Contested spaces and subjectivities of transit: Political ecology of a bus rapid transit development in Oakland, California

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo

Contested spaces and subjectivities of transit: Political ecology of a bus rapid transit development in Oakland, California

MARK

Ingrid Behrsina,⁎, Chris Bennerb a b

University of California, Davis, Geography Graduate Group, 133 Hunt Hall, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616, United States University of California, Santa Cruz, Department of Environmental Studies, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Environmental subjectivities Urban political ecology Transit justice Bus rapid transit

In this paper we argue that political ecology, a critical subdiscipline of geography, can contribute important insights for transportation geographers and planners. Specifically, political ecology's attendance to environmental subjectivities helps explain why some groups traditionally assumed to be in favor of mass transit resist the projects developed in part to benefit them. Based on qualitative research conducted in Oakland, California between 2011 and 2012, this paper ultimately argues that a political ecology lens helps highlight how environmental and transit subjectivities – identities developed from everyday interactions with mobile and built environments – shape dispositions towards, and the politics around, mass transit projects. This insight is important as it reveals how interactions with the built environment, and the subjectivities these interactions engender, can be overlooked in the context of transportation interventions, especially when these subjectivities are in tension with transit planners' working assumptions and worldviews.

1. Introduction Street spaces are central to the functioning of all cities, but like any space, the construction, development, and maintenance of those spaces is the result of complex power relations and political processes (Whitt, 2014). Limited physical space for mobility inevitably means that whose mobility needs, and what types of mobility (non-motorized, public transit, personal vehicles) are prioritized in the design, implementation and enforcement of transportation projects are constantly in conflict. In an effort to manage these inevitable conflicts, transportation planners in recent decades have become more centrally involved in public participation processes around proposed transportation infrastructure. Efforts to understand the nature of conflicts that emerge through these processes is a central area of transportation research, with many researchers studying these conflicts in a transit justice and political economy based framework. These authors typically argue that increased investment in transit in low-income communities and communities of color is important for addressing historical injustices in urban transportation systems (Karner and Niemeier, 2013). In this paper, we investigate the ways in which public participation processes and the historical, economic, and political contexts in which they took place influenced the design and outcome of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) initiative in a low-income, predominantly Latino and African-American community in Oakland, California. This examination

⁎

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (I. Behrsin), [email protected] (C. Benner).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2017.05.003 Received 13 August 2016; Received in revised form 3 May 2017; Accepted 5 May 2017 Available online 10 May 2017 0966-6923/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

helps explain some of the outcomes and tensions surrounding public engagement, but some conflicts emerged that are difficult to explain through transit justice, environmental justice, or political-economy frameworks alone; in this case, an already-funded capital investment in a new bus route that served the lowest-income areas of the city, and that was championed by a coalition of nearly thirty local, grass-roots organizations, met unanticipated resistance from some of the very groups it aimed to benefit. A political ecology approach, with its attendance to environmental subjectivities (Agrawal, 2005; Robbins, 2012), helps explain how these sites of tension emerged and evolved. The idea of environmental subjectivities draws attention to the ways in which environmental conditions create opportunities for groups to develop and coalesce around particular identities and to use these identities to represent themselves in political forums in seemingly surprising ways (Robbins, 2012). In this case study, we examine this in two contexts. We examine how environmental subjectivities developed around particular attachments to landscape features based on local histories of space-making and space-claiming practices; this environmental subjectivity negatively influenced some groups' disposition towards the proposed improvements. In addition, we discuss a group of older people's everyday experiences of physical instability while riding the local transit district's buses, which created another polity that viewed the East Bay BRT (EBBRT) proposal in a negative light. As urban transpor-

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

I. Behrsin, C. Benner

First National People of Color Environmental Leadership summit (Cole and Foster, 2001; Martinez-Alier et al., 2016), and federally recognized in the United States in 1994 by Clinton's Executive Order 12898 (Bullard et al., 2004). Agyeman (2005, pp.1–2) defines environmental justice as “a local, grassroots, or ‘bottom-up’ community reaction to external threats to the health of the community, which have been shown to disproportionately affect people of color and low-income neighborhoods.” Crucially, environmental justice activists and scholars have expanded understandings of the environment to include “where we live, where we work, where we play, and where we learn” (Cole and Foster, 2001, p.16). Bullard et al. (2004, p.25) link the transit and environmental justice movements by explaining that “environmental justice provides a framework under which transportation planning can avoid, minimize, and mitigate negative impacts and enhance the livability of communities for residents” (see also Karner, 2016). They (2004, p.2) summarize the transit justice movement as “struggles to unite transportation and civil rights into one framework… consistent with the environmental justice and civil rights movements.” Transit and environmental justice scholarship together have provided important insights into the ways in which transit projects can disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color. Central to this paper, the transit and environmental justice movements have also played crucial roles in expanding both critical and popular understandings of what constitutes “the environment.”

tation has been framed in explicitly environmental terms as something that can both exacerbate and potentially mitigate global climate change, understanding metropolitan transit decisions through a political ecology framework seems a worthwhile, even necessary, undertaking. Recent literature in political ecology has indeed called for studies to address this lacuna (Monstadt, 2009). Our conclusion elaborates additional avenues for synergies between transportation geography and political ecology. The paper is organized into three sections. First, we present the study's theoretical and methodological frameworks. Second, we analyze the case example of the environmental subjectivities that emerged around the EBBRT project. Finally, we present our conclusions, and outline future fruitful directions for drawing insights from political ecology to bolster transportation geography research and scholarship. 2. Frameworks of transportation justice: towards a political ecology approach Conflicts over transportation access have been at the core of many civil rights struggles in the U.S. Think, for instance, of the Montgomery bus boycott, or the early ‘separate but equal’ doctrine enshrining racial segregation, which was rooted in a Louisiana law requiring racially separate accommodations in railroad cars (Bullard and Johnson, 1997). Thus, it is understandable that many efforts to study inequalities in access to transit have typically been framed in a transit justice or environmental justice framework (Gössling, 2016). However, critical transportation geography literature is just beginning to engage with political ecology insights (c.f. Kuby, 2010; Schwanen, 2012). The potential for pursuing synergies between these approaches seems great, particularly as transportation has emerged as a significant theater of both regional and municipal governance of climate change mitigation. According to the US Department of Transportation, for example, transportation is just behind electricity generation as the largest contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2016). Here we provide a brief overview of environmental justice and transit justice scholarship, and then outline political ecology's analytical strengths, specifically explaining how it differs from environmental justice and political economy orientations. We then introduce political ecology's environmental subjectivities thesis (Robbins, 2012). The section concludes with a description of the methods this study employs.

