Peace and Planning

You know time is flying when you think it’s still March more than a week into April 🤯 Now that I know what month it is – and since it’s been a minute – I figured I was overdue for getting updates and reflections out into the blogosphere. 

For one, I recently shared some *very* preliminary dissertation research at the International Studies Association (ISA) annual conference – this year hosted in San Francisco, CA. I presented early theorizing around car supremacy that’s been rattling around in my brain for a bit and discussed initial findings from a critical discourse analysis I carried out using public witness testimonies at DC Department of Transportation (DDOT) performance oversight hearings (more on this below 👇).

While I’m not in the international affairs or foreign policy space like everyone else at ISA was, it was nice to see colleagues present (even gave me inspiration for a methodology I’ve been contemplating!), interesting to attend sessions on topics like demystifying the peer review process and what it means to be interdisciplinary, fun to posit that others should be adapting the theories and methodologies I’m working on in other countries and cultural contexts, and oh-so-wonderful to visit some lovely tea shops while in town. (As an aside, much to my delight there has been a lot of tea in my life lately: high teas, Turkish teas, picnic teas, a 17-hour audiobook about all the teas…🫖) Always a joy to leave a place with my head and heart (and stomach 🍜) full of goodness – thanks, San Fran! 🌉

I also had an opportunity to share my work at the Carter School’s Graduate Research Symposium. It was very humbling to see what other grad students at universities near and far are up to…in fact, at times I was more impressed with what fellow early career scholars offered there (creating a podcast thesis! Applying queer theory to carceral spaces! Challenging the insider-outsider reconciler binary!) than some of the work being pursued by long-time researchers at ISA 🤫 It was also very neat to see what a dedicated team of under-resourced grad students can pull together – much gratitude to my peers who worked so hard to create such a valuable space for us newbies to experiment and connect 🙏🏻

👉 One line shared by PhD candidate Camila Campos Costa at the symposium that will stick with me for a while is “if you change language, you change practices” – especially salient given that I’m examining the actual language people use to talk about transportation reforms with a keen interest in transforming that discourse. I’ve found, for example, that people who oppose measures to reduce car speed or space allocated to cars utilize (at least) two discursive strategies to claim power in civic discourse: they delegitimize the input of those who might advocate for transportation reforms, and they delegitimize the impact those same folks might experience considering the benefits of proposed transportation reforms (or, alternatively, the risk of bodily harm those folks would face if the reforms weren’t implemented). In other words, they are using words to devalue, disappear, misrepresent, and marginalize the lived experiences of people outside of cars, casting them as literal outsiders who do not belong to the neighborhood, community, or city where they live. What does this look like in practice? Establishing credibility by referencing housing status or tenure (e.g., ”as a born-and-raised Washingtonian,” “as a long-time homeowner”), suggesting that the input of “residents” is being ignored (it’s not, unless people who use bike lanes can’t also be residents), and that everyone would be adversely impacted by, say, a protected bike lane on Connecticut Avenue (among others). Speaking of…

This was timely research to present given that the spines of DC’s Mayor and interim director of DDOT seem to have evaporated when they announced the long-awaited (and hard-fought for) protected bike lanes on Connecticut Avenue would be scrapped. No thanks, DC 👎 Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve been disappointed by the DDOT director (or Mayor, but that would be a much longer blog post), the third in nearly as many weeks after she suggested in her performance oversight testimony that it was incredulous that people expected sidewalks to be maintained well enough to not send them to the emergency room – despite not having the same concerns about people wanting streets without potholes even though they are much less likely to cause injury, let alone disadvantage people with mobility challenges – and being unnecessarily combative towards a group of disability rights advocates…not a good look, especially when half the people who have died on DC streets in 2024 were outside of a vehicle. While it’s hard to stomach that my elected and appointed officials are so easily swayed by such backwards conceptions of whose voices should count and whose lives should be valued, the silver lining of these shameful antics is that they give me more than enough motivation to keep cranking on my research.

Anywho, I was grateful for the chance these two conferences gave me to practice talking about my research, to further refine my thinking on some unwieldy ideas, and to plant seeds in minds that have mostly not engaged with the notions I’m pushing forward. I’ll have one more bite at the apple this semester (exposing my students to my research in our last class of the semester 🤭) and will look forward to future conferences – I got accepted to present my bike bus research at this year’s American Political Science Association annual meeting (!) and also submitted an abstract to the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference so (🤞) more to come!

Here’s hoping I’ll be getting back into the swing of blogging now that the crush of mid-semester (which apparently lasts weeks and weeks) is behind me. In the meantime, I invite you to get curious – what comes to mind when you envision a more peaceful transportation system? ✌️🚸 

(More Scandinavian treats below…)