A.W. den Hoed
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2 records found
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Becoming tourism infrastructure
Older age mobilities and the reconfiguration of local mobility environments in Venice
This article examines the lived realities of older residents’ daily mobility in an over-touristed city. While walking mobility is a fundamental dimension of the everyday lives of individuals, communities, and places, it is also part of the ‘extraordinary’ experience that visitors seek for, turning urban space (pavements, streets, squares) into infrastructure for tourists’ walking mobility and tourist attractions in itself. In historic tourist centres, the walking practices and performances of residents and tourists are highly enmeshed in tight street grids, eliciting or hindering one another, producing either spectacle or discomfort, leveraging opportunity or unaffordability. While research has focused on the nature and extent of these hindrances and on the more structural dimensions of overtourism, the mobile component of ‘living with’ tourism has been explored less widely. We use the case of Venice, a notably ageing city, where residents are exposed to the adverse negotiation of overcrowded walking spaces. Drawing on walking interviews with older residents, we examine the spatial scales at which everyday mobility are contested by tourism, and the repercussions on active ageing and life aspirations. In addition, we situate such negotiations as potentially immobilising forces in which bodily ageing quickly clashes with the material and performative elements of an inherently slow mobility environment. We conclude on the tourism-infrastructure relationship-forcing residents’ fixity in a space of estrangement under the hegemony of slow tourist mobilities which complicates their ageing in place.
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This article examines the lived realities of older residents’ daily mobility in an over-touristed city. While walking mobility is a fundamental dimension of the everyday lives of individuals, communities, and places, it is also part of the ‘extraordinary’ experience that visitors seek for, turning urban space (pavements, streets, squares) into infrastructure for tourists’ walking mobility and tourist attractions in itself. In historic tourist centres, the walking practices and performances of residents and tourists are highly enmeshed in tight street grids, eliciting or hindering one another, producing either spectacle or discomfort, leveraging opportunity or unaffordability. While research has focused on the nature and extent of these hindrances and on the more structural dimensions of overtourism, the mobile component of ‘living with’ tourism has been explored less widely. We use the case of Venice, a notably ageing city, where residents are exposed to the adverse negotiation of overcrowded walking spaces. Drawing on walking interviews with older residents, we examine the spatial scales at which everyday mobility are contested by tourism, and the repercussions on active ageing and life aspirations. In addition, we situate such negotiations as potentially immobilising forces in which bodily ageing quickly clashes with the material and performative elements of an inherently slow mobility environment. We conclude on the tourism-infrastructure relationship-forcing residents’ fixity in a space of estrangement under the hegemony of slow tourist mobilities which complicates their ageing in place.
Beyond infrastructure
The multiple barriers to cycling in middle and older age
Journal article
(2025)
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Wilbert den Hoed
Active mobility is at the core of cities' efforts to promote inclusion, health and liveability. However, the role of cycling remains marginal in many cities and its promotion is usually approached from separate health or transport angles. In addition, its sustainability and suitability for people of all ages is questionable, following the persistently low cycling use among older age groups. While urban populations are ageing and cycling offers important benefits for positive ageing, cycling's promotion strategies typically centre on the modal shift of younger age groups and rarely engage with the long-term experiences that define mobility behaviour. In response, this article offers insight into later life urban cycling by illuminating how diverse cycling lifecourses shape ageing, wellbeing, and mobility itself. By using a mix of qualitative methods, it explores the cycling trajectories and experiences of middle-to-older aged adults in a distinctly low-cycling city in the United Kingdom, where it identifies heterogeneous trajectories and sets of barriers and negotiations that shape present and future cycling practices. Furthermore, this piece reveals how cycling's mobility and wellbeing benefits entangle over the lifecourse, as positive healthy ageing resources. Finally, it identifies what it takes, beyond infrastructural transformations, to support low-cycling cities to make cyc a feasible and normalised part of the mobile practices of people of all ages.
...
Active mobility is at the core of cities' efforts to promote inclusion, health and liveability. However, the role of cycling remains marginal in many cities and its promotion is usually approached from separate health or transport angles. In addition, its sustainability and suitability for people of all ages is questionable, following the persistently low cycling use among older age groups. While urban populations are ageing and cycling offers important benefits for positive ageing, cycling's promotion strategies typically centre on the modal shift of younger age groups and rarely engage with the long-term experiences that define mobility behaviour. In response, this article offers insight into later life urban cycling by illuminating how diverse cycling lifecourses shape ageing, wellbeing, and mobility itself. By using a mix of qualitative methods, it explores the cycling trajectories and experiences of middle-to-older aged adults in a distinctly low-cycling city in the United Kingdom, where it identifies heterogeneous trajectories and sets of barriers and negotiations that shape present and future cycling practices. Furthermore, this piece reveals how cycling's mobility and wellbeing benefits entangle over the lifecourse, as positive healthy ageing resources. Finally, it identifies what it takes, beyond infrastructural transformations, to support low-cycling cities to make cyc a feasible and normalised part of the mobile practices of people of all ages.