’ and ‘enhanceddecision making’, raises critical ethical and political concerns surrounding how mobility practices aremanipulated (House of Lords, 2011) and the democratic accountability for what is often atechnologically utopian, corporate driven agenda (Hollands, 2015) Critical to this debate is the way

in which (mobility) practices are being conceived and promoted by city government–corporaterelationships (Vitanen and Kingston, 2014) and the (lack of) voice that citizens can exercise in shapingconfiguration of cities, which is so critical in framing mobility (Kitchin, 2016)

Accordingly, I argue here that a ‘perfect storm’ of particular intellectual, political and corporateassemblages has coalesced over the past 20 years to form an over-arching narrative for governingindividual behaviours and is becoming central to policy making to reduce carbon emissions In thisway, this narrative has privileged particular ways of both framing behaviour and behavioural change,and casting the logics of how mobility might be envisioned for the future, frequently through atechnological utopian lens However, I argue that these approaches, whilst politically compelling, areintellectually and ethically narrow In the following sections of this review, I explore the basis for thiscontention, through first examining the critiques of narrowly-conceived behavioural approaches Ithen explore the new mobilities paradigm in the social sciences, which has set down an alternativeintellectual framework I then examine how this framework could be used to examine three hopefulresearch trajectories for promoting low carbon mobility in the 21st Century

NEW MOBILITIES: THE SOCIAL PRACTICE OF TRAVEL

Alongside the growth of behavioural economics, the science of nudge and the evolution of the smartcities concept has attracted persistent and growing critiques from a range of social science disciplinesthat have questioned both the pragmatic effectiveness and deeper political motivations for pursuingthe kind of behavioural science emblematic of many current policy regimes (Shove, 2010) From apragmatic perspective, social marketing and its popular manifestation in nudge are regarded ashighly limiting and unambitious forms of behavioural change (Thøgersen and Crompton, 2009),which are unlikely to yield the kinds of mobility transformations required in a climate changed world(Peattie and Peattie, 2009) In other words, the kinds of aspirations set by attempting to marginallyreduce car use and promoting occasional use of alternatives is both practically ineffective and willnot lead to a major change in habits Such a critique is pivotal, because it underscores the need toaddress structurally significant drivers of individual mobility, which are often spatial and economic innature (Barr and Prillwitz, 2014) Accordingly, addressing individual behaviour requires a recognition

of the ways in which personalised decisions are framed by the broader political economy This links

to a further critique of the science of nudge and smart cities, which centres on the political engagement of publics with debates over climate change and mobility In this way, social marketing,nudge and the individualised notion of smart mobility are examples of highly passive (Johnson, 2008)and dis-engaged forms of practice, which do not offer the political possibility of considering moreradical alternatives to the mantra of atomistic and incremental behavioural change (House of Lords,2011) This emphasises the seemingly ‘blind belief’ that behavioural economics and its enactmentthrough technologies can create better mobilities for people and lies at the heart of the arguments

dis-pursued by Jones et al (2011a; 2011b; 2016) in their discussion of the role of the Libertarian

Paternalist state, in which policy goals are achieved through manipulations of individuals, apparentlyexercising free choice The question is raised, therefore, of what role the state ought to hold in notonly governing from a distance (Jessop, 2002), but providing the kind of planning legislation,infrastructure, regulations and participatory mechanisms for an alternative vision for low carbon

mobility (Marsden et al., 2014) Indeed, as Vitanen and Kingston (2014) and Kitchin (2016) note in

regard to smart cities, such initiatives are ethically questionable not only because of the apparentlack of democratic legitimacy, but also because they impose a particular neo-liberal narrative of what

‘efficient’ cities ought to be like

These critiques offer a basis for questioning the logic of achieving low carbon mobility throughindividual incrementalism However, at the heart of both lies a foundational intellectual schism thatstretches across social sciences, but which has been powerfully illustrated in the last 20 yearsthrough the fundamental arguments concerning the intellectual basis for behavioural approaches(Hargreaves, 2011; Hobson, 2002; Owens, 2000; Shove, 2010) and also attempts to demonstrate the

ways in which connections may be drawn between these two approaches (Nash et al., 2017).