2.2. Political ecology Political ecology is a critical framework for addressing humanenvironment interactions. While it is neither a method nor a particular set of theories, Robbins (2012, p.87) emphasizes that “political ecology narratives typically track the historical processes, legal and institutional infrastructures, and socially implicated assumptions and discourses” that lead to unjust outcomes. He (2012, p.88) also suggests that “by critically evaluating who is put at environmental risk and why, political ecologies pull at the threads of the global environmental system, to better explicate how it works.” Political ecology's roots can be traced to Marxist political economy and geographic theory (Keil, 2003; Castree, 2005; Robbins, 2012), but the subfield has grown to incorporate insights from environmental justice scholarship and post-structural theory. Environmental justice scholarship has played a central role in political ecology's analytical expansion to include urban sites in its field of vision (Robbins, 2012). Despite this overlap, several scholars have directly addressed the difference between environmental justice and urban political ecology (UPE) scholarship (Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003; Holifield, 2009; Kitchen, 2013). These studies tease out the distinctions between the two orientations, primarily asserting that environmental justice, which emphasizes direct action, is less tightly tied to theory, and often operates within Rawlsian distributional justice and sustainability frameworks that are aligned with liberal democratic orientations and tend to obfuscate deeper structural dynamics. Political ecology, though often still considered a normative community of practice (Forsyth, 2008; Rocheleau, 2008; Robbins, 2012), is less associated with direct action, and asks deeper “why” questions about the processes that create uneven distributions. Despite these critiques, we argue that environmental/transit justice and political ecology have many logical points of intersection, especially as both are concerned with the uneven distribution of socio-ecological hazards and risk. While it often retains a Marxist emphasis on class and structural relations, political ecology has brought the environment back into political economic analysis by embracing the notion that “the systems that govern use, overuse, degradation, and recovery of the environment are structured into a larger social engine, which revolves around the control of nature and labor” (Keil, 2003; Robbins, 2012, p.59). While

2.1. Transit justice and environmental justice In the United States, both the transit justice and environmental justice movements have deep roots in the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, several cite Rosa Parks' legendary act of resistance aboard a Montgomery, Alabama bus as the spark that fueled mid-20th century efforts to end institutionalized, racialized, oppression in the United States (Cole and Foster, 2001; Bullard, 2003; Bullard et al., 2004; Agyeman, 2005). Transit justice and transit equity movements are broadly concerned with the “fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of transportation investments across demographic groups and space” (Karner, 2016, p.46). Recent transit justice scholarship has explored the different theories of justice that inform transportation policy and projects (Martens, 2016; Pereira et al., 2016). Empirically, Karner et al. (2016), suggest that the transit justice literature has tended to focus on the ways in which transit systems mediate access to jobs, healthy food, physical activity, and healthcare, as well as exposure to burdens such as air pollution, noise, and risk of collision (see also Lucas, 2004, 2006). Recognition of the environmental justice movement as an independent, yet related, initiative did not come until later, when an African American community united in protest around the construction of a hazardous waste facility in Warren County, North Carolina in 1982 (McGurty, 2007). The movement was institutionalized in 1991 at the 96

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

I. Behrsin, C. Benner

DeLanda, 2006). Thus, while environmental and transit justice approaches generally focus on inequity and activism organized around racialized and class identities, political ecology's environmental subjectivities thesis provides an alternative lens through which to explore the material interactions that lead to collective identity and political mobilization. Indeed, UPE scholar Nik Heynen (2014, p.602) has asserted that “broadening the sorts of political subjectivities who both suffer and benefit from the uneven production of urban nature is an important task that requires more intellectual, as well as political, attention.” In sum, subjectivities develop through everyday practices and engagements with the environment (c.f. Grove, 2009; Holifield, 2009). These subjectivities, which emerge in relation to particular material configurations, lead to new avenues through which collectivities come together and engage in political action, sometimes in ways that transportation planners and engineers might not predict.

political ecology continues to employ political economic analysis, there are nevertheless distinctions between the two orientations. Galt (2013) suggests that there are three main differences between political economy and political ecology. First, political ecology tends to be more place-based and grounded in ethnographic fieldwork. Second, political ecology has been more receptive to incorporating poststructural approaches. Most relevant to this paper's case study is poststructural theory's attention to subjectivities, discourse, and power in knowledge production (Foucault, 1980, 1991). Third, Galt (2013, p.9) argues that unlike political economic scholarship, “most political ecology conceptualizes nature as having causal powers or ‘agency’ that must be taken into account for better explanations of social and socio-ecological phenomena.” Material agency, or vibrance (Bennett, 2010), as will be discussed in the next section, is also enrolled in the development of particular subjectivities. In summary, Galt (2013, p.641) asserts, political ecology “offers the potential for better analysis and action through paying simultaneous attention to the workings of capital, rationalities and the makings of meaning, and ecological flows of materials and energy.” While much of political ecology scholarship has attended to rural areas, we reiterate Heynen et al.'s (2006) assertion that a political ecology understanding of ‘the environment” should be extended to include urban contexts as well.

2.4. Methodology: participant observation in Oakland, California While political ecology scholarship cannot be defined by a single set of methodologies or theoretical concepts, it does have distinguishing features such as multi-scalar analysis, political economic analysis, historical analysis, ethnography, discourse analysis and ecological field studies (McCarthy, 2002; Neumann, 2009; Robbins, 2012). This study is informed by six months of participant observation by the first author with TransForm, a transit advocacy organization in Oakland, California. Findings draw on notes taken during multi-stakeholder organizing meetings; daily communication with community organization representatives, transit riders, and local residents; observing and speaking at public meetings; observation of rider experiences as a passenger on AC Transit Bus Line 1, and structured interviews with representatives from 19 of the 33 organizations that participated in the EBBRT advocacy coalition. The structured interviews lasted between 45 min and 2 h, and were guided by an interview protocol focused on questions related to each organization's history of engagement with the EBBRT project. Analysis did not require full transcriptions or the development of a coding scheme. Notes from interviews and participant observation were validated and contextualized by reviewing newspaper articles, policy documents, and relevant secondary literature.

