From Infrastructure to Experience: Cultural Dimensions of Daily Commuting in Asian Urban Life



Author Information

Godeliva Anggonosari Indah Puspita Tanggu, Universitas Paramadina, Indonesia

Abstract

In many Asian cities, daily commuting occupies a significant portion of everyday life. Living close to the city center has increasingly become a privilege, while most urban residents reside in suburban areas and travel long distances each day for work, education, and other activities. As a result, urban life is often experienced not through destinations, but through extended moments of movement—walking, waiting, transferring, and navigating the city. This paper examines daily commuting as an experiential and cultural dimension of urban life, rather than as a purely functional or infrastructural process. The study employs a descriptive qualitative approach, drawing on reflective observation and thematic interpretation of everyday commuting experiences to explore how urban mobility is lived and perceived in daily routines. Rather than presenting a comparative analysis of specific cities or conducting geographical data collection, the paper adopts a conceptual scope that reflects shared commuting conditions across Asian contexts shaped by varying levels of system integration. In more integrated environments, commuting becomes embedded in everyday routines, enabling movement with trust and predictability, while fragmented systems require continuous negotiation and individual adaptation, shaping distinct experiential outcomes. The paper highlights the role of multi-sensory engagement in commuting spaces, including visual, auditory, and bodily experiences that influence perception. Within these routines, curiosity sustains engagement with the surrounding environment, while playfulness offers moments of emotional relief. Together, these elements frame commuting as an emotional transition and position commuting corridors as meaningful urban spaces where lived experience and everyday well-being intersect.


Paper Information

Conference: ACCS2026
Stream: Cultural Studies

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Posted by James Alexander Gordon