Search Results (24)

Urban transport has evolved based on three main visions: automobility, multimodality, and accessibility. The first dominates North American cities; the second, European; the third, significantly discussed in the literature, is still in the early stages of practical development, with a few limited examples. Each of the first two visions has an aligned planning paradigm to support aspirational goals and future directions. But implementation has been disappointing, owing to the appearance of anomalies; that is, unanticipated and unexplained mismatches between the vision and the paradigms that refuse to be resolved. The attempts are self-defeating, and result, for example, in congestion and road accidents. A review of the literature with some new insights can shed light on the problems and the anomalies of these two visions. For the third vision, a new paradigm has been proposed based on accessibility and polycentric and multi-timed cities, promising new insights and breakthroughs in the way of thinking about transport and cities. Some practical examples of accessibility cities are presented with a focus on people, places, land use changes, telecommunications, transportation demand management (TDM), and public and non-motorized transport. Some minor anomalies are discussed. In conclusion, enhancing accessibility in cities is crucial for creating more inclusive and sustainable urban environments that are less dependent on cars, but this vision and this paradigm still require further development to be accepted and implemented. Full article

As the road to environmental and social sustainability is tied to large-scale systemic transitions, inevitably, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship should be considered in their context. In this paper, we investigate how entrepreneurial opportunities develop in trajectories of sectoral transitions to sustainability. We adopt a social practice perspective and, based on insights from sectoral systems of innovation, socio-technical systems and activity theory, we develop an activity-based template/framework to represent sectors and their inherent dynamics in a structured and holistic way. The framework allows for the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities in the contradictions that emerge during transitions in the activities of sectors due to internally developed inconsistencies and/or external interventions. Hence, plausible narratives of the anticipated business futures can be constructed. It also surfaces the role of learning and knowledge creation, i.e., innovation, in resolving contradictions, thus creating value and stirring transitions in the direction of sustainability. The case study of the transition of the automobility sector to sustainability is used to test the framework proposed. Full article

Improving, strengthening, and fine tuning, as well as developing, revitalizing, conserving, and preserving, are all words commonly used in an urban and regional planner’s vocabulary. More nebulous are the concepts of it, thyself, which are the other in planning thinking and professional interventions. Who, what, how, when, and where will it be carried out? If conscious and aware of one’s actions, oneself ought to be able to answer these questions without deference to its outcomes. However, it is commonly recognized that we are unable, and at times unwilling, to understand others’ reaction to a proposal, even when put forward according to established common norms and traditions and socio-economic, environmental, cultural, and legal orders. The purpose of this paper is to review various planning challenges derived from earlier lived and or researched experiences that have already occurred, others taking place here and now, as well as others in need of further conceptualization and study. The review methods build not only upon the now classical sustainability framework, but also upon the more recent and alternative Soft City approach centered on place, movement, and sociability. It is believed that the planning topics and methods analyzed in this review can help reach carbon neutrality goals, promote climate urbanism, accomplish higher utilization of renewable energy, and reduce automobility levels, all goals conducive to graceful bliss and authentic happiness. Full article

The transport system in Germany is characterised by a dominance of individual automobility. Acknowledging the necessity of a transition in the transport sector towards a more equal and sustainable transport system, the paper takes a closer look at how local and regional transport planning actually responds to the demands of the transition. Following a practice theoretical approach, the empirical analysis of local and regional transportation planning in the Rhine-Main region aims at an understanding of planning actions that go beyond infrastructural and technological change. Based on document analysis and interviews, the analysis highlights spatial and material changes promoted by transport planning, normative aims, and assumptions followed by transport planning and skills and competencies supporting transport planning in the Rhine-Main region. The paper identifies two overarching transport planning practices that shape the way the transport transition is addressed in the Rhine-Main region: the expansion of sustainable transport networks and the redistribution of road space. The empirical results are discussed with regard to the potential for change in local and regional transport planning. Full article

This contribution investigates the quality of news media coverage on the transition of mobility and transport in Germany as judged by experts in journalism and mobility. Mass media serves a crucial function in reaching an informed political consensus about paths towards sustainable mobility. Political actors, experts, and the general public need to be correctly and comprehensively informed about relevant demands and options for transitioning mobility and transport systems. However, media are often accused of failing to serve their functions in the public interest. Coverage on scientific issues is frequently criticized, e.g., for being incomplete, inaccurate, or skewed negatively or towards elite and standard sources. No research, however, has been undertaken to analyze how well coverage of mobility in transition conforms to professional quality standards. We aim at this research gap using semi-structured interviews with experts in transport/mobility from academia and journalism. Experts’ quality expectations are unveiled, and insights are derived on how well mobility journalism meets them. We find that media are accused of several blind spots, seeming to downplay, ignore, or inaccurately report several relevant issues. Findings further show that reporting is slowly shifting from a focus on automobility towards a more diverse presentation of the transport system, while relevance and complexity of the transformation processes are not yet presented sufficiently comprehensibly to a heterogeneous public. Full article

