Place-Framing and Regulation of Mobility Flows in Metropolitan ‘In-Betweens'

This chapter deals with the intersection of place and flows, through its manifestations in public debates and contentious action. It considers mobility and flows through the politics of place how the future of a place is negotiated. The chapter aims at proposing a framework to study these 'place' arguments in mobility debates. The framework is applied at a particular type of place in metropolitan areas, the 'in-between cities', spaces for which metropolitan flows are often emphasized, but the sense of place is forgotten or at least heavily contested. These metropolitan 'in-betweens' thus constitute key cases from which to start an exploration of place-framing in relation to the regulation of mobility flows. The empirical illustration is based on what appears an emblematic case of a metropolitan in-between, a zone between Rotterdam and The Hague in the southern part of the Randstad, in the Netherlands, the municipality of Midden-Delfland.