Hypermobility (travel)

Hypermobile travelers are "highly mobile individuals" who take "frequent trips, often over great distances." They "account for a large share of the overall kilometres travelled, especially by air." These people contribute significantly to the overall amount of airmiles flown within a given society.Høyer, K. G. and Næss, P. (2001). Sustainable Tourism or Sustainable Mobility? The Norwegian Case. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 8, 147-160. Although concerns over hypermobility apply to several modes of transport, the environmental impact of aviation and especially its greenhouse gas emissions have brought particular focus on flying.Anderson K, Bows A (2008). Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences (366:1882, p.3863-3882). Anderson K (2008). (Presentation slides): Reframing climate change: from long-term targets to emission pathways. Among the reasons for this focus is that these emissions, because they are made at high altitude, have a climate impact that is leveraged by a factor commonly estimated to be 2.7 higher than the same emissions if made at ground-level.Peeters, P. & Williams, V. 2009. Calculating emissions and radiative forcing. P.76 in: Gössling, S. & Upham, P (Eds.), 2009. Climate change and aviation: Issues, challenges and solutions.
Although the amount of time people have spent in motion has remained constant since 1950, the shift from feet and bicycles to cars and planes has increased the speed of travel fivefold. This results in the twin effects of wider and shallower regions of social activity around each person (further exacerbated by electronic communication which can be seen as a form of virtual mobility), and a degradation of the social and physical environment brought about by the high speed traffic (as theorised by urban designer Donald Appleyard).
The changes are brought about locally due to the use of cars and motorways, and internationally by aeroplanes. Some of the social threats of hypermobility include:
* more polarisation between rich and poor
* reduced health and fitness
The addictive properties of hypermobile travel have been noted by researchers.Higham J.E.S., Cohen S.A., Cavaliere C.T. (2014). Climate Change, Discretionary Air Travel, and the "Flyers' Dilemma". Journal of Travel Research. 53:4:pp.462-475.Ram Y., Nawijn J., Peeters P.M. (2013). Happiness and limits to sustainable tourism mobility: a new conceptual model. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 21:7:pp.1017-1035.Cohen S., Higham J., Cavaliere C. (2011). Binge flying: Behavioural addiction and climate change. Annals of Tourism Research.Cohen S.A., Higham J.E. (2011). Eyes wide shut? UK consumer perceptions on aviation climate impacts and travel decisions to New Zealand. Current Issues in Tourism. 14:4:pp.323-335.Jenkins S. (2009). Hypermobility is now the opium of the people, an obsession that wrecks communities and planet. The Guardian. 22 Dec. 2009.
Widespread Internet use is seen as a contributory factor towards hypermobility due to the increased ease which it enables travel to be desired and organized. To the extent that the Internet perversely stimulates travel, it represents a lost opportunity to reduce overall emissions because online communication is a straightforward substitute for physical travel.
The term hypermobility arose around 1980 concerning the flow of capital,Damette F (1980). The regional framework of monopoly exploitation: new problems and trends. Regions in Crisis: New Perspectives in European Regional Theory (p.76-92). and since the early 1990s has also referred to excessive travel. [See: Hepworth and Ducatel (1992);Hepworth ME, Ducatel K (1992). Transport in the information age: Wheels and wires. ISBN 1-85293-220-1. Whitelegg (1993);Whitelegg J, Holzafel H, Whitelegg J (1993). Transport for a sustainable future: the case for Europe. ISBN 1-85293-145-0. Lowe (1994);Lowe MD (1994). The global rail revival. Society (31:5, p.51-56). van der Stoep (1995);van der Stoep J (1995). Hypermobility as a Challenge for Systems Thinking and Government Policy. Proceedings 39th Annual Meeting International Society for the Systems Sciences, Louisville (p.402-411). Shields (1996);Shields R (1996). Flow as a new paradigm. Space and Culture (1:1, p.1-7). Cox (1997);Cox KR (1997). Spaces of globalization: reasserting the power of the local. The Guilford Press, New York. Adams (1999);Adams J (1999). The social implications of hypermobility. OECD Env. Directorate, Unclassified ENV/EPOC/PPC/T (99) 3/FINAL/REV1 (; p.95). Khisty and Zeitler (2001);Khisty CJ, Zeitler U (2001). Is Hypermobility a Challenge for Transport Ethics and Systemicity? Systemic Practice and Action Research (14:5, p.597-613). Gössling et al. (2009);Gössling S, Ceron JP, Dubois G, Hall CM, Gössling S, Upham P, Earthscan L (2009). Hypermobile travellers. and Implications for Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction. In: Climate Change and Aviation: Issues, Challenges and Solutions, London. The chapter: . The book: Mander & Randles (2009);Mander S, Randles S (2009). Aviation Coalitions: Drivers of Growth and Implications for Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction. In: Climate Change and Aviation: Issues, Challenges and Solutions (ISBN 9781844076208), Earthscan, London. and (Higham 2014).Higham J.E.S., Cohen S.A., Cavaliere C.T. (2014). Climate Change, Discretionary Air Travel, and the "Flyers' Dilemma". Journal of Travel Research. 53:4:pp.462-475.] The term is widely credited as having been coined by Adams (1999), but apart from the title of the work it says nothing explicit about it except that "[t]he term hypermobility is used in this essay to suggest that it may be possible to have too much of a good thing."
==See also==
*Dromomania
*Environmental impact of aviation
==References==
Category:Air Pollution
Category:Transport & planning