Evelyn Blumenberg

School choice offers families an opportunity for children to attend schools other than those they are zoned to by residential location. Most families live beyond walking distance to choice schools, so vehicular transportation is needed to attend. Yet, most choice programs have not been designed with such access in mind, and most school bus programs are designed only for neighborhood schools. Such diminished access for children in households without cars presents an equity issue. This study examines the relationship between household transportation resources—automobiles, transit, and walkability—and the likelihood that children attend a choice school. We match data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey California Add-On with school characteristics to identify the school each respondent ages 5–17 attends and the school to which school districts zoned them. We then fit a model that predicts choice of school type: neighborhood zone public, choice public, or private. Controlling for student, household, transportation, neighborhood, and assigned zone school characteristics, a student in a household with at least one vehicle had more than double the predicted probability of attending a choice public school compared with a student in a zero-vehicle household. The difference in predicted probabilities grew for students who were low-income, non-white, or zoned to low-performing schools. Living in neighborhoods with high-quality public transit access or high walkability did not affect the probabilities. These findings underscore the importance of transportation resources in enabling families to send their children to schools that best fit their needs.

This special issue emerges from the Urban Studies journal’s Critical and Conceptual Advances in Urban Studies initiative and features the development and application of a transport-as-a-social-construct framework. The collection of articles demonstrates the framework’s conceptual breadth as well as its empirical relevance across diverse geographic contexts and transport modes. We begin by outlining three conceptual articles that establish key theoretical foundations for a social constructivist understanding of urban transport, highlighting how social, cultural, and political forces both shape and are shaped by urban transport systems. We then introduce nine empirical articles organized around four interrelated thematic areas: the social construction of transport systems, the social benefits and burdens of transport, social interaction and cultural production in transport spaces, and the social and cultural determinants and experiences of travel. Beyond these thematic areas, we identify three overarching and recurring analytical threads: contestation and conflict, contingency and interdependency, and people and performativity. Our analysis highlights the generative potential of contestation and conflict in opening alternative futures for urban mobility, the context-sensitivity of transport meanings and effects, and the importance of attending to situated actors and embodied experiences in advancing a social constructivist perspective. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the breadth of theoretical and empirical contributions and asserts their significance to both scholarship and intervention.

Low-income households commonly lack access to quality and affordable transportation options, impeding their access to opportunities. Low-income households with children face additional challenges. We draw on data from thirty-nine in-depth interviews to examine the effect of children on the travel behavior and experience of low-income adults. We find that low-income households with children experience increased financial and temporal burdens related to travel. These unique and complex challenges result in fewer socioeconomic opportunities and financial resources and reduced time for non-travel activities. The findings underscore the importance of programs and policies to develop a multimodal, affordable transportation safety net.

Some policymakers and advocates view public school choice as a strategy to overcome underlying problems with the U.S. educational system that stem from the tie between racial residential segregation and assigned neighborhood schools. Yet, states and local school districts have adopted diverse school choice policies and programs that may or may not accomplish this objective. In this study we use a two-step floating catchment area method to examine metropolitan-level variation in the relationship between neighborhood racial-ethnic composition—specifically the percentage of Black and Latino/a students—and spatial accessibility to public choice elementary schools. The analysis focuses on the eight largest metropolitan areas in California. Our statewide model shows that, all else equal, public choice school access is higher in California neighborhoods with larger shares of Black residents and lower in neighborhoods with larger shares of Latino/a residents. However, these relationships vary across specific metropolitan areas. For example, although the racial-ethnic composition of neighborhoods is not associated with school choice access in the San José and Bakersfield metropolitan areas, the percentage of Black and Latino/a residents is positively associated with school choice access in the San Diego area. If school districts adopt school choice programs, our findings suggest the importance of implementing policies and services to ensure equitable access to them.

This essay seeks to cultivate a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the social dimensions of urban transport. Through a historical account of theoretical developments and an overview of contemporary trends, we propose a framework for conceptualising urban transport as a social construct. This perspective encourages a shift away from seeing transport as physical and spatial entities to emphasising the complex social dynamics that underpin the functional aspects of transport systems. Grounded in social constructivist thinking and critical theoretical traditions, our framework offers an integrative foundation for connecting three key strands of urban transport scholarship: individual-level analyses that link transport to quality of life outcomes such as well-being, opportunity and exclusion; collective-level perspectives that position transport systems as arenas of social meaning, contestation and mobility flows; and systemic-level investigations into the co-evolution of transport infrastructures with broader societal structures and power relations. We argue that, as societal shifts – such as growing socio-economic inequities, post-COVID transformations and the rise of digital transport economies and new mobility options – continue to reshape mobility, a sociological approach becomes increasingly relevant in understanding transport’s evolving role in urban life. By framing urban transport as a social construct, we aim to establish a critical and socially–embedded understanding of urban transport, catalyse new dialogues on how social, cultural and political forces shape and are shaped by urban transport systems, and pave the way for research that not only analyses but also seeks to transform the social dimensions of urban transport.

This essay focuses on Donald Shoup's contributions to increasing equity in cities. Shoup makes many equity arguments in his own scholarship, among them the harmful effects of parking requirements on housing supply and costs and the contribution of parking to the transportation expenditures of lower-wage workers (who are more likely to rely on travel modes other than driving). He also argues that the funds generated from pricing parking could be used to make neighborhood improvements, potentially enhancing the built environment in low-income communities. Given his many clear and compelling arguments on the often-overlooked effects of parking on travel and cities, it is easy to see their application to many other equity issues, including the one highlighted in this essay—the role of parking policy in helping women manage both their travel and their lives.