Littering the City or Freedom of Mobility? The Case of Electric Scooters

Abstract

This chapter explores the co-production of e-scooters, infrastructures, users and non-users, with an interest in the e-scooter’s impacts on urban space and generation of waste in Norwegian cities. It asks how urban space is configured according to conflicting interests. It explores what is lost and gained as e-scooters enter as a sustainability-oriented ‘innovation’, and what they add to existing modes of mobility and mobility infrastructures. The focus is on users, opponents and distributors. This approach generates new knowledge about how a broad range of actors understand and enact this new form of mobility. The chapter argues that all involved actors experience the consequences of violations to spatial justice. Rather than easing congestion for ‘last mile’ urban transportation, e-scooters risk becoming and being seen as obstacles.