Transport Mobility And The Production Of Urban Space

The contemporary urban experience is defined by flow and structured by circulating people, objects, and energy. Geographers have long provided key insights into transportation systems. But today, concerns for social justice and sustainability motivate new, critical approaches to mobilities. Reimagining the city prompts an important question: How best to rethink urban geographies of transport and mobility? This original book explores connections – in theory and practice – between transport geographies and "new mobilities" in the production of urban space. It provides a broad introduction to intersecting perspectives of urban geography, transport geography, and mobilities studies on urban "places of flows." Diverse, international, and leading-edge contributions reinterpret everyday intersections as nodes, urban corridors as links, cities and regions as networks, and the discourses and imaginaries that frame the politics and experiences of mobility. The chapters illuminate nearly all aspects of urban transport, from street regulation and roadway planning, intended and "subversive" practices of car and truck drivers, planning and promotion of mass transit investments, and the restructuring of freight and logistics networks. Together these offer a unique and important contribution for social scientists, planners, and others interested in the politics of the city on the move.

Helmut Holzapfel’s Urbanism and Transport, a bestseller in its own country, now available in English, examines the history and the future of urban design for transport in major European cities. Urbanism and Transport shows how the automobile has come to dominate the urban landscape of cities throughout the world, providing thought-provoking analysis of the societal and ideological precursors that have given rise to these developments. It describes the transformation that occurred in urban life through the ongoing separation of social functions that began in the 1920s and has continued to produce today's phenomenon of fractured urban experience – a sort of island urbanism. Professor Holzapfel examines the vital relation between the house and the street in the urban environment and explains the importance of small-scale, mixed-use urban development for humane city living, contrasting such developments with the overpowering role that the automobile typically plays in today's cities. Taking the insights gained from its historical analysis with a special focus on Germany and the rise of fascism, the book provides recommendations for architects and engineers on how urban spaces, streets, structures and transport networks can be more successfully integrated in the present day. Urbanism and Transport is a key resource for architects, transport engineers, urban and spatial planners, and students providing essential basic knowledge about the urban situation and the challenges of reclaiming cities to serve the basic needs of people rather than the imperatives of automobile transport.

Transforming Urban Transport brings into focus the origins and implementation pathways of significant urban transport innovations that have recently been adopted in major, democratically governed world cities that are seeking to advance sustainability aims. It documents how proponents of new transportation initiatives confronted a range of administrative, environmental, fiscal, and political obstacles by using a range of leadership skills, technical resources, and negotiation capacities to move a good idea from the drawing board to implementation. The book's eight case studies focus on cities of great interest across the globe--Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Stockholm, and Vienna--many of which are known for significant mayor leadership and efforts to rescale power from the nation to the city. The cases highlight innovations likely to be of interest to transport policy makers from all corners, such as strengthening public transportation services, vehicle and traffic management measures, repurposing roads and other urban spaces away from their initial function as vehicle travel corridors, and turning sidewalks and city streets into more pedestrian-friendly places for walking, cycling, and leisure. Aside from their transformative impacts in transportation terms, many of the policy innovations examined here have altered planning institutions, public-private sector relations, civil society commitments, and governance mandates in the course of implementation. In bringing these cases to the fore, Transforming Urban Transport advances understanding of the conditions under which policy interventions can expand institutional capacities and governance mandates, particularly linked to urban sustainability. As such, it is an essential contribution to larger debates about what it takes to make cities more environmentally sustainable and the types of strategies and tactics that best advance progress on these fronts in both the short- and the long-term.

This book critically explores the relationship between mobility patterns, transport provision and urban development in East African cities. Bringing together contributions on the futures of mobility in urban East Africa, the chapters examine transport provision, mobility patterns, location-specific modes of transport and transformative factors for transport and mobility in the rapidly urbanising region. The book outlines different mobility needs to be addressed in transport planning to serve and shape the respective cities and examines the decision-making process in transport planning and the level of accountability to the public. The contributors show the dialectic between innovation in transport/mobility and urban development under rapid urbanisation and discusses how to practically integrate mobility and transport provision into urban development. This book will be of interest to scholars in urban planning, transport planning, transport geography, social sciences and African studies.