2.3. Political ecology's environmental subjectivities thesis Subjectivity research is not unfamiliar territory for transportation geographers. Indeed, this journal has published several articles which deal explicitly with the concept of mobile subjectivities – “possible ways of being, experiencing and moving through space that often have significant impacts on people's everyday life” (Schwanen and Páez, 2010, p.593; see also Budd, 2011; Schwanen et al., 2012; Jensen, 2013; McLaren, 2016; Yu, 2016). We suggest that political ecology's environmental subjectivities thesis (Robbins, 2012) can lend further nuance to mobility subjectivity research by paying particular attention to environmental governance and materiality. The first thread of the environmental subjectivities thesis attends to governance technologies – rules, institutions, and social norms – that enroll environmental discourses, and the ways in which these produce subjectivities, or reflexive understandings of the self (Butler, 1997). Using Foucault's concept of governmentality (Foucault, 1991), political ecology studies have explored the internalization of expectations of conduct. Within political ecology scholarship, this focus on governance teases out the ways in which state institutions and social norms, developed under the auspices of environmental management, effect changes not only within environmental systems, but also within political subjects themselves (Leffers and Ballamingie, 2013). The outcome is the emergence of citizens whose subjectivities are expressed through behaviors such as forest stewardship (Agrawal, 2005; Li, 2007), lawn maintenance (Robbins, 2007), and carbon emissions monitoring (Rice, 2010, 2014), all of which are cast in explicitly environmental terms. The environmental subjectivities thesis' second thread takes materiality seriously in its analysis. It emphasizes the subjectivities that develop through networked interactions with other people and nonhuman objects,1 and the attendant opportunities for political mobilization that these interactions produce. This approach foregrounds the affective relationships that develop among people and things (Grove and Pugh, 2015), and the political potential that these relationships open up. Rather than being organized along prescribed domains of class, ethnicity, or gender, these polities emerge through networked assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Guattari, 1995; Latour, 2005;

3. Case study: bus rapid transit for Oakland's International Boulevard corridor 3.1. Oakland's International Boulevard International Boulevard has been one of the main transit corridors in Oakland for over 100 years. The neighborhoods surrounding the Boulevard are among the poorest in the city, and have a high concentration of Latinos (50%) and African-Americans (25%). In 2013, a full 62% of residents of these neighborhoods earned less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, a reasonable threshold for a minimum basic income given high housing costs in the area. Homeownership levels stood at only 27%, only 69% of households had adequate vehicle availability, 35% were non-citizens, and the 4year graduation rate from area highs schools was only 60%.2 AC Transit Bus Line 1 is the primary transit line that operates along this corridor, and occupies a similar route as the proposed EBBRT project (see Fig. 1). A 2011 AC Transit report found Line 1 to be one of the of the most heavily-used routes in the East Bay, averaging 12,000 passengers on weekdays (AC Transit, 2011). It also found that it is one 2 All demographic data comes from the 2013 version data of the Center for Regional Change Regional Opportunity Index, including all census tracts on both sides of International Boulevard from Lake Merritt to the San Leandro city border. See http:// interact.regionalchange.ucdavis.edu/roi/. Adequate vehicle availability is defined by having at least one vehicle per worker, or one vehicle per household if there are no workers in the household.

1 Assemblage theory and similar approaches like vital materialism (Bennett, 2010) however, reject an overly-simplified human/other-than-human binary determination (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Guattari, 1995; DeLanda, 2006).

97

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

I. Behrsin, C. Benner

Fig. 1. Proposed EBBRT alignment, courtesy of AC transit (2-column).

3.2. Proposed interventions and processes

of the most productive routes, with over 75 passengers per service hour. However, only 57% percent of the bus's running time is spent in motion – delays and dwell time represent 19% and 24% of run time, respectively. Furthermore, buses rarely operate according to scheduled running time. In fact, the report found that actual running time only fell below the scheduled running time (73 min for the entire route) in the evening. Several factors help explain why the current system is not operating as effectively as transit planners would like. First, the fact that the route is such a popular one can also be understood as a source of its own undoing. Because few passengers pre-pay for their tickets, every time a new passenger boards, the bus has to wait for coins to be counted, bills to be flattened, etc. This helps explain Line 1's significant dwell time. Second, the line serves neighborhoods with higher than average concentrations of transit-dependent populations (AC Transit, 2007a). Without level boarding platforms, those in wheelchairs or pushing strollers need extra time to board. Most notably, during the afternoon peak travel time, only 18% of trips were completed according to the scheduled time. Traffic congestion caused by private vehicles also contributes to delayed run times, as well as to local air pollution. In fact, according to the City of Oakland International Boulevard Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Plan, the neighborhoods along International Boulevard have more child emergency room visits due to asthma than the rest of Alameda County (Raimi + Associates, 2011, p.3.21). In addition to being home to inefficient transit service and poor air quality, International Boulevard can be unsafe for bicyclists and pedestrians. Pedestrians must sometimes travel 1000 ft to reach a signalized intersection, whereas, ideally, this distance should be less than 600 ft (Raimi + Associates, 2011, p.6.20).

In order to address these mobility concerns, AC Transit proposed implementing a BRT line along the International Boulevard corridor (see Fig. 1). According to Wright and Hook (2007, p.iii), BRT projects “deliver a high-quality mass transit system within the budgets of most municipalities, even in low-income cities.” The EBBRT project was designed to improve transit service and increase transit ridership by providing a viable alternative to auto travel, thereby reducing traffic levels and significantly cutting emissions and pollutants in some of Oakland's poorest neighborhoods.3 While some BRT projects, especially in the global South, have garnered critique for being less equityoriented than their proponents suggest, the EBBRT project seems poised to avoid management arrangements such as private operation (PagetSeekins, 2015; Rizzo, 2015) and increased fares (Paget-Seekins, 2015; Rizzo, 2015; Vermeiren et al., 2015) that tend to disproportionately affect lower-income residents. AC Transit argues that the project will substantially increase service frequencies and enhance transit reliability and speed in a particularly high-demand, congested travel corridor. Proposed improvements include implementing separated 11- to 12foot one-way transit lanes along International Boulevard, centerboarding stations with canopies and ticket kiosks, prioritized traffic signals for transit vehicles, and modern safety, security and communications systems. Low-floor articulated transit vehicles would stop at raised-platform stations, allowing level boarding and alighting through any door (see Fig. 2). Eventually, EBBRT is estimated to increase corridor ridership from 24,000 to 49,000 patrons per day in 2025,

3 Though the initial proposal called for the EBBRT system to run from San Leandro BART through Oakland to Downtown Berkeley BART, this paper will only discuss the Oakland segment.

