Introduction

Montreal's deindustrialisation from the 1960s was coupled with downtown renewal, which effectively meant that many low-income, working-class neighbourhoods were wholesale cleared for new projects. Faced with the threat of demolition and eviction, and fed up with spiralling rents and unmaintained apartments, tenants and other stakeholders organised to take control of their housing situation and mobilised to save their neighbourhoods. The housing cooperative emerged as a viable model. This was such a common story that in 1984, Radio-Canada aired, at prime time and on Sundays, ‘La Pépinière’ (‘Nursery’), a one-hour, five-episode miniseries drama fictionalising the real-life stories of tenants who decided to take collective action, form cooperative housing and become a community. ‘Security’, ‘tenure’ and ‘mutual aid’ were the keywords used by the protagonists in fictionalised or documentary media representations about housing cooperatives in this period.

In the midst of a strong movement of housing co-ops that sought to offer alternatives to gentrification and to house disadvantaged societal groups, women in various government and non-profit positions, women who were part of women's organisations, and the women's movement helped each other and other women in precarious housing situations to establish housing co-ops for women. Feminist proponents of permanent and affordable women's housing argued that housing was central to women's emancipation, that is, to the designing of ‘non-sexist’ cities. They also developed specific ideas about how women's housing could architecturally cater to women's needs.

Introduction

Located within a world of moving capital, forms of informal housing emerge in the Global South as a means of appropriating urban space (YUVA, 2019). These housing arrangements have particular inherent and relational temporalities, that is, these practices hold a spatial, material and experiential relationship with time – often, to consolidate, through incremental growth, change in material and perceived security. However, these housing temporalities may be non-linear, revealing a life of precarious circumstances – floods, fire, evictions and changing individual and political circumstances (Bhan, 2017). This chapter argues that this temporality matters: it is a space of transformation, that is, of socio-economic and political mobility, and should be of key interest to discourses on housing. Literature across disciplines on mobility, poverty and capabilities, and choice and agency suggest that the temporality of these housing practices is not just symptomatic of a quantitative movement of people or finance across space, but also implies a qualitative shift in well-being (Sen, 1999; 2000; Dani and Moser, 2008; Narayan and Kapoor, 2008; Cresswell, 2010; Griffiths et al, 2013). However, state narratives that hold a limited reading of the temporality of informal housing practices further set into motion conditions for precarity.

This chapter locates itself within the city of Delhi, India, to illustrate state narratives of housing temporalities through two cases. In Delhi, cycles of evictions have broken large ‘slum’ clusters, or bastis, ‘unsettling the city’ (Bhan, 2017) into further spatial configurations of ‘moving slums’ with particular ‘precarious temporalities’ (Kalyan, 2014): waiting during resettlement, resultant cycles of homelessness from forced eviction and peripheral resettlement.

The criticality of housing and its impacts on human health and well-being have been noted for decades. Indeed, the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Universal Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, states unequivocally that:

Written in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, this declaration was shaped by that monumental global event and the fragility of everyday people within it. It is a vision for a better world. Yet, in the current global setting, as economies recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and face new challenges, including ongoing instability from the Israel-Gaza conflict and war in Ukraine, the effects of increasing climate crisis-induced severe weather events and the stuttering global economic situation, a severe housing crisis remains. Indeed, across both the Global North and South, and irrespective of national economic status, we see how this promise to provide a minimum standard of housing for every global citizen has not been kept.

Introduction

Housing and sociocultural practices are critical influences on human health globally. Yet, the World Health Organization's Housing and Health Guidelines (WHO, 2018) have identified that low-income groups, including Indigenous peoples, are more likely to live in housing that is unsuitable. In turn, this raises their exposure to health impacts from housing and crowding, such as mental stress and infectious disease transmission (WHO, 2018).

For Australian Indigenous communities experiencing relatively high levels of socio-economic vulnerabilities, sufficient, well-maintained housing infrastructure can support healthy living practices (Healthabitat, 2019). However, if there is insufficient housing stock to meet community need, as is the case in much of Aboriginal Australia, crowded social housing can adversely impact occupants’ health through recurring transmission of infectious diseases between residents in regular close bodily contact (Lowell et al, 2018). This can manifest as high-frequency of upper respiratory tract (URT) and otitis media (OM) infections. These infections are problematic on their own but can be lethal because key organisms involved in these diseases, such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, may cause meningitis and pneumonia (Subramanian et al, 2019). Moreover, the risks of infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae are greater in individuals who are immune-compromised, elderly or young (Subramanian et al, 2019). There is also a relationship between recurrent infections and chronic diseases. Damaged skin after scabies and pyoderma disorders can attract infections by group A Streptococcal (GAS) infections. Recurrent infections by this bacterium can lead to acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis (PSGN). These associations are significant, as PSGN can lead to chronic kidney disease (CKD) (White et al, 2010; Garcia-Garcia et al, 2017) and ARF to rheumatic heart disease (RHD) (Kerdemelidis et al, 2010).