Over the past ten years, the study of mobility has demonstrated groundbreaking approaches and new research patterns. These investigations criticize the concept of mobility itself, suggesting the need to merge transport and communication research, and to approach the topic with novel instruments and new methodologies. Following the debates on the role of users in shaping transport technology, new mobility research includes debates from sociology, planning, economy, geography, history, and anthropology. This edited volume examines how users, policy-makers, and industrial managers have organized and continue to organize mobility, with a particularly attention to Europe, North America, and Asia. Taking a long-term and comparative perspective, the volume brings together thirteen chapters from the fields of urban studies, history, cultural studies, and geography. Covering a variety of countries and regions, these chapters investigate how various actors have shaped transport systems, creating models of mobility that differ along a number of dimensions, including public vs. private ownership and operation as well as individual vs. collective forms of transportation. The contributions also examine the extent to which initial models have created path dependencies in terms of technology, physical infrastructure, urban development, and cultural and behavioral preferences that limit subsequent choices.

This book offers the reader a comprehensive understanding and the multitude of methods utilized in the research of urban mobilities with cities and ‘the urban’ as its pivotal axis. It covers theories and concepts for scholars and researchers to understand, observe and analyse the world of urban mobilities. The Handbook of Urban Mobilities facilitates the understanding of urban mobilities within a historic conscience of societal transformation. It explores key concepts and theories within the ‘mobilities turn’ with a particular urban framework, as well as the methods and tools at play when empirical, urban mobilities research is undertaken. This book also explores the urban mobilities practices related to commutes; particular modes of moving; the exploration of everyday life and embodied practices as they manifest themselves within urban mobilities; and the themes of power, conflict, and social exclusion. A discussion of urban planning, public control, and governance is also undertaken in the book, wherein the themes of infrastructures, technologies and design are duly considered. With chapters written in an accessible style, this handbook carries timely contributions within the contemporary state of the art of urban mobilities research. It will thus be useful for academics and students of graduate programmes and post-graduate studies within disciplines such as urban geography, political science, sociology, anthropology, urban planning, traffic and transportation planning, and architecture and urban design.

The structuring of Urban Space is as topical as ever in this era of climate change, hyper-urbanisation, post-digital labour markets, and geo-political power shifts. Scholarship of the contemporary urban condition is dominated by studies and examples drawn from the global north. Yet, cities of the global south are distinctive from those of the global north. Socio-political conditions structure patterns and practices of urban reproduction and, in turn, Urban Space reflects conditions in the Global South. Th­e result is different space related outcomes. Th­is is the central topic of this collection. In this book, a unique collection of case study-based accounts posits both English and Spanish academic literature to interpret and reinterpret the appropriation, negotiation and reconfiguration of Urban Space in cities, from Colombia to Namibia. ­This collection will be of particular interest to urban scholars and others interested in contemporary urban change, especially those with an interest in the Global South. Readers will encounter new perspectives on the State’s enduring influence in urban land and territory reconfiguration and the contrasting wider rhetoric that affords and legitimises a key role for the private sector. Th­e case studies also illuminate opportunities and possibilities for grassroots organising to challenge prevailing city actor hierarchies. ­They also highlight the political-economic consequences of particular cases of bus rapid transport projects for spatial and social segregation. Across these and other topics, recurring themes of inequality, governance, and environment are investigated in contested urban terrains. Th­e result is a unique collection of viewpoints, with a common, critical narrative on the present and future challenges facing cities of the Global South.

This work confronts head-on the dilemma faced by a world wedded to mobility: the danger of continuing along the fossil-fuelled path and the real paucity of viable technological alternatives which can be deployed in time.