This paper explores how three cities (Seattle, Greater Manchester and Stockholm) have approached the governance of smart mobility services in the early stages of their introduction. The research finds that cities have limited steering capacity, and when they do steer services this is done on the assumption that smart mobility will deliver wider social, environmental and economic good. While broad-ranging benefits are yet to materialise to any identifiable degree, the potential for smart mobility to tackle some of the challenges of automobility undoubtedly remains, and the new services are acting to change mobility patterns in cities, at least for some people. We focus on the need to develop clear accountability arrangements between the public and the private sector, which we see as a necessary element of a collaborative governance approach that allows both sides to identify shared goals and maximise their achievement. However, we stress that developing a collaborative approach requires cities to govern with intent, which means that services need to be deployed or permitted with clear objectives and an understanding of their anticipated impacts. Full article

This paper challenges the fact that the absolute freedom for residents to locate themselves wherever they want can lead to sustainable cities. Urban sprawl is the corollary to this freedom. Urban sprawl has become a controversial issue. Lines of thought among academics, practitioners, and local authorities have been diverse. Some academics advocate the compact city as an antidote to urban sprawl, some scholars doubt the ability of conventional notions of containments to create sustainability, and others are fascinated by urban technologies and believe in the feasibility of these technologies, whereas local authorities impose policies, one after the other, without effective results. The problematic point is the absence of a comprehensive approach to undermining the urban sprawl sustainably. On the other hand, the physical urban compactness alone cannot meet containment aims. The study therefore study poses a question: Is there a theory or policy that can accommodate all of these ideas? This study attempts to find a sustainable compromise through a critical review of the impact of auto-mobility on urban affairs and to solve the dialectical contradictions between the protagonists of compactness and their counterparts who advocate urban sprawl. The review ends with a comparison between urban initiatives and theories related to auto-mobilities, and highlights the approaches to sustainable urbanism. The conclusion is that all classic planning theories have neglected the sociocultural impact on the urban realm, and that the current initiatives and mutual debates consider the resident just as a physical object who cannot contribute effectively to sustainable urban syntax. The study concludes that urban sprawl can also be a compacted zone if authorities ensure the equity of loci-services. Then, the preference for housing locations will not be a challenge to urban residents’ movements to settle closer to their work. In the end, the inhabitants will share in making an integrated and real urban containment. Full article

As transport automation technology continues to emerge, there is a need to engage in the questions of its governing—to find a balance between unreflective enablement and rigid control. An increasing body of literature has begun to address the topic, but only a few studies have examined discourse and culture as central components of the related governance processes. This article aims to analyse the discourse surrounding self-driving vehicles in the Finnish context by drawing from the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. The critical discourse analysis framework is applied to study a comprehensive set of documents published by Finnish national-level governmental bodies from 2013 to 2020. The analysis identifies four imagined ways of implementing self-driving vehicles into the Finnish transport system and a large set of mostly positive anticipated implications. Moreover, the analysis illustrates the transport automation imaginary’s cultural and spatial detachment, most obvious in the lack of detail and the disconnection between the imagined implementations and the anticipated implications. The findings are convergent with findings from other governance contexts, where discourse has been largely characterised by an unjustified optimism and strong determinism related to the wedlock with the automobility regime. If left unaddressed, such lack of reflectivity will not just lead to a plethora of undesired implications for Finnish society at large but will also signify a failure in developing an adaptive governance culture needed to face challenges of the 21st century. Full article

As policy makers grapple with rapid motorization processes, cycling facilities are gaining new urgency, offering non-polluting and affordable alternatives to automobility. At the same time, urban sustainability paradigms tend to focus on purely technical solutions to transportation challenges, leaving questions of history and social power aside. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in Aguascalientes Mexico, this article contributes to the transportation and mobility justice literature by focusing on the work of social movements in confronting a variety of challenges in the provision of active-transportation services. First, this research explores how social movements express and negotiate transportation-justice concerns to government and planning authorities. Next, I build on the concept of insurgent citizenship to highlight the processes through which residents contest ongoing injustices and formulate alternatives for building inclusive cities. From the creation of makeshift cycling lanes in underserved urban areas to the search for socially just alternative to policing, social movements are forging new pathways to re-envision sustainable transportation systems. These insurgent forms of citymaking—understood here as insurgent mobilities—underscore the creative role of citizens in producing the city as well as the enormous amount of care work involved in these processes. Full article

