Project Description

The recent debate on urban policy mobilities has attracted the attention of a multidisciplinary group of scholars. Literally, policies circulate among different places, establishing new relationships and ways of policy making. Urban policy instruments are produced, translated and transferred by varied actors across multiple spatial and temporal scales. However, a need to clarify the specific dynamics of urban policies mobilization and mutation still remain, once this literature gap undermine futher analyzes and limit the reach of investigations.

Thus, this PhD research explore the mobility circuits to analyze and identify these specific dynamics. Mobility Circuits are differentiated analysis approaches, which consider different interconnected elements (agents, materials, scales, and situations) and their specific forms of relationality. This approach allows more integrated and complete analyzes.

Considering the theoretical debate and the problem, the research questions are presented: (1) how are urban policy instruments mobilized in mobility circuits? (2) how are the urban policy instruments transformed in mobilization? (3) why do certain urban policy instruments become ‘mobile’? (4) how the different relationships in mobility circuits are established?(5) what is the ‘power’ of mobility circuits in the urban policy's production of local instruments?

Research Team

• Tatiane Cristina Serrano
• Isabel Breda Vázquez (supervisor)

Financial Support

• FCT PD/BD/114006/2015

Stage of Progress

• Concluded in 2020