98

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

I. Behrsin, C. Benner

Fig. 2. Proposed EBBRT station improvements (2-column).

(DOSL). The largest sources of funding for the EBBRT project comes from federal funding sources, including the Federal Transit Administration's “Small Starts” program, and the transit capital investment program, but is also supplemented with a number of local, regional and state-wide funding sources.

reduce yearly car trips along the corridor by three million and prevent 1900 tons of GHG emissions per year (AC Transit, n.d.). The total cost of the program, according to an AC Transit EBBRT project manager, will be under $200 million (personal communication, Oakland, November 7, 2011). In the case of the EBBRT project, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) required AC Transit to invite relevant government officials, project supporters, and community members to an initial public meeting to discuss the potential significant impacts of the project. AC Transit met public input requirements for the scoping phase with a series of public meetings between May 2003 and February 2004. Major themes of public concern during this phase included 1) Impacts on local bus stops, bus service, and the region's light rail system – Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART); 2) Neighborhood and business impacts; 3) Potential of service to Jack London Square; 4) How Oakland's Chinatown could be better served (AC Transit, 2007a, p.7.6–7.8). The second phase of the process revolved around the preparation of the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). AC Transit published its DEIR in April 2007. An AC Transit-produced flyer advertising the DEIR listed over eight locations in Oakland and two websites where the document could be viewed, as well as provided information for two public hearings to discuss the project in Oakland (AC Transit, 2007b). The public comment phase was the second major opportunity for public involvement in the DEIR process. The public was given 180 days to respond either in person or in writing to the DEIR. For the EBBRT project, two public hearings were held in June 2007, one in Downtown Oakland, and the other at the Fruitvale/San Antonio Senior Center. A website and physical address for receiving public comments were publicized as well (AC Transit, 2007b). The fourth phase of the process involved responding to public comments. All comments regarding the DEIR must be addressed either by modifying, developing, or evaluating additional alternatives, improving analysis, making corrections, or documenting why no action was taken (Wachs, 2004, 155). The EBBRT Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) was released in February 2012, which marked the launch of the project's fifth phase. AC Transit held six public meetings in Oakland between February and March 2012 in which they presented the FEIR in various neighborhoods along the International Boulevard corridor, and responded to questions, comments, and concerns. One month later, the AC Transit Board of Directors voted to endorse what became known as the “DOSL” alternative. Rather than extending the route all the way to the Berkeley border, this alternative alignment proposed the route run between Downtown Oakland and San Leandro

4. Discussion: emergence of environmental subjectivities in the EBBRT planning process This paper now turns to the outcomes and tensions that emerged during the EBBRT decision-making process in Oakland. The Oakland Public Works Committee reviewed the project on July 10, 2012 and recommended that the full City Council approve it with several conditions. One week later the Oakland City Council voted 7–0, with one member excused, approving the project. Despite its passage, sites of social justice and political-economic tension familiar to transportation planners – concerns around local hiring preferences, parking loss, and gentrification – became evident throughout the planning process. There is a limit, however, to the extent to which examining equity and political-economic dynamics can explain the ways in which the public interpreted and engaged in these efforts. Bringing in political ecology's attention to subjectivities and the ways in which they are shaped by particular human-environment interactions illuminates additional dynamics that a political economic lens alone cannot. This analysis offers insights as to why the initiative and its champions encountered both lukewarm reception and fierce resistance from some of the very constituencies it aimed to serve. 4.1. Treescapes as triumphs Attending to the history of changes in the built environment that have taken place in Oakland is essential in order to understand how varying local dispositions towards the EBBRT project developed and shifted over time. One well-known redevelopment effort, the Fruitvale Transit Village project, has been frequently cited as a “prime example” of a cooperatively envisioned and implemented TOD initiative (Bernick, 1996; Cervero et al., 2004; Hess and Lombardi, 2004; Jones, 2006). Despite contrasting opinions that contend that the Fruitvale Village has failed to live up to some of its aspirations (Strickland, 2006), the process of transforming the built environment around the Fruitvale BART station led to a particular expression of place attachment, and influenced the ways in which the area's residents perceive their neighborhood, proposals to change it, and themselves in relation to 99

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

I. Behrsin, C. Benner

Fig. 3. International Boulevard at fruitvale station: renderings pre- and post-EBBRT treatment from 2012 FEIR (2-column).

Unity Council, which defeated and redirected a proposed BART plan to build a parking structure between International Boulevard's commercial corridor and the BART station. At the same time, the Unity Council served as a local coordinator for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Transportation for Livable Communities program, whose objective is to

both. International Boulevard runs just east of Fruitvale Village's brightlycolored mixed-use buildings and palm-adorned central plaza. The section of the Boulevard that runs through the Fruitvale is punctuated with medians that feature the occasional bench, ubiquitous Parisinspired bollards, and prominent, if young, sycamore trees (see Fig. 3). These trees, conspicuously absent from many other stretches of International Boulevard, became an important part of the assemblage of factors that initially limited support for the EBBRT project. Specifically, one organization's relationship with advocating for the Fruitvale's greenscaping led this group to develop misgivings about the EBBRT project, though its constituents will be well-served by the initiative. The Unity Council is a 501(c)(3) non-profit community development corporation that helps “families and individuals build wealth and assets through comprehensive programs of sustainable economic, social, and neighborhood development” (The Unity Council, 2013). Headquartered in the Fruitvale neighborhood, the Unity Council's subsidiary, the Fruitvale Development Corporation, was the visionary behind, and the primary developer of, the Fruitvale Transit Village. The Village represented a major victory and powerful turning point for the

support community-based transportation projects that bring new vibrancy to downtown areas, commercial cores, neighborhoods, and transit corridors, enhancing their amenities and ambiance and making them places where people want to live, work and visit (Metropolitan Transportation Commission, 2013). It was in this capacity that the Unity Council worked with community members and local landscape architects to redesign International Boulevard's medians in an effort to integrate the Fruitvale Transit Village project into the surrounding neighborhood (personal communication, Oakland, March 27, 2013). Ten years after the first phase of the Fruitvale Transit Village's completion, the Unity Council remains one of the most influential community organizations in the area. Because of its prominent leader100

