UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Regulation of Urban Mobility Regimes: A Conjunctural Approach A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Geography by Samuel Laurence Nowak 2017 © Copyright by Samuel Laurence Nowak 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The Regulation of Urban Mobility Regimes: A Conjunctural Approach by Samuel Laurence Nowak Master of Arts in Geography University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Helga M. Leitner, Co-Chair Professor Eric Stewart Sheppard, Co-Chair This thesis examines the securitization of a light rail transit line in Los Angeles, California called the Blue Line, conceptualizing securitization as the disproportionate use of law, police, and socio- technical systems of security to regulate individuals as they move throughout the transit network. To understand this process, I develop a theoretical framework that integrates two largely divergent literatures, mobilities theory and urban political economy. I argue that together these literatures provide a productive framework for examining different modalities of regulating human mobility in the capitalist city, what a term a mode of mobility regulation. Methodologically, I extend the current limitations of mobilities research through a Gramscian-inspired conjunctural approach to the study of mobility and immobility. A conjunctural approach provides an historical analytic that analyzes the ii mechanisms and relations by which urban mobility regimes attempt to secure dominance through complex articulations of ideology, economy, and race. Through this approach, I examine the socio- spatial forces that shaped the mode of mobility regulation within Los Angeles rail transit as one of securitization. Drawing on archival research into these ideological, economic, and racial relations of force, I show how everyday transit mobilities intersect with macro-scale relations and processes. Ultimately, I argue that different modalities of regulating human mobility in the capitalist city both draw on and reproduce various axes of social difference, and the ways in which mobilities are unevenly organized around such difference. iii The thesis of Samuel Laurence Nowak is approved. Ananya Roy Helga M. Leitner, Committee Co-Chair Eric Stewart Sheppard, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 The Securitization of Public Transit ........................................................................................................................... 3 The Blue Line ................................................................................................................................................................. 6 The Structure of the Argument ................................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 2. The Regulation of Urban Mobility Regimes ...................................................................... 11 Placing Urban Political Economy in the Politics of Mobility ...............................................................................13 The Political Economy of Urban Transit .................................................................................................................17 Regulating the Regime of Metromobility .................................................................................................................24 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................31 CHAPTER 3. A Conjunctural Approach to the Study of Mobility and Immobility ............................ 33 The Methodological ‘Crisis’ of the New Mobilities Paradigm ..............................................................................35 For Historical Mobilities: Beyond Mobile Methods in Mobilities Methodologies ............................................37 The Conceptual Underpinnings of a Conjunctural Approach ..............................................................................39 Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Mobility and Immobility ..........................................................................45 Method: Archival Document Analysis .....................................................................................................................51 CHAPTER 4. The (Thin) Blue Line: Police and the Politics of Mobility .............................................. 55 Revanchist Urban Policy and Zero Tolerance Policing .........................................................................................59 Urban Transit and Entrepreneurial Urban Governance ........................................................................................65 Security as a Racial Mobility Project .........................................................................................................................72 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................78 CHAPTER 5. Conclusion: Constructing Future History .......................................................................... 80 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................................... 86 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Ananya, who inspired me to think conjuncturally. Thanks to Helga and Eric, who have made me a more rigorous scholar and more thoughtful person. Thanks to Dimitar, Emma, and Clare for support and care. Thanks to John, Lynn, and Clay, without whom this project would not have been possible. Funding for this research was provided by National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the American Association of Geographers, Urban Geography Specialty Group. vi CHAPTER 1. Introduction “Transportation is important in itself, but is even more important as a perspective from which to view politics and power in our society.” (Whitt 1982, 3) On January 1st, 2009 Oscar Grant, a Black, unarmed resident of Oakland, California, was shot in the back by Johannes Mehserle, a white Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer. Grant had been lying face down, his arms underneath him, when Mehserle stood and drew his firearm in fear of Grant reaching for a gun. Mehserle fired into Grant’s back while another BART transit police officer kneeled on his neck, holding him down. During the court proceedings, Mehserle would later claim he had accidentally drawn his .40-caliber pistol instead of his Taser—despite being holstered on the opposite side of his body—unable to recognize the difference before he shot Grant (Manyak 2010). In the grainy, cell-phone-camera footage that would soon spread virally across the internet, you can hear the collective intake of breath from the gathered crowd after the gunshot and angry cries after the shocked silence fades. Grant would later die from the gunshot wound at age 22, survived by his four-year-old daughter and parents. Mehserle, meanwhile, was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter, serving only 11 months of a two-year sentence. Though Mehserle’s defense team claimed “this case is not about race” (The People of the State of California v. Johannes Mehserle 2010, 2), the shooting of Oscar Grant and its aftermath were riven with racial tensions. On the platform, the officer restraining Grant with his knee, Tony Pirone, yelled racial epithets at Grant while pinning him down. On the streets, the shooting sparked days of protest against police brutality and for racial justice. Protestors lay prone in the streets, telling the gathered police officers “I am Oscar Grant”; others barricaded BART turnstiles with banners reading “end police brutality,” blocking traffic through the transit system (Mckinley 2009). In the courtroom, the trial was one of the first in the State of California to convict a white police officer for the shooting of an African American, yet it also has the dubious distinction of a jury without a single 1 African American (Anthony 2010). After the decision, there were more protests, with calling the two-year sentence of involuntary manslaughter unjust. It is a surprisingly overlooked detail of the incident that Grant was on the move. Taking advantage of a BART policy that provided discounted rides and late-night service on the light rail system for New Year’s Eve, Grant and his friends were in transit back to the East Bay after festivities (“New Year’s Eve Flash Pass” 2008). After reports of a fight from central control, his train was stopped at Fruitvale to wait for responding officers, holding the passengers from moving onto the next station. Upon arrival, the transit police officers pulled Grant and several others from the train and onto the platform at Fruitvale Station. Immediately after the shooting, BART transit police ordered the train in motion—without questioning any potential witnesses—a move criticized by independent reports of the shooting. Incentivized by subsidies, managed by surveillance systems, regulated and permanently terminated by transit police, Oscar Grant’s