Labor webs and the transformation of local transportation infrastructures

全世界城市规划者面临的一个关键挑战是如何最好地加强城市居民的流动性和交通基础设施。随着交通选择的迅速变化以及世界各地城市正在规划新的交通基础设施，我们仍然对交通系统的这些变化如何影响交通行业的工作人员以及城市中的经济，政治和劳动关系如何受到这些变化的影响知之甚少。这个人类学项目将解决这一差距。通过对交通行业的精细研究，该项目将寻求了解交通基础设施的变化如何对城市生活的许多方面产生影响。从研究中收集的数据还将为城市规划提供信息和推进政策，使研究人员、规划人员和政府官员深入了解促进和抑制城市流动的因素。该项目将针对美国和全球的交通政策制定者和城市规划者开展宣传活动。伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校的Tarini Bedi博士将探讨包括城市规划者、交通工人和城市居民在内的利益相关者如何参与城市交通基础设施的变化。这项研究将在两个城市进行，印度城市孟买和东南亚城市新加坡。这些城市都是探索交通基础设施问题的理想实验室，因为孟买的几项新的重大交通基础设施倡议和投资，因为新加坡的交通规划已成为亚洲、欧洲和美国城市的典范。研究人员将在这两个城市进行为期24个月的研究，使用一系列人种学数据收集和分析技术，包括参与者观察和采访城市交通规划者，运输工人，市政官员以及交通和道路基础设施投资者。该项目将为人类学、运输政策、劳动研究和更广泛的政治经济学的辩论做出重要贡献。这些数据将帮助研究人员通过探索城市规划、城市交通和基础设施之间的可能关系，以及运输工人的经验，更好地了解城市交通的挑战。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A key challenge for urban planners worldwide is to address how best to enhance mobility and transport infrastructure for urban dwellers. As transport options are rapidly changing and as new transport infrastructures are being planned in cities across the world, we still know very little about how these changes to transport systems are affecting those who work in the transport industry and how economic, political, and labor relationships in cities are being affected by these changes. This anthropological project will address this gap. Through a fine-grained study of the transport industry the project will seek to understand how changes in transport infrastructure can have impacts on many aspects of life in a city. The data gleaned from the research would also inform and advance policy in urban planning by offering researchers, planners and public officials insights into the factors that enable and inhibit urban mobility. The project specifically includes dissemination activities targeted at transport policy-makers and urban planners in the United States and globally.Dr. Tarini Bedi of the University of Illinois at Chicago will explore how stakeholders, including urban planners, transport labor, and urban citizens engage with the changes in urban transport infrastructure. The research will be conducted in two cities, the Indian city of Mumbai and the Southeast Asian city of Singapore. These cities are both ideal laboratories for exploring questions of transport infrastructure because of several new major transport infrastructure initiatives and investments in Mumbai and because the city of Singapore's transport planning has become a model for cities in Asia, Europe, and the United States. The researcher will conduct twenty-four months of research across these two cities using a range of ethnographic data collection and analytical techniques, including participant observation and interviews with urban transport planners, transport labor, municipal officials, and investors in transport and road infrastructures. The project will make important contributions to debates in anthropology, transport policy, labor studies, and political economy more broadly. The data will allow the researcher to better understand the challenges of urban mobility by exploring the possible relations among urban planning, urban mobility and infrastructure, and the experiences of transport labor.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.