In their chapter examining comparative experiences of informal housing residents in Caracas and Sydney, Quintana Vigiola (2022) makes three key propositions: first, despite the often discussed/highlighted negative impacts, informal housing can very well have positive impacts on residents’ well-being; second, informal housing residents make use of various psychosocial and physical strategies to improve their housing experience, which, in turn, leads to improvement of their perception of overall well-being; and, third, meaningful commonalities can be identified in terms of informal housing residents’ perceptions of housing and well-being across cities in the Global South and North. In this reply to Quintana Vigiola (2022), I will engage with these three propositions, drawing on my own research in informal housing settlements in a Southern context.

I begin with Quintana Vigiola's (2022) first proposition on the positive impacts of informal housing on residents’ well-being. Indeed, the literature on informal housing often tends to focus on the negative effects of such housing arrangements and the precarity associated with them. In comparison, there have been many fewer studies and much less written on how particular modes of informal dwellings can also have positive effects on residents’ well-being. I would like to expand on this by reflecting on my research in two informal settlements in Dhaka, one being Korail – a very large slum – and the other being Town Hall Camp – a former refugee camp – where I carried out ethnographic fieldwork. I found that not all people in these settlements lived there because of an inability to move out due to a lack of economic means.

The previous chapters have explored how people can view the same transport phenomena and come away with varying, even oppositional decisions about their origins, impact on society, and ways to improve outcomes. Reflecting on the case studies, this chapter first contrasts issues in sequencing data and findings, recognizing that prioritizing datasets has implications on later analysis and possibly, conclusions. Mixed data can be integrated at different levels, as well. A first approach for researchers may prioritize the tradition with which the researcher is most familiar. However, a fully integrated approach of simultaneous quantitative-qualitative data collection and analysis may reveal connections between each strand of data, enabling real-time adjustments that better reflect realities. This chapter includes a typology of mixed methods research designs, shown in Figure 7.1, that will aid alignment of knowledge to action. As an example of an emerging approach, I focus on how crowdsourcing—a digital approach to gather knowledge from a large group—can support transport planning in a co-productive approach. In co-production, local participants and planners are considered equals in the production of knowledge, development of solutions, and implementation—when the toolsets and power dynamics are shared. This approach can nonetheless result in conflicting answers to the same problems, which is why this approach for triangulating knowledge may be so powerful. Following recent guidance on integrating mixed methods (Creamer, 2018), this chapter shows how researchers can construct meta-inferences from divergent approaches to transport problems.

In a world that is increasingly reliant on interconnected transportation systems to provide lifelines for cities and regions, how can we find truth? Our transportation systems are not just about moving people and goods from one place to another; they are complex sociotechnical ensembles that shape, and are shaped by, the societies they serve. And in Transport Truths: Planning Methods and Ethics for Global Futures, Greg Griffin explores the methods that underpin how we plan for transport, highlighting the need for a comprehensive approach to address modern challenges.

As an important entry in the Transport Futures series at Bristol University Press, the book emerges from a realization that traditional approaches to transport planning often fall short in addressing the wicked challenges of our time. The need for sustainable, equitable, and efficient transport systems has never been more pressing, yet the path to achieving these goals is fraught with complexities and contradictions. By integrating insights from diverse disciplines and employing a critical realist perspective, Griffin provides a comprehensive framework for understanding and addressing these multifaceted challenges.

For example, quantitative methods such as statistical analysis and traffic modeling provide valuable data on transport patterns and trends. However, they often fail to capture the nuances of individual experiences and the broader social context. deeper insights into these aspects but may lack the rigor and generalizability of quantitative approaches.