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

I. Behrsin, C. Benner

mobility. His response was also in conflict with local media accounts, which in fact reported that AC Transit officials were aware of the dangers the Van Hool buses posed for elderly riders (Gammon, 2008). This woman's question also resonated with the opinions of EBBRT opponents, acting predominantly through blog posts, local online news outlets, as well as through comments at public hearings, who were concerned about the physical safety of AC Transit's low-floor Van Hool buses. Led by local activist and 2008 AC Transit Board of Directors candidate Joyce Roy, members of this group described the Belgianmade buses as “buses from hell” (Gammon, 2008), “death traps” (AllenTaylor, 2007), and “uncomfortable and dangerous, especially for older and disabled riders” (San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, 2008). These physical experiences influenced this collectivity's attitude towards the EBBRT project. As Fredrickson and Anderson (1999), p.22) point out, “it is through one's interactions with the particulars of a place that one creates their own personal identity and deepest-held values.” In this case, the “place” that was generating particular environmental subjectivities was AC Transit's Van Hool bus. The dialogue around this issue that took place at Allen Temple Arms reveals a particular subjectivity that stems from this community's experience of physical vulnerability aboard moving transit vehicles. It also explains some of the resistance TransForm and AC Transit encountered in working to get EBBRT approved for Oakland. For example, one partner that TransForm had long sought to bring on board the coalition was the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). ACCE's Riders For Transit Justice group – a collective that “is committed to empowering the voices of the community and together, to ensure transit accessibility and affordability” is a powerful voice in the East Bay's transit justice community (ACCE Riders For Transit Justice, 2013). While TransForm had solicited the organization's support on numerous occasions, ACCE, influenced by others concerned about the buses' physical safety, was reluctant to sign on to the coalition. Ultimately, the group's chairperson did speak in support of the project at the July 17, 2012 Oakland City Council meeting. She cautioned, however, that ACCE still had major concerns about whether EBBRT would be safe for “people of all ages” (Concurrent Meeting of the Oakland Redevelopment Successor Agency/City Council/Joint Powers Financing Authority, 2012). The issues that emerged around both the proposed landscaping changes near the Fruitvale Transit Village and the physical experience of riding AC Transit buses reveal dynamics that neither transit justice nor political economy analyses adequately address. A UPE approach takes the micropolitics and material aspects of subjectivity development seriously, and brings this into conversation with larger, structural processes, such as the community outreach activities that are part and parcel of many transportation planning initiatives in the United States. Contentious topics like parking availability, community benefits arrangements, job creation, security and safety, and landscaping changes almost always inevitably emerge in the context of transportation planning. However, what the two cases highlighted here demonstrate is that there are particular subject positions that develop through the course of daily practices and interactions with the built environment. The particular trees that greet community members on International Boulevard just beyond the Fruitvale Transit Village are more than merely landscape adornments; rather, they are daily symbols of community organizing triumphs that evoke a sense of self-efficacy and pride. Similarly, what consequentially emerged from a discussion of bus safety, writ-large, was the particular experience of elderly bus riders' experiences as passengers on Van Hool buses. These bus riders called the AC Transit planning team's attention to the particular understandings of safety and security the riders developed by inhabiting specific subject positions that emerge only in relation to intimate interactions with the built environments, like buses, that they occupy. These riders' experiences bring to light the differing relationships that various constituencies – whether planners or elderly riders – develop in relation to the material world.

ship role, TransForm, the organization that spearheaded advocacy work in support of the EBBRT project, hoped the Unity Council would formally sign on as a fellow supporter of the transit initiative. In late January 2012, TransForm's community organizer met with the Unity Council's Real Estate Development Director, a long-time acquaintance, in order to understand the Unity Council's thoughts on the project, and gauge the organization's support. One central concern that surfaced was that the project would remove the median landscaping it had stewarded. For the Unity Council, the trees were a particularly meaningful reminder of the changes they had campaigned for, and their victory over the proposed BART parking lot (meeting, Oakland, January 31, 2012). The trees became more than just urban adornments. Rather, they became “site(s) of constituent possibilities for identity and subjectivity” (Grove, 2009, p.208). They were living histories, daily reminders of community members' efficacy and leadership in local place-making activities. Thus, despite the fact that AC Transit plans demonstrated that the EBBRT would add median space as well as additional landscaping, the Unity Council ultimately did not sign on as EBBRT supporters or advocate on its behalf. In effect, the Council and its constituents had developed a particular place attachment and environmental subjectivity, a collective understanding of self that developed in relation to the physical environment, that led them to be wary of the EBBRT project. 4.2. Bodies and buses A second example of environmental subjectivity, based on everyday embodied practice, also developed within a particular Oakland polity. In this case, subjectivity was aligned with an assemblage of the physical environments of AC Transit buses and the physical frailty that can accompany old age. Located in the 8000 block of International Boulevard, Allen Temple Arms is an affordable senior living community in Oakland's Elmhurst neighborhood. Affiliated with Oakland's second largest congregation, Allen Temple Baptist Church, Allen Temple Arms was the site of an AC Transit public community meeting on March 12, 2012. The meeting was convened to share information about an updated version of the EBBRT route that AC Transit was championing after the release of the project's FEIR. As the assembled Allen Temple Arms and other Oakland residents, most of them with canes and walkers, vocalized their questions and concerns, it became apparent that many of the elderly residents in attendance were gravely concerned about the safety of the new buses. Immediately following a tense back and forth about the longer distances that the proposed route would require the Allen Temple Arms residents to walk, one elderly woman ventured, “How safe is it to ride on BRT?” Rather than asking for a clarification about what kind of “safety” the woman was referring to, the AC Transit representative began listing the surveillance and security technologies, such as improved lighting, emergency phones, and security cameras with which each bus stop would be equipped, before summarily moving on to the next question, much to the woman's visible frustration. The automatic way in which the AC Transit representative responded to this question seemed at odds with other questions attendees asked about how much time they would have to cross the street to median boarding platforms, and how long it would take to walk to the bus stations. Rather, it became clear from conversations with those seated around her that the woman had been referring to the physical experience of taking the bus. The middle-aged, physically fit, AC Transit project manager had not taken the embodied everyday experiences of his audience members into account when fielding this question. Furthermore, his response seemed to demonstrate that he was accustomed to responding to questions about personal safety as it related to crime. This hints, perhaps, at his previous experiences having to answer questions within this genre of concern, or even a subconscious bias that privileged the security of elites and their personal belongings over the physical safety and socio-environmental particularities of elderly 101