Spaargaren and Mol (2008) have noted that the basis for this intellectual schism is founded on somekey epistemological differences, broadly (but by no means exclusively) that research from thebehavioural economics and cognitive psychological traditions focuses on a theory-led, extensive &quantitative approach, whereas broader psychological, anthropological and sociological traditionsfocus on theory-building (or grounded theory), interpretivist and intensive & qualitative approaches.Aligned to the schism within social science, researchers of mobility have therefore sought tochallenge the intellectual and political dominance of behavioural economics and particular elements

of psychological thought through developing new ways of researching and imagining low carbonmobility, through the new mobilities paradigm

The new mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry, 2011a) has been a major vehicle throughwhich social scientists have advocated an alternative narrative for framing low carbon mobility (Urry,2011b) and is founded on both conceptual and methodological change:

“Travel has been for the social sciences seen as a black box, a neutral set of technologies andprocesses predominantly permitting forms of economic, social, and political life that are seen

as explicable in terms of other, more causally powerful processes As we shall argue,however, accounting for mobilities in the fullest sense challenges social science to changeboth the objects of its inquiries and the methodologies for research” (Sheller and Urry, 2006,

p 208)

In terms of ‘objects’, Adey (2010) highlights the importance of appreciating that mobility is not anobjectified or quantifiably measurable entity, but rather is manifested in a series of contexts, all ofwhich have meaning and which begin to unpack why changing mobility practices is so challenging

Indeed, Hannam et al (2006) have argued for four ways in which contemporary mobility needs to be

appreciated: through understanding that mobility is fluid and not affixed to instrumental definitions

of behaviour; that mobility is virtual and imaginary, as well as physical; that mobility in and of itself

has identity value; and that mobility is embodied and emotive (Hannam et al., 2006) As such, how

we explore mobility needs to be governed through different intellectual lenses and in terms ofpersonal mobility and climate change necessitates a refocusing of our efforts in two ways (Cresswell,2010; 2011; Cresswell and Merriman, 2011) First, rather than exploring the atomistic behaviours ofindividuals and attempting to define barriers or drivers, we ought to be exploring practices As Shove

and other sociologists have advocated (Shove, 2003; Shove et al., 2012), practices are:

“…routine-driven, everyday activities situated in time and space and shared by groups ofpeople as part of their everyday life Social practices form the historically shaped, concreteinteraction points between, on the one hand actors, with their lifestyles and routines, and onthe other hand, modes of provision with their infrastructures of rules and resources,including norms and values” Verbeek and Mommaas, 2008, p 634)

In this way we can begin to re-conceptualise high carbon travel behaviours such as car driving interms of the broader historic, social and economic factors that contribute to individual behaviours.Accordingly, rather than viewing driving to work as a solely individual decision, a practicesperspective also enables us to understand how the culture of long-distance car commuting hasdeveloped and has been perpetuated by freeway developments, workplace parking, suburban livingand the prominence afforded to the car in popular culture (Dennis and Urry, 2009; Kunstler, 1994;1998) Indeed, more than this, we can view most developed and developing societies as having orworking towards forms of auto-mobility, in which the car is privileged above all other forms oftransport (Urry, 2007) and through which the logics of neo-liberal individualism can be exercised totheir fullest extent To understand personal mobility and any potential to reduce carbon emissions

we must therefore look towards an analysis of mobility practice alongside individual transportbehaviours Indeed, we must also pay attention to the spaces in which (affective) situational contextsevolve (Adey, 2008; Cresswell and Merriman, 2011)) These situational contexts may be connected toboth transport infrastructure (Dunckel Graglia, 2016; Merriman, 2009) and wider urban architectures

