David HÖLZEL, TU Dortmund University, Germany
Joachim SCHEINER, TU Dortmund University, Germany
In geography, transportation and related subjects, “opportunity” is a term which is frequently used to link spatial mobility with the notion of life chances and social mobility. Expressions such as “geographies of opportunity” or “opportunity structures” suggest that particular destinations are carriers of certain functional utility with potentially positive impacts on individual lives. Ensuring “access to opportunity” then appears as a central goal of planning and policy in order to improve or preserve quality of life. However, such understanding often ignores the conceptual tension that arises from the need for an aggregate perspective in planning and the actual experience at the individual level. Consequently, pragmatic approaches implicitly apply normative assumptions about the nature of opportunity and therefore run into danger of producing erroneous selections of destinations in the analysis of accessibility.
This theoretical presentation aims to trace implicit normativity in existing conceptualizations of opportunity and to identify analytical caveats that arise from normativity. We argue that opportunity needs to be investigated at both the aggregate and the individual level to improve evaluations of accessibility. In this context, we present a novel conceptualization of opportunity, which complements previous understandings of opportunity by incorporating individual experience. Pockets of local order and occasions are introduced as mappable spatiotemporal entities of ordinary and extraordinary opportunity, respectively. Occasions describe sections in timespace which are unique and meaningful to the development of the individual life course. Finally, we discuss implications for empirical application, future research, planning and policy.
Mots clés : Access|Life Chance|Opportunity|Social Mobility|Time Geography
A103539DH