 Welcome, everyone. Once again, let's talk about urban planning. From pandemic-era travel to navigating without a ticket, public transport is a battleground for belonging. And to talk about this, I've invited Louise Staule from Tallinn University in Estonia. And Louise will join us to explore how passengers negotiate the differences, how they challenge norms, and redefine what it means to be public in these mobile spaces. So we reveal along with Louise, we reveal these hidden struggles, the resilience of those who rely on public transport. Louise, welcome to our episode. Thank you so much for having me. So what prompted you to explore the experiences of people in public transport? I started out with an interest in public transport as a public space. How can we understand it? What does it mean if we frame it in a way of kind of seeing it, not only in terms of something that provides movement, that we need to kind of plan and research for more efficiency or sustainability, but actually that also has a function like other public spaces, a communal or a political function beyond its own movement function. So I started off with this idea of how can we reconceptualize public transport to understand really the diversity of people that come together in this space and the experiences that they have on a really daily basis. And what was specifically missing in the research that you wanted to address? So I started off with this interest in the publicness, kind of in itself what is the idea of publicness. Not only about public space, but particularly about public transport and what we can learn from it. And I found two, let's say shortcomings. I would say in the public space literature and planning, we very often look at public spaces still in a kind of static way. So the ideal are squares or public parks or streets, but rarely, I mean, increasingly so over the last years, but still rarely we understand it as also a mobile space, spaces on the move or that are kind of in between movements for people to. So this is on the one hand from the public space literature. And on the other side in the public transport literature and planning, it's still very often focused on this efficiency on kind of the movement function again. So there is less focus on the daily experiences to mundane practices and maybe also these minor instances of resistances that I talk about in the article. So this really communal and also political function of the space in itself that goes beyond a public service provision or a public ownership of public transport. Sounds like a promising background. So let us know the most important highlights the findings of your research. Okay. I think the main kind of my main approach, my main finding is that public transport is a public space. And it is so made through the negotiations of the differences that come together within. So I can explain this a bit through this research. I established that one characteristic that makes public spaces general. I mean, I talked to users, transport dependent users on public transport, but I think this can relate to public space more broadly is that it is kind of shaped by a way of how people are expected to behave within this space. And this can be formal rules of conduct like policies of how to access the space, what is allowed, what is not allowed in it, but it can also be kind of social rules of conduct of what is expected to behave. So this is one finding that this is one of the delineations or definitions of what makes a public space or the respondents I talked to. And then the result of this that I focus mainly in this research and this article is that actually there is a set of normative values that come with these expectations. So there are expectations towards how to behave within the space, how to negotiate with other people, these shared spaces, and everyone that somehow doesn't fit within the values or within this normativity that sets kind of a default standard passenger experiences one or the other form of deviance. So this notion of deviance comes repeatedly also in my article that can be situational. So someone doesn't quite behave according to the situation, or it can be societal which is very prevalent. I think in public transport, this can be someone who can't afford the public transport ticket. I look at people who resort to fare evasion because they can't afford public transport ticket. It can also be someone who can't really navigate the infrastructure that is very restrictive. So control barriers, they also come as a result from fair policies that we need to somehow control the entrance. So people that travel with France, people that travel with some kind of luggage or accompaniment, find it more difficult to negotiate certain infrastructures. And it can also be how the system in itself is planned. So historically, we have very center-oriented and commuter-oriented transports of all these kind of values or normativities that shape who is considered to be the ideal passenger, create for those passengers who don't fit in a sense of deviance and experience that comes with this. Deviance that they somehow have to navigate in this system. Of course, let's follow up on that because I read your article and it indicates that there are lessons to be learned from planners, from policymakers, but probably among transport users following these dialogues and interactions that you mentioned. So what lessons are those? So I think there's, methodologically, there's one lesson that I would bring closer to also researchers' hearts is to kind of take these micro-level experiences, so the experiences that people really have on the bodily level and the practices that they adopt on the body, so the embodied practices, as really informing an understanding of which or whose needs are actually marginalized, whose transport needs or mobility needs are maybe not met. And then I think conceptually also there's a lot that we can learn from putting this public space lens on public transport, understanding, okay, what other function does this space fulfill for people in their daily lives and also understand certain practices that people adopt, maybe a bit from a different perspective. I mean, I particularly look at fair evasion as one of these instances, and fair evasion is not a practice that has not been studied or is unknown. It has just been very often studied from a perspective that is kind of criminalized and assumed, okay, people do it out of opportunistic or ideological or voluntary reasons. And I think bringing conceptually this a bit different perspective in can make us understand the root causes of certain practices instead of countering the symptoms. So instead of trying to just cancel out fair evasion, maybe understand, okay, what are the more systemic inequalities that we could address and make it more equal and fair for a diversity of users. Of course, you were touching in one one topic that I would like also to address because it concerns now future research. So what's ahead of us, because you indicate that you will mention before focusing on marginalized groups or probably also the role of technology on public transport you mentioned this in the article. So tell us more about next steps in research. I think one of the next steps is to kind of translate these findings that I have maybe started to address with looking at one specific dimension of fairs. Fairs are a way of delineating who is allowed to access public space, which capacities and our capabilities sorry are considered as standard to use and there are a lot of different dimensions that also affect this. I mean, the one way is, for example, the access to technologies of digital platforms of digital tools. Also, if we talk about public transport to translate this also into different settings of different transport environments that have different fair policies, for example, or just different infrastructure in place. So this is one way of going further in the research and I think the other way is also to understand what can we take if we acknowledge that public transport has this political and communal function. What can we take from the actually very broadly existing already ideas in public space and public spatial planning to also make public transport more inclusive, more resilient and ultimately also more sustainable within the cities. Thank you first to couple of good tips for research. This has been a very straight to the points episode but I would like to challenge you a bit more and if you could summon up this conversation in one or two sentences of the punchline of this conversation. What would it be. I mean, but I would say the public in public transport stands not only for ownership, but for the people that use it. And by looking at their daily experiences, we can understand who is allowed to move and who has more difficulties to do so. Perfect. Thank you for coming to our episode, Luis. Thank you very much for having me. So for those who are watching us on YouTube, you can find all the resources, all the materials of this conversation on the let's talk about urban planning website, including the study and all the interviews that Luis carried on. You can also listen to this episode, whatever you get your podcast you can subscribe to our newsletter below and follow us on Twitter.