and domestic designs (Barr et al., 2018; Katz, 1994; Langdon, 1994) What these studies demonstrate

is the importance of space and spatial design in promoting or suppressing certain kinds ofmovement In both Kunstler’s (1994) evocative account of American suburbia and Grindrod’s (2013)revealing narrative of post-war British urban planning, the influence of space and design becomecritical in establishing practices that have led to carbon-heavy personal mobility as something,literally set in stone In this way, I argue that changing mobility behaviours to tackle and adapt toclimate change becomes much more of a task related to the underpinning contexts for practices andthe out-working of such practices in everyday life

TRANSFORMING PERSONAL MOBILITIES

Thus far in this review I have argued that cognitive-psychological approaches towards travelbehaviour and their translation into behavioural change programmes are unlikely on their own topromote the kinds of cultural changes in personal mobility that will be needed to reduce carbon

emissions and promote sustainable travel practices This is partly because understanding mobilitythrough individualistic lenses is too narrow, and also because changing mobility requires a substantialchange in the political and economic circumstances in which mobility occurs Yet I argue here thatdespite the challenges of re-casting the intellectual and policy landscape of personal mobility andclimate change, there are three distinct contexts where transformation may be cultivated The firstlies in the often overlooked setting of the urban and the ways in which new cultures of mobility can

be designed-in through collaborations between transport researchers, spatial planners and citizens.Second, we might begin to tackle head on the powerful role that international tourism plays and theopportunities to re-make our tourist lives The third responds to these two agendas and emergesfrom renewed interest in human wellbeing and a recognition that more active and slower travel canplay a major role in both reducing carbon emissions and enhancing our physical and emotionalhealth

Re-imagining the city for sustainable mobility

Cities have become (in the developed world) and are fast becoming (in many developing nations) thesites for majority human habitation and economic activity As such, cities potentially present an idealspace in which to embed low carbon mobility and generate a shift away from incrementalistapproaches to behavioural change, towards new ways of moving but also of dwelling One way ofexploring this issue is to examine the influence of spatial design and land use types on the propensity

of residents to travel and by which modes (Krizek, 2003) This has been seen as critical, becauseglobally there continues to be a trend for newly affluent groups in cities to desire private motortransport and the affordances of living in newer city suburbs at greater distances from economicactivities (Banister, 2011), following the example of North American cities (Baldassare, 1992) Early

studies had drawn clear correlations between land use and propensity to travel (Saelens et al., 2003),

with those living in low-rise, sprawling, suburban neighbourhoods more likely to make journeys (and

do so by car) than those living in high-density village-style or inner-city neighbourhoods However,deeper methodological scrutiny raised the issue of whether attitudinal, income and lifestyle factorshad a far greater influence on journey decision making; in other words, (affluent) residents ofdensely populated neighbourhoods with lower propensity to travel rates may have chosen to livethere because of the proximity to services, rather than being influenced by the neighbourhooddesign (Boarnet and Crane, 2001; Bagley and Mokhtarian 2002; Krizek, 2003; Srinivisan and Ferreira,2002) Yet there is considerable evidence within the planning literature that different kinds of(strategic) land use planning, neighbourhood spatial layout and even architectural design can have aprofound impact on the propensity to travel, even when lifestyle factors are controlled for (Stead,

2001; Cao et al., 2007; Litman, 2007; TRB, 2009) and so there is a growing evidence base that

planning has a key role to play in shaping mobility practices

If there is empirical evidence that neighbourhood planning and design can have an impact on travel(mode) choice, then it becomes fruitful to explore how longer term shifts in mobility practices can beachieved, outside of the remit of individualised and incrementalist appeals to change travelbehaviours I argue here that there are three key considerations The first concerns the role ofstrategic planning in the long-term; the second concerns urban design principles; whilst the third has

to do with re-balancing the tension between individual demand for personalised travel and the need

to reduce private motor transport

The role of strategic planning has been shown to be highly beneficial in framing mobility practices

