Event

UrbanStudies@McGill Seminar Series

Friday, February 19, 2016 12:00to13:00
rm. 420, Macdonald-Harrington Building, CA, QC, Montreal, 815 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, CA

Govind Gopakumar, Associate Professor

Centre for Engineering in Society, Concordia University

Social Life of a Bus

Although many of us rely on buses to move from one point to another, we usually do so without taking the time to reflect on the relations we have with other commuters, the bus as a material artifact, or the bus system. This film is an effort to instigate reflection by taking seriously the quotidian in the operation of urban buses. Grounded within an intellectual matrix formed by “the intertwinement of infrastructure, informality, and mobility” (McFarlane and Vasudevan 2014: 256), this film investigates the quotidian politics of infrastructure and the (im)mobilities of everyday life. It does so by focusing on bus transportation in Bengaluru. 

Buses in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), a growing metropolis of 10 million people in India, are a particularly interesting location because of some recent challenges. Although, buses in the city shoulder a major share of people movement, mobility choices are being shaped by the rapid rise in automobility, which in itself is influenced by policy priorities in favor of massive, government-subsidised, infrastructure investments (such as metro, tolled elevated roads, signal free corridors, flyovers) geared towards private automobility. At the same time, the city’s public transportation agency, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) operates without the benefit of either government subsidies or direct citizen oversight. Against such a context, focusing on three aspects in the everyday mobility of buses – safety, equity, and accessibility – this film proposes that we pay more attention to them since buses are our ticket to safer, more equal, and more sustainable cities.

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The Urban Studies @McGill Seminar Series invites speakers to present on a variety of ongoing research, projects, and issues related to urban studies. The seminars are hosted and organized by the McGill School of Urban Planning, with participation from the McGill School of Environment, and Department of Geography. The seminars typically run from noon to 1pm on Fridays throughout the semester and are open to students, faculty, and other members of the urban studies group.

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