Re-municipalising sociospatial infrastructure: A journeying ethnography of Greater Manchester's dementia (un)friendly buses

• Published in: Social science & medicine (1982) Vol. 360; p. 117300
• Main Author: Fletcher, James Rupert
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-11-2024
• Subjects: Aged; Ageing; Anthropology, Cultural; Cognition; Dementia; England; Female; Humans; Male; Mobility; Motor Vehicles; Shopping; Transport; Transportation; Urban; England; Mobility; Urban; Cognition; Shopping; Transport; Ageing
• ISSN: 0277-9536; 1873-5347; 1873-5347
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117300

Transport can pose substantial challenges for people with dementia. Dementia-friendly approaches seek to encourage public transport use by enhancing people and places through educational initiatives and architectural augmentation respectively. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority is implementing dementia-friendliness within a major re-municipalisation of public transport. Reporting findings from a journeying ethnography of bus travel with passengers with dementia, this paper critiques contemporary friendly transport. It argues that buses are vital sociospatial infrastructures, the friendliness of which is constituted by entangled socio-material and political economic forces. The re-municipalisation of friendly transport requires a radical civic offer of social de-segregation and equitable development.
•Dementia-friendly public transport centres education & architectural augmentation•This paper critiques conventional DF approaches•Reports on creative go-along ethnography with passengers with dementia•Repositions buses as vital sociospatial infrastructures•Friendliness is constituted by entangled socio-material & political economic forces