End of the Road?:Loss of (Auto)mobility Among Seniors and Their Altered Mobilities and Networks – A Case Study of a Car-Centred Canadian City and a Danish City

Abstract

In many Western nations there is now a strong reliance on cars for mobility. At the same time the built environment has been highly configured around automobility at the expense of other potential forms of mobility. Also at the same time, Western nations are experiencing agingpopulations where many seniors will be faced with the inability to maintain their automobility as driving skills diminish or are eliminated completely. With everyday mobility in jeopardy, seniorswill likely be confronted with having to reconfigure their mobility in an attempt to retain their networked connections to meet their needs. Utilizing a case study with a mixed methods approach, examining two different cities, Aarhus, Denmark and Mississauga, Ontario, Canada,this research project investigates what happens to the mobility and networks of seniors when their automobility is lessened or disappears completely.The concept of mobility action chains is presented and utilized as a means of tracing out connections between the participants and their needs, and how these connections are configured and reconfigured. Utilizing this approach, one can see possible and actualized independent mobility, mobile with and mobile other arrangements within mobility action chains. In general, among the participants in both communities, the car brings forward a sense of freedom offlexibility in the timing and configuration of connections. While still being able to drive, in both communities seniors introduced self-regulating coping strategies, enabling, yet constraining, their continued car use in order to make connections. The coping strategies used by the participants in order to retain their connections to needs, after no longer driving a car, varied, with the Aarhusseniors relying more on non-car driving independent means of mobility, while also having mobile with and mobile other configurations, whereas the Mississauga seniors rely heavily on mobile with and mobile other configurations that are car based. In both communities, a growing reliance on mobile other arrangements can be seen as participants age. Through the use of mobilityaction chains, among the participants in the two settings under consideration, one can see the social, design and operational scripts that contribute to the creation, or reconfiguration of these chains, in order to retain connections between the self and needs.Overall, the research project finds that in the case study settings considered, the mobility an individual is able to sustain, in order to meet their needs, at a given moment in time, is related to their motility and available potential coping strategies, including independent, mobile with and mobile other configurations, through their use of available mobility technologies and mobilityinfrastructures and, the built environment they are situated in and attempting to traverse