(Medaris and Daseking, 2012; Engebretsen et al., 2017) and a number of key principles have been

identified that can promote sustainable mobility practices (Banister and Hickman 2006; CfIT, 2011),which include: settlement size, regional location, strategic transport network provision, density,mixed land use, neighbourhood design, accessibility to services and traffic & parking management.However, the ability of planning systems to deliver these in the long term is questionable (Banister,2011; Gilg, 2005) Evidence from different national contexts clearly demonstrates the outcomesbetween planning systems; in Germany, which has a strong regional planning system and a typically

European approach to strategic planning, cities like Freiburg have attained major reductions in caruse through strong political leadership and a planning culture that is strongly associated with masstransit, walking and cycling (Buehler and Pucher, 2011; Fitzroy and Smith, 1998; Medearis andDaseking, 2012; Kenworethy, 2006) Indeed, even in North American cities, the development of NewUrbanism (Katz, 1994; Glaeser and Shapiro, 2001) has been influential in cities like Portland, Oregon,where there is evidence that urban renewal has begun to address the problems associated withsuburban sprawl (City of Portland, 2016) Yet in the UK, the planning system continues to lack both astrategic dimension and indeed a regional focus, meaning that planners have relatively little power toeither vision places or to make strategic decisions that could affect major shifts in mobility practices(Banister, 2011)

The high profile that has been afforded to cities like Portland in the United States is also partly to dowith a second key concern I wish to pursue in re-thinking sustainable urban mobility, which has notonly to do with spatial planning but the design of places: streets, homes, businesses, parks and otherspaces of amenity Design principles have as long a history as the pioneers of modern day townplanning (Howard, 1898), yet design considerations often seem to be those which come lowest whenconsidering new developments This is partly to do with how city authorities have come to see theurban: cities are spaces of economic activity, the grand project and ultimately competitiveness(Massey, 2007; Harvey, 2003), all of which suppresses a focus on local context, heritage, style,longevity and resilience (Kunstler, 1998) Importantly, design can play a pivotal role in two ways First,

it can actively support sustainable forms of mobility through the re-design of streets, pathways,cycleways and the re-balancing of the relationship between mass transit and other road traffic

(Shriver, 1997; Badland et al., 2008; Khattak and Rodriquez, 2005) Accordingly, design can both

practically enable walking and cycling, whilst also symbolising the priority given to certain modes(Southworth, 2005) Second, in re-designing streets, the very essence of such spaces are re-purposed

as ones for socialising and dwelling, rather than merely places through which we have to move toserve an economic purpose (Sadik-Khan and Solomonow, 2016) This introduces the notion thatdwelling, rather than constantly moving, might be an aspiration, and one which lays at the heart ofefforts to sustain the vibrancy of urban area (Jacobs, 1961), build garden cities (Hall and Ward, 1998;Clark, 2003) and promote New Urbanist thinking (Grant, 2006), and which forms critical efforts to re-introduce ‘design for living’ as a basic principle in planning (Creating Excellence, 2017)

The challenge, therefore, is to explore how both the opportunities afforded by planning land usedifferently and by designing places for diverse mobility and dwelling might be achieved Theintellectual and policy challenge lies squarely in the cultural assumptions that we embed about howpeople move; that is, there is an implicit assumption that provision ought to be made for eachhousehold to run one or more private vehicles What is so concerning about the smart cities concept

is that this notion of private transport is being carried forward into debates on autonomous vehicles(Fagnant and Kockelman, 2015) and that visions for smart cities are still dominated by a conventionalview of transport planning (Banister, 2008), which regards speed, individualism, private mobility and

a traffic dominated cityscape as a desirable future Yet this both displaces emissions (still required tofuel electric vehicles) and seemingly does little to promote diversity in mobility and dwelling It mayeven have the reverse impact of feeding the desire to travel