Technological innovations in sociotechnical transitions are usually found in market or spatial niches. These novel niches may sometimes emerge and expand, and eventually may erode an established sociotechnical system regime. In this paper, we redefined niche emergence as potentially consequent from the convergence of different regimes. That is, it is proposed that innovative niches may be grounded in established regimes but subsequently expand or bridge to previously distinct and separate other sociotechnical system regimes. However, the extension of overlapping regimes creates new forms of “external” competition for industrial participants inside each regime. This paper therefore proposes that regime–regime confluence may be observed in (1) the boundaries between regimes potentially being broken via emergent new niches; (2) pre-existing local networks being fragmented and reformed into exclusive and/or wider networks; and (3) competitive challenges and pressures arising both from inside and outside the traditional industry. These outcomes are illustrated in this paper with the case of automobility transitions arising from the combination of C (connected), A (autonomous), S (shared), and E (electric) cars. The paper presents an analysis of 340 instances of regime–regime boundary crossing examples over 10 years of data drawn from specialist industry journals and websites. The number and diversity of the validated results show that CASE vehicles are both a cause and consequence of automobile industry transition, and hence that regime–regime confluence is an important neglected source of innovation and structural change. Full article

Social practice theories can be useful for studying changes in mobility systems as regards automobility practices. However, many studies address the demand side and the user practices of consumers, without examining the supplier side. This Norwegian study focuses on the role of providers in car-sharing practices, using data from household interviews with car-sharing users, stakeholder workshops, and interviews with providers of car-sharing services. How are car-sharing providers shaping car-sharing practices, and with what implications? How do business models and platform technologies affect car-sharing practices? The results show how new car-sharing service companies, in addition to established firms such as car dealers and car rental companies, affect car-sharing practices by offering several alternatives for accessing cars. The implications of this are discussed, noting how car-sharing practices are shaped by car-sharing providers in the recursive relationship between practice-as-entity and practice-as-performance. The conclusions offer a critical view of how the providers contribute to various kinds of car-sharing understandings, as well as the implications for policy and practitioners. Full article

It is hoped that Automated Driving (AD) will make alternatives to the private car more attractive and facilitate the transition to sustainable transport. However, this expectation may underestimate both the resistance of private automobility and the unintended consequences of automated driving. Whether AD will contribute to sustainable mobility depends largely on its implementation and how its risks are prevented. This paper provides empirical insights into the design of acceptable forms of AD by investigating specific use cases with respect to the requirements of different mobility configurations. We pay special attention to people who travel with children. Our use cases comprise three probable types, covering the spectrum from demand-responsive transport (DRT) to private vehicles. Our results include the identification of mobility configurations and an analysis of AD use cases considering several empirically derived criteria: improved accessibility, ease of daily life and well-being, and improvement of the traffic situation and the transport system. Our analysis is based on a qualitative study in the Berlin area, Germany. The discussion focuses on the usefulness of AD against the background of different user perspectives, sustainability, and societal requirements, as well as an evaluation of AD in terms of its acceptability. We conclude that automated mobility use cases should meet the requirements of different mobility configurations to promote the transformation from private to shared automobility and, eventually, less automobility overall. Full article

Tourism trips in New Zealand are strongly car-dominated. Research suggests that such car use practices do not only emerge from purely rational economic considerations but also result from symbolic and affective motives, institutionalized mobility cultures, and habitualized mobility practices that have developed and materialized in spatial structures over decades. This paper explores the notion of automobility and its influence on the domestic tourism mobilities of Christchurch residents. It does so by applying Q methodology, an inherently mixed method that involves participants structuring statements by their level of agreement, followed by a range of qualitative post-sorting questions. The statements draw on insights from the study of tourism mobilities, mobility cultures and classical mode choice research, allowing this study to provide novel insights into the under-researched field of urban–rural tourism mobility. The juxtaposition of quantitative Q and the qualitative interview results reveals influential factors at the personal, interpersonal, societal/political and infrastructural level. The results then feed into a conceptualisation of influential factors of tourism mobility choices using an embedded, interlinked structure that captures the dynamics of social interactions (i.e., feedback-loops). Policy implications are discussed with regards to possible sustainability pathways in line with New Zealand’s decarbonisation strategy. Full article

Urban mobility is currently undergoing significant changes in cities worldwide, as gendered mobilities are converging and automobility is on a downward trend among younger cohorts. The aim of this study was to examine the dynamics of gendered mobilities over generations and across three different urban contexts in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (northeast Spain), in an effort to understand whether the mobility gender gap is closing and whether young adults have lowered their private transport levels. Generalized linear models were built to analyze travel survey data from the Working Day Mobility Survey (EMEF) to comprehend mobility changes between 2008 and 2018. The study identified a generational countertrend among new generations of young adults, who reported more sustainable mobility practices than their predecessors. Furthermore, results show a general trend towards gender convergence of travel behavior on the outskirts of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, but also a tendency towards gender divergence in the core area of Barcelona City. Since the mobility gender gap is closer to convergence in those areas where private transport use is more widespread, future efforts towards achieving climate objectives should aim at decoupling such gender convergence from car-dependent built environments. Full article