Book Chapter

Transport in a sustainable urban future

Shaw, Jon, Docherty, Iain

2011

Overview

This chapter explores debates over how the role of the car and related policy developments, including neoliberalism, new realism, and the competitiveness agenda, have shaped city transport systems over the last 30 years. It then explores what the uncertain conditions of the post-financial crisis economy may mean for urban transport and its contribution to the sustainable city of the future. It argues that transport is critical to the physical form of the city, and that the opportunities it provides in large part shape the social and economic life of urban places. Urban transport has been a laboratory for regulatory change, with the neoliberal era and its focus on promoting the car contributing to profound changes in the organisation of urban life. The key policy choice for the future of urban transport is between applying new technologies to try and ‘green’ the existing mobility system, such as electric vehicles, and the more radical task of reorganising the city to reduce reliance on motorised transport, especially the private car.

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Subject: economic crisis / neoliberalism / new realism / public transport / sustainable cities / transport policy / Urban and Rural Studies / urban transport systems
• ISBN: 9781847426673, 1847426670