Tourist mobilities: re-configuring leisure time for a low carbon world

Quite apart from the context of the everyday and the urban is a second mobility setting whereintellectual and policy integration is urgently required and where a far more ‘wicked’ problem of

mass consumption exists (Hopkins and Higham, 2016; Scott et al., 2012) The leisure and tourism

industry is a continually globalising phenomenon, breaking into new markets annually as developingnations foster new middle class entrants into the international tourist class (Page and Connell, 2010).Pragmatically, tourism is fundamentally concerned with discretionary mobility (Urry, 2002) andthrough both air travel and other emissions associated with tourist activities, it presents a major

challenge to achieving climate change targets (Becken and Hay, 2007; Dickinson et al., 2011) Yet

tourist activities pose a major challenge even when attempting to measure carbon emissions, given

the international nature of tourism (Scott et al., 2012) Indeed, alongside the demand of emergent

middle class households in developing nations for private motor transport (Banister, 2011), comesthe increasing demand for international travel, with estimates of growth in air travel presenting a

staggering challenge for reducing global carbon emissions (Scott et al., 2010; 2012) For example,

IATA (2016) estimates that there will be a doubling in air transport passenger numbers in the next 20years or so, from 3.2 billion in 2016 to 7 billion in 2035 Moreover, tourism is yet another example of

a social practice that is historically contingent and which has evolved through the affordances oftechnological development, market de-regulation and the commodification of places as sites ofconsumption and play (Graham and Shaw 2008; Shaw and Williams, 2004; Urry, 2002; 2007)

Despite the importance of tourist activities to carbon emissions, most discussions of personalmobility and climate change have been scaled to specific place contexts (e.g the urban) or particularbehaviours (e.g car driving or encouraging active travel) This has formed an intellectual gapbetween social science literatures focused on everyday contexts and those within leisure and tourismsettings (Verbeek and Mommaas, 2008) In part this has to do with disciplinary boundary setting andthe mirroring of such ‘siloing’ in policy making, but overcoming this gap is imperative if a holisticapproach towards low carbon mobility is to be realised Such a task may in fact not be asintellectually challenging as it first might seem, because research within the field of sustainabletourism has mirrored that in the wider social sciences Indeed, it is possible to identify two discreteintellectual traditions within tourism and leisure studies for examining sustainable tourist behaviour(Verbeek and Mommaas, 2008): one which takes a positivist intellectual position and has focused oncognitive psychology to explore individual tourist decision making (Budeanu, 2007), with anotherutilising interpretivist epistemology to examine the socio-cultural significance of tourism mobility and

its embeddedness in social practices (Cohen et al., 2013; Dickinson et al., 2010; Hibbert et al., 2013; Higham et al., 2014)

Accordingly, the intellectual integration of research on everyday and tourist mobilities is not hard toimagine in principle However, research on sustainable tourism has revealed the sharp differencesbetween the ways in which publics engage with the issue of climate change and mobility betweeneveryday and touristic settings, emphasising the ‘wicked’ nature of the challenge Extensive researchover the past ten years and more has explored how tourist practices, in particular flying, are regarded

as either irrelevant to climate change (Dillimono and Dickinson, 2015; Gossling and Peeters, 2007;

Gossling et al., 2006) or as something which can be ‘traded off’ There are several strands to this

research First, scholars have examined how tourism spaces are often ‘off limits’ to discussions ofclimate change, through the sense that tourism represents a space of play and freedom, un-shackled

by the demands of everyday life As such, ‘a holiday is a holiday’ as one respondent noted (Barr et al.,

2011) Second, this can often be rationalised by participants in research studies who are able to

