.top-header{ transform: scale(0.5); transform-origin: top left; width: 200%; } Unstable Installation Series: Scheiner, J. (2007) ‘Mobility biographies: elements of a biographical theory of travel demand’, Erdkunde, 61(2), pp. 161–173.

Scheiner, J. (2007) ‘Mobility biographies: elements of a biographical theory of travel demand’, Erdkunde, 61(2), pp. 161–173.


Scheiner relocates travel behaviour from the instant of choice to the temporal architecture of a life. Mobility biography names the development of travel practices in relation to residential, household and employment biographies, where routines stabilise behaviour while relocations, work changes and other key events may interrupt established patterns. The conceptual gain lies in replacing cross-sectional explanation with process: mobility is neither an isolated preference nor a direct response to environment, but a path-dependent formation in which earlier arrangements constrain and enable later ones. Methodologically, the paper also clarifies the limits of retrospective reconstruction: exact distances and frequencies are fragile, whereas residences, workplaces, transport availability and major transitions are more recoverable. Its wider importance lies in joining transport geography to life-course research, making temporal sequence itself an explanatory dimension of spatial practice.