Mobility Practice of Slum Households in Siliguri City: Analyzing the Nexus between Mobility,Poverty,and Human Adaptations in Urban India

Abstract

The present research steams from the question that how the urban poor, inhabiting slums and surviving on narrow, close-knit networks of economic opportunities, tend to negotiate their mobility practices in a city where the existing transport infrastructure is highly biased toward motorization. The study accordingly navigates through the mobility patterns of slum households in Siliguri, a medium-sized Indian city, within the context that the city’s urban transport scenario is visibly biased toward automobile-centrism. By analyzing factors such as access to transport modes, travel preferences and needs, frequency of travel, and accessibility constraints, the study endeavors to shed light on the ways the urban poor of Siliguri negotiate space in the city through their daily mobility practices. The findings from the data, collected through door-to-door household surveys in 400 slum households, pertaining to the travel behavior of slum residences of Siliguri, highly corroborate with the findings of the existing body of scholarly evidence in the field, arguing that the poor of a city are not “motorized” so far and they depend much on shared or nonmotorized modes for their day-to-day commutes. This adaptation reflects their resilience in optimizing available resources, further highlighting the intricate relationship between socio-economic circumstances and mobility practices.