‘trade off’ their ‘good’ behaviour for the majority of the time (avoiding car use, participating in otherpro-environmental practices), enabling them to indulge in a long-haul flight and two weeks in a

resort (Hares et al., 2010) Third, psychologists have linked such strategies to forms of cognitive dissonance, or what Stoll-Kleeman et al (2001) referred to as the ‘psychology of denial’, in which

narrative strategies are developed to justify apparently contradictory behaviours, one of which caneven be that tourists ought to fly and see vulnerable environments before climate changepermanently changes them Finally, research has noted the challenge of devolving responsibility fortackling climate change through comparisons of personal carbon emissions alongside those of cited

highly polluting countries, such as China or the United States (Barr et al., 2011; Hares et al., 2010)

This litany of studies leads to the depressing conclusion that if re-making cities for low carbonmobility isn’t challenging enough, tourist mobility, in particular within rapidly developing nations, islikely to be an even harder issue to tackle, not least because many of the infrastructural and planning

opportunities to shape practices are even harder to implement in international tourism contexts,

which means that more radical approaches towards regulation may be required (Higham et al., 2016; McKercher et al., 2010; Scott et al., 2010) At one level this can be seen as negative – restricting in

some way individual rights to travel or at least to do so at low cost Yet just as re-claiming streets forpeople may be seen as a restriction on the freedom of the private motor vehicle, it can also be seen

as a celebration of dwelling and the creation of better places Likewise, we might ask whetherdifferent and lower carbon forms of tourism and leisure might also lead to better experiences that

we currently find hard to imagine To begin addressing this fundamental and partly speculativequestion, we must look to innovations in leisure and tourism studies that have begun to explore

these issues through the lens of ‘slow’ tourism (Fullagaer et al., 2012; Dickinson and Dickinson, 2006; Dickinson et al., 2010) Slow tourism has emerged not only from concerns about the environmental damage exercised by ‘binge’ flying and excessive consumption (Cohen et al., 2011) but also from the

sense that higher levels of wellbeing and relaxation can be achieved through both a deepengagement with places and also making the journey part of the tourist experience (Caffryn, 2012)

In this way, slow travel is conceptually broad, although is fast becoming a mainstream element ofsustainable tourism scholarship, given the possibilities it presents for transformative change(Lumsden and McGrath, 2011) Practically, slow travel involves an emphasis on two aspects: utilisinglow carbon travel modes and the upholding of connectivity with the places visited; that is to say slowtourism emphases a prolonged depth of experience In line with insights from mobilities research(Adey, 2010), proponents of slow travel contend that the experience of travelling through and with,rather than ‘above’, can transform holiday experiences Although slow travel began very much as aniche initiative, recent innovations by providers of ski holidays (e.g Snow Carbon, 2017; Loco2,2017), which are predominantly based on low cost air travel, have developed marketing strategies topromote rail travel to ski resorts, attempting to tackle the documented reluctance of tourists to shiftaway from air travel because of both perceptions of the speed associated with air travel and the

experience of using land-based transport (Hares et al., 2010) Such innovations are critical to wider

research on personal mobility and climate change because they have demonstrated the potential foralternative frameworks of mobility (O’Regan, 2012) but also highlight the desperate need for

planning and infrastructure to support such changes (Dickinson et al., 2011) These range from the

relative difficulty of booking travel by rail compared to air, the integration of national bookingsystems for train travel, the flexibility of accommodation provision and the willingness of major touroperators to engage with such innovations (Barr and Shaw, 2016) Indeed, it’s without question thatdeveloping alternatives to readily available, low cost air travel to hundreds of internationaldestinations is a Herculean task Moreover, even transferring tourist travel from air to high speed railhas certain limitations, both in terms of how speed is still prioritised and the associated carbonemissions from high speed rail over conventional rail travel (Preston, 2009) Yet despite theseimportant considerations, I also argue here that there is a major opportunity to capitalise on the

demonstrable benefits of slower tourism through the lens of wellbeing and upholding the value of

personal experience, which presents perhaps the brightest hope for making both the intellectual andpragmatic case for re-shaping everyday and tourist mobilities, and to which I now turn

