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Blog post: One modernity lost, the other out of reach – Contested post-Soviet infrastructures

Infrastructures serve as basis for developmental discourses, preconfigure our ideas, and literally build futures because of their decades-long lifespans. Debates on infrastructures surely relate to materialities – rails, concrete, and wires. However, it is crucial to note that cultures, political regimes, and markets, as well as the (unequal) geographies of knowledge production matter just as prominently.

This article by CoMoDe researchers Lela Rekhviashvili and Wladimir Sgibnev was originally published  in German at Berliner Gazette on 15th April 2021 and in English on LeftEast.org on 30th of April.
Continue reading there: English / German.

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Blog post: Unobvious reasons for trolleybus demolition in Moscow

A trolleybus on a broad street. It is snowing and already getting dark. Behind the trolleybus are several cars and a taxi, and in the back there is a house with some shops.
(c) Khusen Rustamov, Pixabay

This article by CoMoDe researcher Egor Muleev is republished from ifl.blog. Read the original article here.

Trolleybuses run on electricity from overhead wires mounted on poles above roads. 50% of the world’s trolleybus systems are located in formerly Soviet states. Extending the count to China, North Korea and ex-Eastern Bloc countries brings the percentage up to 76% (213 out of 282 systems). Continue reading “Blog post: Unobvious reasons for trolleybus demolition in Moscow”

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Blog post: Public transport is the first to go

This article by CoMoDe researcher Lela Rekhviashvili was first published on the ifl.blog. Read the originial article here. 

I just returned from Tbilisi and I am to start thinking of how to analyse the fieldwork on urban mobility  I conducted there during October-November 2020 as part of CoMoDe project – but I’m terribly disoriented. In October I came to a city where the municipal government had insisted on sustainable, pedestrian and public transport-oriented policy changes for the past two years. Exactly before my arrival one of the pilot street infrastructural redesign projects had opened. The city mayor, Kakhi Kaladze, stood up to drivers’ outrage on limitations to car mobility by insisting he cannot be a mayor for car-drivers only, indicating that the city had to accommodate for a diversity of urban dwellers’ mobility needs. Continue reading “Blog post: Public transport is the first to go”

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Facebook group “Marshrutka Appreciation Society”

In our public facebook group “Marshrutka Appreciation Society” we not only talk about marshrutkas, but about everything around mobility and (public) transport in the post-Soviet space. This reaches from funny stories which happened in the world of public transport to scientific articles and job offers. Furthermore it provides the opportunity to get connected to other interested people from this field. We are happy to welcome new members!

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PUTSPACE – Public Transport as Public Space in European Cities: Narrating, Experiencing, Contesting

Today we have another tip: the PUTSPACE Project. PUTSPACE – Public Transport as Public Space in European Cities: Narrating, Experiencing, Contesting – aims to humanise transport research by studying diverse narratives, experiences and contestations of public transport, as they have been unfolding in cities across Europe since the late nineteenth century. The project places public transport at the frontline of contesting what is, can be, or should be public in the city. For more information we recommend their website.

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The Marshrutka Project

Check out The Marshrutka Project! This research project, led by CoMoDe researchers Wladimir Sgibnev and Lela Rekhviashvili, dealt with the role of the marshrutka (minibuses) mobility phenomenon in the production of post-Soviet urban spaces, in and beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus. It provided an empirically founded contribution to the larger discussion on post-Soviet transformation, highlighting the bottom-up and everyday emergence of new orders in the fields of economy, morale, urban development and migration.