ABSTRACT
It was a natural disaster and its impact on human beings and society that unearthed evidently the socially inequitable distribution of mobility opportunities in modern societies. When the hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Louisiana in the USA on 29 August 2005, it clearly demonstrated what dramatic and discriminatory consequences the limited possibilities for mobility can have in these days. It quickly became obvious that part of the (white) middle and upper classes were able literally to escape from the floods by car while African-American neighbourhoods without access to private motorised transport and without a functioning public transport system were practically abandoned to the flood waters. Consequently, people who lacked access to transport systems were coined ‘the mobility poor’ (Cresswell 2006, 259ff), indicating that the right or the ability to move is becoming increasingly important in the late-modern society. Cresswell notes that whereas about 85 per cent of the population, predominantly white and middle class, had already left New Orleans before Katrina struck, over 77,000 households comprising about 200,000 people remained in the city without any opportunity to get out of it (ibid.).