Personal mobility and wellbeing

Part of the challenge of promoting sustainable mobility has therefore been the disconnect that exists

in both the academic literature and within policy between land use planning, transport planning andtourism policy in many nations (Cullingworth and Nadin, 2009) As such, the issue of how places andspaces ‘work’ in terms of the quality of life and wellbeing benefits they afford is often overlooked Yet

in attempting to reduce the need for travel and in promoting long-term shifts in (daily and touristic)mobility practices, there are major opportunities for academics and planners to consider howreductions in high-carbon mobility and associated uptake of walking, cycling, mass transit usage and

‘slower’ travel can have major benefits for wellbeing, both in terms of physical and mental health

(Sallis et al., 2004) Here I argue lies perhaps the most positive outcome of re-structuring our land

use, transport and tourism systems in enabling us to re-connect with place-based communitiesthrough de-individualising the way we move, slowing down our movement and promoting ‘activetravel’, broadly defined as the use of walking and cycling, alongside mass transit usage, whichinvolves a degree of physical activity (Birbidge and Goulias, 2009).

Evidence from health research clearly supports the assertion earlier in this review that only major

land use and infrastructural change are likely to promote daily active travel practices (Badland et al., 2008; Freeman et al., 2012; Larco et al., 2012; Ogilvie et al., 2010) This is connected with

neighbourhood design and walkability, cycling infrastructure, proximity of services and workplaces,and flexible working alongside the implicit cultural assumptions about how people use and share

space For example, Buehler et al.’s (2011) evidence demonstrates the difference in walking and

cycling rates between the United States and Germany and the relative lack of influence associatedwith so-called ‘soft’ measures to promote behavioural change (e.g promotional campaigns) asopposed to both infrastructural and cultural factors (such as neighbourhood design and workplacesupport for active travel)

Within the everyday context, the benefits of adopting a well-being focused approach towardsreducing car use can be synthesised in three ways and has coalesced around the notion of ‘activetravel’ within the health sciences First, alongside the demonstrable benefits for carbon reductionassociated with reduced car use (Rissell, 2009), promoting active travel is also likely to haveimportant local environmental benefits, related to air pollution, noise, vibration and overall

environmental & landscape quality (Nazelle et al., 2011) A second set of evidence has documented the physical health benefits of active travel (Merom et al., 2010), which has been shown to contribute to Body Mass Index (BMI) reduction (Pabayo et al., 2010), cardiovascular health (Anderson et al., 2010; Hu et al., 2007), and diabetes reduction (Saunders et al., 2013) However,

alongside the building evidence of physical health benefits of active travel lies the potential forimproving emotional health and wellbeing It is well established that physical exercise has individualmental health benefits (Cohen-Cline, 2015; Penedo and Dhan, 2005) but there is growing evidencethat active travel and use of mass transit enables greater levels of sociability (Rissell, 2009), leading

to reduced feelings of isolation and loneliness amongst certain groups (Green et al., 2014), especially the elderly (Mackett, 2014; 2017; Musselwhite et al., 2015) In addition, we also need to consider the

wider mental health and wellbeing benefits of making adjustments to city infrastructure andplanning that can reduce car use and promote active travel There is emerging interest amongsthealth geographers in particular about the mental health impacts of different kinds of spatial design,neighbourhood configuration and easy access to green space (or indeed ‘blue’ space in terms of

coastal communities) (Berg et al., 2010; Alcock et al., 2014), with a consensus in the literature that access to high quality urban space does associate with higher levels of mental health (Bornioli et al.,

2018; Lee and Maheswaran, 2011) However, these associations are both complex and likely to beexperienced differently within communities (Sturm and Cohen, 2014) In other words, in efforts tochange the design and aesthetic of urban space to both reduce the need to travel and promoteactive travel, there are important considerations concerns the consequences of such changes.Accordingly, there exist major opportunities for planners, transport researchers, health professionalsand geographers to collaborate in making the intellectual and policy case for changes in settlementand neighbourhood design to promote active travel and access to high quality spaces Critical to thisagenda will be examining the ways in which such changes affect different publics within communities