This chapter provides antidotes and warnings of the limitations of quantitative methods through qualitative innovation. I sequence case examples to determine how qualitative insights might be used in a transport study or plan. The first case involved developing an interviewing protocol spanning an ocean—students from Texas working with a team from Republic of The Gambia to support planning for increases in tourism in the West African country. Using the same partnership, I describe how a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) can be used in online and paper-based formats to scale local knowledge. Next, I show how qualitative coding can be used to organize themes and concepts for research and practical applications, arguing that these methods are under-utilized by practitioners for turning public comments into practical guidance. As a capstone for qualitative research methods, I summarize a small-scale case study of a two-decade planning process for a pedestrian bridge in a socially contentious setting in Texas. This chapter positions futures storytelling as a critical method for transport planners, using cogent and impactful examples from the Greater Philadelphia Futures Group. If contextual match is an advantage of qualitative methods, assessing findings is more of a challenge, which this chapter supports through reflective guidance on the limitations of reliability and generalizability and the time and resource requirements of qualitative study. Finally, the chapter shows how to assess qualitative analysis from the ethical framework, showing how the approach supports the multiple levels of analysis from a critical realism ontology.

Quite a distance from technological capitals, the Republic of The Gambia provides a complementary perspective that nonetheless is in its own moment of turmoil between the rules of power and development. This context shows how adding airport capacity is valuable for enabling growth and cultural connection in a region of West Africa with limited ground transport. The capital city of Banjul is a critical historical case, as a site of colonization and enslavement, and now a growing industry of diaspora tourism. As a nation colonized by the British empire, surrounded by the former French colony of Senegal, The Gambia is a modernizing nation seeking financial growth and autonomy. This chapter leverages Achille Mbembe's development of decolonial theory for both conceptual inspiration and critical lenses to review findings and meaning for the nation's prospects (Mbembe, 2021).

In The Gambia, the eagerness to accelerate the development of transport infrastructure often leads to a complex dance with foreign direct investment (FDI). External credit comprises 57.6 percent of the country's debt stock, or 48.9 percent of gross domestic product (GPD) (International Monetary Fund African Dept, 2021). Real GDP is forecasted to grow in the 5– 6 percent range over the next few years, but another shock like the COVID pandemic could seriously endanger debt payments. This chapter delves into the particular investment of the Saudi Fund for Development's loan that enabled expansion of Banjul Airport—seizing a key opportunity to expand tourism, while deepening debts to foreign investors.

This chapter describes three paradigmatic changes in quantitative methods for transport planning: big data, causality outside of laboratory contexts, and machine learning approaches. In contrast with other scholars, I argue that big data is not all data—digital transport traces track technological objects rather than people and their transport decisions. I show this through a case of understanding micromobility, where e-scooter trips may be fully tracked under a corporate subscription model. However, many owned vehicles, including bicycles, provide no digital trace whatsoever. Therefore, reliance on data from shared mobility services may mis-represent the broader population of users. Planners relying on these forms of potentially biased ‘smart city’ information could inadvertently prioritize users of specific mobility services, creating a negative feedback loop. As an example, a planner identifying unsafe intersections by calculating the number of crashes per bike share trip—rather than performing bicycle traffic counts throughout a city—could prioritize areas in the central city and along recreational corridors frequented by tourists over the city's everyday bicyclists. Tracking rental trips is not the same as all trips for any travel mode. Understanding the prospects and limitations of quantitative analysis in transport is critical whether working on an individual project or an entire forest of transport issues.

This understanding argues in favor of new methods of data fusion—combinations of representative surveys and other methods with big data to mitigate bias while maximizing spatial and temporal accuracy.

Powerful research is about how we turn knowledge into action, both during and after a study. This chapter reviews the findings across the case studies, suggesting a growing emphasis on a critical realism approach to knowledge production may emphasize qualitative and mixed methods in transport to address systems of power for social and environmental progress. However, it provides counterpoints that knowledge of wicked problems may never be fully uncovered, and that mixed methods may over-complicate and needlessly delay finding suitable answers in some contexts. This chapter provides practical tools to assess how transport research is used in policy making, centered on how it is communicated. The concluding section points to the progress and problems that remain for researchers and scholars seeking transport truths.

A slow, steady rise for critical realism?

Traditional transport research has predominantly gravitated towards either positivist frameworks, which emphasize empirical observation and quantifiable variables, or interpretive frameworks, which prioritize subjective experience and contextual understanding. In this duality, critical realist approaches have been comparatively underutilized. Critical realism, a philosophy that combines elements of positivism and interpretivism, posits that while an objective reality exists, our understanding of it is always mediated by social, cultural, and linguistic factors. In other words, it seeks to understand not just the ‘what’ but also the ‘why’—the underlying mechanisms and structures that give rise to observable phenomena.