Docklessness, aesthetic governance, and the urban ‘micromobility mess’
研究了无桩微出行系统带来的视觉乱象，指出停车规管等治理措施实际上在强制推行城市景观的视觉秩序，并分析了其对交通公平和城市权利的影响。
Dockless micromobility sharing systems have wrought significant visual changes to urban streetscapes worldwide. These changes are often described in terms of the ‘mess’ of micromobility, characterised by dockless vehicles abandoned in roadways, sidewalks, and recreational paths, tossed into waterways, and graffitied, burned, and otherwise vandalised. In this paper, we argue that efforts to govern this dockless micromobility mess – which most frequently comes in the form of parking regulations – effectively impose and enforce normative visual order on the cityscape. Based on an analysis of primary image data and publicly available documents, we identify that efforts at governing docklessness also have the effect of governing the aesthetics of urban space in three ways: through (1) visual-material interventions (e.g. parking corrals and mats, app interfaces); (2) linked strategies of visual verification (digital image capture and assessment) and computer vision (the use of AI and machine learning); and (3) visual erasure (e.g. impounds and bikeshare graveyards). We discuss the implications of the aesthetic effects of micromobility governance for docklessness itself and the utilisation of dockless micromobilities and potential impacts on transportation equity and sustainability, and most significantly, for the right to the city.