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

I. Behrsin, C. Benner

5. Conclusions

infrastructure regimes, and the study of the environmental governance of urban infrastructure. Analyses of transportation regimes can call attention to the “configurations of institutions, techniques, and artifacts which determine ‘normal’ sociotechnical developments in a city and thus shape general urban processes and urban metabolism” (Monstadt, 2009, p.1937). Environmental governance studies focused on transportation systems can continue Rice's (2010, 2014) work on problematizing the technopolitics of greenhouse gas inventories and the processes through which urban residents take on and resist responsibility for their carbon footprints. Lastly, we suggest that transportation geographers are well-positioned to take up political ecology's long-standing tradition of questioning the power inherent in interpreting and deploying meanings of “nature” (Castree, 2005), particularly as it relates to definitions of renewability, waste, and sustainability that are encoded in frameworks for regulating and producing various fuels (c.f. Bailis and Baka, 2011; Baka, 2014). Especially at a time when mass transit projects are being pursued and implemented in the name of carbon reduction and climate change mitigation, transportation geographers are ideally situated to further critical geographic scholarship by taking up these insights from UPE.

In the context of Oakland, an apparent paradox emerged in the resistance that developed from two particular polities that the EBBRT was explicitly aiming to serve. Bringing in political ecology's attention to the ways in which physical interactions with the built environment create particular subjectivities – assemblages of values, identities, and priorities – helps explain these outcomes. Participant observation revealed that the Unity Council, an organization representing a lowincome, largely transit-dependent community, resisted endorsing the EBBRT initiative. This hesitancy stemmed in part from a particular place attachment that emerged around the organization's role in a previous local redevelopment initiative. A second environmental subjectivity, derived from the everyday practice of elderly bodies riding public transit, also emerged and in some cases took the form of resistance towards the EBBRT. It is important to note that in both the Fruitvale neighborhood and around Allen Temple Arms, this hesitancy and resistance was effective at eliciting changes in the project design. For example, in the Fruitvale, AC Transit attempted to make the project more enticing to community members by paying for the rerouting of a particularly accident-prone intersection. Furthermore, in response to the frustrations expressed at Allen Temple Arms, AC Transit has shifted the EBBRT stations near the community in order to reduce the distances that residents must walk to catch the bus. Thus, these two examples illustrate the ways in which subjectivities, derived from everyday embodied practices, can influence mass transit services, and have material effects on the built environment. This study of the EBBRT development highlights the contributions that insights from political ecology can make to transportation geography literature. Based on the research presented here, it becomes clear that transit planners especially overlook the actual physical experience of riding mass transit, and the subject positions this practice fosters. This case's attendance to historically, spatially, and materially contingent urban subjectivities illuminates how both historical urban design trajectories and everyday interactions with the urban environment influence individual and collective dispositions towards proposed mass transit projects. In reviewing archival material for this paper, we encountered a blog posting that articulates the ways in which varying subjectivities have been overlooked in relation to mass transit planning. The comment reads, “I realized the basic problem with the present BRT plan—it is designed by traffic engineers. Their over-arching concern is buses, and their movement, not bus passengers” (Roy, 2012). While this paper highlights the importance of environmental subjectivities, there are several other ways in which political ecology and transportation geography could move forward synergistically. First, transportation geographers could pursue studies that embrace an expanded notion of metabolism that goes beyond attending to the “transport-related consumption of resources and production of externalities” (de Vasconcellos, 2005, p.330). Rather, a UPE interpretation pays close attention to the circulations and transformations of power, capital, and labor, in addition to materials (Heynen et al., 2006).4 As Bulkeley et al. (2014, p.1475) note, infrastructure like transportation systems are “‘metabolic vehicles’ which facilitate the securitisation and circulation of resources through the city, embedded in and co-evolving with capitalist and economic institutions” (see also Monstadt, 2009). Transportation geographers taking up this notion of metabolism could produce new insights as to the ways transportation infrastructure is enrolled in the relational production and transformation of space. Monstadt (2009) recommends two additional integrated avenues for UPE studies of urban infrastructure systems which we argue are applicable to transportation studies specifically: the study of urban

