High mobility lifestyles: Unpacking travel behavior in Accra's rapidly expanding periphery

This paper explores everyday travel behavior among urbanites in Accra's periphery and unpacks how travel choices and preferences are conditioned and constrained in a context of rapid urban expansion, unregulated residential sprawl, infrastructural deficits, congestion and changing socio-economic conditions. The paper draws on qualitative interviews (n = 48) and a travel survey (n = 2107) targeting economically active adults residing in peripheral neighborhoods. Their travel behavior is characterized by a high proportion of adults who regularly travel outside their neighborhoods, over relatively long distances (10+ km) and mainly using motorized transport. The paper proposes “high mobility lifestyles” as a metaphor to capture key aspects of travel behavior in the peripheries and explores how travelers navigate the opportunities and constraints associated with living in the peripheries. As a unique feature, spatially explicit destination data are used to map the predominant destinations and long distances travelled from Accra's peripheral neighborhoods. The research illuminates how infrastructural deficits, long distances, severe congestion and rising transport costs combine to make high mobility lifestyles exceedingly strenuous, costly, and time-consuming. Ultimately, in-depth understanding of travel behavior, embedded in contextual conditions, can provide insights on how travel choices may be changed and how transport, systems may be made more sustainable and inclusive. •High mobility lifestyles predominate in Accra's peripheral neighborhoods•Unregulated residential sprawl conditions and constrains high mobility lifestyles•Travel is strenuous due to infrastructural deficits, long distances and congestion.•High mobility lifestyles are under pressure in changing socio-economic conditions