A new direction for mobility? Integrating immobility into sustainable consumption corridors

The sustainability transformation of the transport sector remains a key challenge in the fight against climate change. However, many resource-intensive mobility practices that people engage in, such as driving a car or flying, have been shown to be highly resistant to change. At the same time, complex patterns of (dis)advantage and social privilege have emerged that relate directly to people’s (in)ability to be (im)mobile, illustrating the ambivalence of (im)mobility. This article fuses insights from social-scientific mobility studies regarding the centrality of diverse mobilities in late modern societies with a focus on the strong sustainability potential of socially negotiated limits to mobility promoted in sustainable consumption research. It thus explicitly moves away from a sole focus on ‘greening’ mobility and towards measures to reduce the need for mobility, including emerging forms of immobility. By focusing on efforts to reduce demand for mobility in urban spaces associated with the 15-minute city, the article addresses critical questions about setting limits to mobility and fostering voluntary immobility in a climate-constrained world. It advances a conceptual approach that locates mobility as well as immobility within a consumption corridor, thereby explicitly recognising the social and ecological implications of too much (im)mobility.