Acknowledgements The authors thank our anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, which helped strengthen this piece. This research did not receive any specific grants from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. References AC Transit, 2007a. East Bay Bus Rapid Transit Draft Environmental Impact Report. Available: www2.oaklandnet.com/oakca/groups/ceda/documents/webcontent/ dowd009114.pdf. AC Transit, 2007b. East Bay Bus Rapid Transit Notice of Availability of Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Report and Public Hearings. Available: http:// www.actransit.org/planning-focus/projects-in-the-works/east-bay-bus-rapid-transit/ ([accessed 7 May 2011]). AC Transit, 2011. Line 1R Service and Reliability Study Executive Summary. Available: www.actransit.org/wp-content/uploads/line1r_2.pdf ([accessed 10 Jun 2016]). AC Transit (n.d.) BRT: The Future of AC Transit, Available: http://www.actforme.org/ about/future.php ([accessed 15 May 2011]). ACCE Riders For Transit Justice, 2013. ACCE Riders For Transit Justice [online], ACCE Riders for Transit Justice. Available: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ACCERiders-For-Transit-Justice/156692301020387?sk=info ([accessed 21 Jun 2013]). Agrawal, A., 2005. Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects, New Ecologies for the Twenty-first Century. Duke University Press, Durham. Agyeman, J., 2005. Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice. New York University Press, New York. Allen-Taylor, J.D., 2007. ‘Riders Knock New Van Hool Buses at MTC Meeting’, The Berkeley Daily Planet. 2 Mar, Available: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/ 2007-03-02/article/26454?headline=Riders-Knock-New-Van-Hool-Buses-at-MTCMeeting–By-J.-Douglas-Allen-Taylor ([accessed 27 May 2013]). Bailis, R., Baka, J., 2011. Constructing sustainable biofuels: governance of the emerging biofuel economy. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 101 (4), 827–838. Baka, J., 2014. What wastelands? A critique of biofuel policy discourse in South India. Geoforum 54, 315–323. Bennett, J., 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, Durham. Bernick, M., 1996. ‘Transit Villages: Tools for Revitalizing the Inner City’, ACCESS Magazine. 1 Oct, Available: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/2mg32071. Budd, L.C.S., 2011. On being aeromobile: airline passengers and the affective experiences of flight. J. Transp. Geogr. 19 (5), 1010–1016 Geographies of Passenger. Bulkeley, H., Broto, V.C., Maassen, A., 2014. Low-carbon transitions and the reconfiguration of urban infrastructure. Urban Stud. 51 (7), 1471–1486. Bullard, R.D., 2003. Addressing urban transportation equity in the United States thirteenth annual symposium on contemporary urban challenges: urban equity: consideration of race and the road towards equitable allocation of municipal services. Fordham Urban Law J. 31, 1183–1210. Bullard, R.D., Johnson, G. (Eds.), 1997. Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC; Stony Creek, CT. Bullard, R.D., Johnson, G., Torres, A. (Eds.), 2004. Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity, first ed. South End Press, Cambridge, Mass. Butler, J., 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif. Castree, N., 2005. Nature, Key Ideas in Geography. Routledge, London; New York.

4 See Newell and Cousins (2014) for further discussion of how the concept of metabolism is utilized in Marxist political ecology, industrial ecology, and urban ecology.

102

Journal of Transport Geography 61 (2017) 95–103

I. Behrsin, C. Benner

environmental justice movement? J. Peasant Stud. 1–25. McCarthy, J., 2002. First world political ecology: lessons from the wise use movement. Environ. Plan. A 34 (7), 1281–1302. McGurty, E.M., 2007. Transforming Environmentalism: Warren County, PCBS, and the Origins of Environmental Justice. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J. McLaren, A.T., 2016. Families and transportation: moving towards multimodality and altermobility? J. Transp. Geogr. 51, 218–225. Metropolitan Transportation Commission, 2013. Transportation for Livable Communities Program [online], Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Available: http://www. mtc.ca.gov/planning/smart_growth/tlc/ ([accessed 26 May 2013]). Monstadt, J., 2009. Conceptualizing the political ecology of urban infrastructures: insights from technology and urban studies. Environ. Plan. A 41 (8), 1924–1942. Neumann, R.P., 2009. Political ecology. In: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, pp. 228–233. Available: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/ retrieve/pii/B9780080449104005800 ([accessed 16 Mar 2014]). Newell, J.P., Cousins, J.J., 2014. The boundaries of urban metabolism: towards a political–industrial ecology. Prog. Hum. Geogr (309132514558442). Paget-Seekins, L., 2015. Bus rapid transit as a neoliberal contradiction. J. Transp. Geogr. 48, 115–120. Pereira, R.H.M., Schwanen, T., Banister, D., 2016. Distributive justice and equity in transportation. Transp. Rev. 0 (0), 1–22. Raimi + Associates, 2011. International Boulevard Transit-oriented Development Plan. Available: www.raimiassociates.com/db_files/projects-specific_2_3397381791.pdf. Rice, J.L., 2010. Climate, carbon, and territory: greenhouse gas mitigation in Seattle, Washington. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 100 (4), 929–937. Rice, J.L., 2014. An urban political ecology of climate change governance. Geogr. Compass 8 (6), 381–394. Rizzo, M., 2015. The political economy of an urban megaproject: the bus rapid transit project in Tanzania. Afr. Aff. 114 (455), 249–270. Robbins, P., 2007. Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are. Temple University Press, Philadelphia. Robbins, P., 2012. Political ecology: a critical introduction. In: Critical Introductions to Geography, second ed. J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA. Rocheleau, D.E., 2008. Political ecology in the key of policy: from chains of explanation to webs of relation. Geoforum 39 (2), 716–727. Roy, J., 2012. Introduction. In: AC Transit WATCH, Available: https://actransitwatch. wordpress.com/2012/03/16/37/ ([accessed 10 Jun 2016]). San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, 2008. Rare Opportunity - Spectacular Candidate for AC Transit [online]. Indybay, Available: http://www.indybay.org/ newsitems/2008/10/31/18547532.php?show_comments=1 ([accessed 27 May 2013]). Schwanen, T., 2012. Continuity and change in Dutch transport geography. J. Transp. Geogr. 25, 169–170 Special Section on Accessibility and Socio-Economic Activities: Methodological and Empirical Aspects. Schwanen, T., Banister, D., Anable, J., 2012. Rethinking habits and their role in behaviour change: the case of low-carbon mobility. J. Transp. Geogr. 24, 522–532 Special Section on Theoretical Perspectives on Climate Change Mitigation in Transport. Schwanen, T., Páez, A., 2010. The mobility of older people – an introduction. J. Transp. Geogr. 18 (5), 591–595 Special issue: The mobility of older people. Strickland, E., 2006. Ghost Town: What if they Built they Development of the Future and No One Came? East Bay Express, 4 Jan, Available: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ oakland/ghost-town/Content?oid=1080080 ([accessed 26 May 2013]). Swyngedouw, E., Heynen, N., 2003. Urban political ecology, justice and the politics of scale. Antipode 35 (5), 898–918. The Unity Council, 2013. About Us [online], The Unity Council. Available: http://www. unitycouncil.org/about-us/ ([accessed 26 May 2013]). U.S. Department of Transportation, 2016. Transportation's Role in Climate Change [online], Transportation and Climate Change Clearinghouse. Available: http:// climate.dot.gov/about/transportations-role/overview.html ([accessed 19 May 2016]). de Vasconcellos, E.A., 2005. Transport metabolism, social diversity and equity: the case of São Paulo, Brazil. J. Transp. Geogr. 13 (4), 329–339. Vermeiren, K., Verachtert, E., Kasaija, P., Loopmans, M., Poesen, J., Van Rompaey, A., 2015. Who could benefit from a bus rapid transit system in cities from developing countries? A case study from Kampala, Uganda. J. Transp. Geogr. 47, 13–22. Wachs, M., 2004. Reflections on the Planning Process. In: Hanson, S., Giuliano, G. (Eds.), The Geography of Urban Transportation. Guilford Press, New York, pp. 141–162. Whitt, J.A., 2014. Urban Elites and Mass Transportation [online]. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J Available: https://books.google.com/books/about/Urban_ Elites_and_Mass_Transportation.html?id=-uX_AwAAQBAJ ([accessed 27 May 2016]). Wright, L., Hook, W., 2007. Bus Rapid Transit Planning Guide. Institute for Transportation & Development Policy Available: http://www.itdp.org/microsites/ bus-rapid-transit-planning-guide/brt-planning-guide-in-english/. Yu, S., 2016. “I am like a deaf, dumb and blind person”: mobility and immobility of Chinese (im)migrants in flushing, queens, new York City. J. Transp. Geogr. 54, 10–21.