(Wolch et al., 2014) and how different practices can be promoted For example, there are challenges

surrounding the cultural norms associated with shared spaces across national settings, meaning thatchanges in design need to be associated with insights from a sociological perspective, whichrecognise the corporeal nature of mobility in urban space (Imrie, 2012)

Within the context of tourism and leisure, wellbeing promotion has traditionally been viewed withinthe context of specific individual ‘wellness’ promotion, for example the tradition of spa holidays andforms of corporeal and physical relaxation therapies (e.g massage, yoga) (Smith and Kelly, 2006).However, renewed interest in the conceptual and empirical connections between tourism andphysical and emotional health has emerged through a motivation to examine how wellbeing can beenhanced on a wider scale, outside a specific niche market (Scottish Executive, 2005) This emergesfrom a recognition that particular kinds of space provide the basis for promoting physical and

emotional health (White et al., 2016) For example, in tourism and recreation research, the notion of

‘health enabling’ places has been used to develop ideas surrounding the ‘green’ and ‘blue’ gyms,where access to natural environments presents opportunities for physical and emotional enrichment(Foley and Kistemann, 2015) Indeed, psychologists have also begun to understand the therapeuticbenefits of charity-based group tourism activities to tackle growing instances of anxiety, isolation anddepression in populations (Coghlan, 2015) and the critical social benefits that tourism can afford todisadvantaged groups (McCabe and Johnson, 2013) Alongside the work of evidencing the role ofdeep engagement with places and their psychological benefits, researchers are also exploring theways in which wellbeing (as opposed to individualistic concerns with wellness) can be used to re-orientate products and services within the tourism industry towards the delivery of public health and

wellbeing benefits (Hartwell et al., 2012; Pyke et al., 2016) This presents opportunities for

developing what Soper (2008) has referred to as ‘alternative hedonism’ for the promotion ofbehaviour change In referring explicitly to slow tourism, Fullagar (2012, p 101) argues that:

“Slow tourism and travel potentially offer a way to think through the relationship that existsbetween environmental concern and pleasurable experiences that can sustain lifestylechange and transform highly consumerist practices”

For both everyday and tourism mobilities the prospect of reducing the need to travel, the promotion

of dwelling and the role of active travel presents transformative possibilities in terms of reducingcarbon emissions and re-discovering the affordances of place, deep engagement and physicalactivity Such a transformation can only be met with a sustained engagement in the intellectualproject of uncovering and upholding of the deep structural deficiencies that lead to hyper-mobilityand often lower levels of wellbeing that excessive travel produce This requires the construction of

‘alternative hedonisms’ (Soper, 2008) that enable citizens to step off what O’Neill (2008) refers to asthe ‘hedonic treadmill’ of consumption Thinking about our wellbeing when we consider ourpersonal mobility is a way of positively framing this transition Doing something about it will requireresearchers to re-focus their efforts to challenge the political economy that presents unconstrainedmobility as a unquestioned good

Conclusion

New research agendas for mobility and climate change

In the context of climate change, mobility presents perhaps the most ‘wicked’ of intellectual andpolicy challenges Being able to travel frequently, at low cost and often in privacy is still a recentexperience, yet it has been embraced as one of the key signifiers of personal success and nationalprogress Hyper-mobility is something that carries considerable social status and frames identitiesand experiences Yet hyper-mobility poses a major threat to the global climate; its association witheconomic growth means that millions more in developing nations are likely to demand greaterpersonal mobility and buy into long-haul air travel and tourism; its entrenchment in western ‘auto-cultures’ means that challenging the dominance of carbon-intensive private transport represents adeep questioning of neo-liberal assertions about individual freedom and choice; and the complexity

of everyday life through the distribution of economic activities and lack of strategic planning means