Labor webs and the transformation of local transportation infrastructures

世界各地的城市规划者面临的一个关键挑战是解决如何最好地增强城市居民的机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运输行业的员工，以及城市的经济、政治和劳资关系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。通过对交通运输业的精细研究，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通过为研究人员、规划者和政府官员提供对促进和抑制城市流动性的因素的洞察，为城市规划政策提供信息和推动政策。该项目具体包括针对美国和全球交通政策制定者和城市规划者的宣传活动。伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校的塔里尼·贝迪将探索包括城市规划者、交通工人和城市公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。这两个城市都是探索交通基础设施问题的理想实验室，因为孟买有几个新的重大交通基础设施倡议和投资，而且新加坡的交通规划已经成为亚洲、欧洲和美国城市的典范。研究人员将使用一系列人种学数据收集和分析技术，在这两个城市进行为期24个月的研究，包括参与者观察和对城市交通规划者、交通劳工、市政官员以及交通和道路基础设施投资者的采访。该项目将对人类学、交通政策、劳工研究和更广泛的政治经济学领域的辩论做出重要贡献。这些数据将使研究人员通过探索城市规划、城市流动性和基础设施之间的可能关系，以及运输工人的经验，更好地理解城市流动性的挑战。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.