Cervero, R., Murphy, S., Ferrell, C., Goguts, N., Tsai, Y.-H., Arrington, G.B., Boroski, J., Smith-Heimer, J., Golem, R., Penninger, P., Nakajima, E., Chui, E., Dunphy, R., Myers, M., McKay, S., Witenstein, N., 2004. Transit-oriented Development in the United States: Experiences, Challenges, and Prospects. 102 Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C. Available: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id= 13573&page=1 ([accessed 26 May 2013]). Cole, L.W., Foster, S.R., 2001. From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement, Critical America. New York University Press, New York. Concurrent Meeting of the Oakland Redevelopment Successor Agency/City Council/Joint Powers Financing Authority [online], 2012. Oakland, CA, Available: http://oakland. granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1094 ([accessed 2 Aug 2016]). DeLanda, M., 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. Continuum, London; New York. Deleuze, G., Guattari, F., 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Forsyth, T., 2008. Political ecology and the epistemology of social justice. Geoforum 39 (2), 756–764. Foucault, M., 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, 1st American ed. Pantheon Books, New York. Foucault, M., 1991. Governmentality. In: Foucault, M., Burchell, G., Gordon, C., Miller, P. (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview With Michel Foucault. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Fredrickson, L.M., Anderson, D.H., 1999. A qualitative exploration of the wilderness experience as a source of spiritual inspiration. J. Environ. Psychol. 19 (1), 21–39. Galt, R.E., 2013. ‘Placing Food Systems in First World Political Ecology: A Review and Research Agenda’, Geography Compass. 7(9) Available: http://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/10.1111/gec3.12070/abstract ([accessed 4 Feb 2014]). Gammon, R., 2008. ‘The Buses From Hell’, The East Bay Express. 23 Jan, Available: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-buses-from-hell/Content?oid= 1088265 ([accessed 27 May 2013]). Gössling, S., 2016. Urban transport justice. J. Transp. Geogr. 54, 1–9. Grove, K., 2009. Rethinking the nature of urban environmental politics: security, subjectivity, and the non-human. Geoforum 40 (2), 207–216. Grove, K., Pugh, J., 2015. Assemblage thinking and participatory development: potentiality, ethics, biopolitics. Geogr. Compass 9 (1), 1–13. Guattari, F., 1995. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-aesthetic Paradigm. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Hess, D.B., Lombardi, P.A., 2004. Policy support for and barriers to transit-oriented development in the inner city: literature review. Transp. Res. Rec. 1887 (1), 26–33. Heynen, N., 2014. Urban political ecology I: the urban century. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 38 (4), 598–604. Heynen, N., Kaika, M., Swyngedouw, E., 2006. In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism, New ed. Routledge, London; New York. Holifield, R., 2009. Actor-network theory as a critical approach to environmental justice: a case against synthesis with urban political ecology. Antipode 41 (4), 637–658. Jensen, A., 2013. Controlling mobility, performing borderwork: cycle mobility in Copenhagen and the multiplication of boundaries. J. Transp. Geogr. 30, 220–226. Jones, D.W., 2006. Oakland's Fruitvale Village: Its Transportation Benefits and Commercial Difficulties [online]. August, Available: http://www.accma.ca.gov/pdf/ talu/FruitvaleVillageStudy1-07.pdf ([accessed 25 May 2013]). Karner, A., 2016. Planning for transportation equity in small regions: towards meaningful performance assessment. Transp. Policy 52, 46–54. Karner, A., Niemeier, D., 2013. Civil rights guidance and equity analysis methods for regional transportation plans: a critical review of literature and practice. J. Transp. Geogr. 33, 126–134. Karner, A., Rowangould, D., London, J., 2016. We Can Get There From Here: New Perspectives on Transportation Equity: A White Paper From the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. Keil, R., 2003. Urban political ecology. Urban Geogr. 24 (8), 723–738. Kitchen, L., 2013. Are trees always “good”? Urban political ecology and environmental justice in the valleys of South Wales. Int. J. Urban Reg. Res. 37 (6), 1968–1983. Kuby, M., 2010. Introduction to the Special Section on alternative fuels and vehicles. J. Transp. Geogr. 18 (6), 711–714 Special Section on Alternative Fuels and Vehicles. Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford; New York. Leffers, D., Ballamingie, P., 2013. Governmentality, environmental subjectivity, and urban intensification. Local Environ. 18 (2), 134–151. Li, T.M., 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Duke University Press Books, Durham. Lucas, K., 2004. Running on Empty: Transport, Social Exclusion and Environmental Justice. Policy, Bristol, UK. Lucas, K., 2006. Providing transport for social inclusion within a framework for environmental justice in the UK. Transp. Res. A Policy Pract. 40 (10), 801–809. Martens, K., 2016. Transport Justice: Designing Fair Transportation Systems. Routledge, New York, NY. Martinez-Alier, J., Temper, L., Del Bene, D., Scheidel, A., 2016. Is there a global

103