Total Daily Mobility Patterns and Their Policy Implications for Forty-Three Global Cities in 1995 and 2005

Total daily travel (cars, motorcycles, public transport, walking and cycling) in forty-three world cities are examined separately for their contribution to total daily travel needs (person-kilometres) in 1995 and 2005. The data reveal that while the car as a whole is declining minimally in its contribution to daily travel, in line with the idea of “peak car use”, walking and cycling are very mixed in growing their contributions. Public transport on the other hand is doing much better. This is true of the forty-one developed cities examined in the paper, but also in Taipei and Sao Paulo where a different picture may have been expected based upon rapid motorization in these less developed cities. These data are discussed for their implications throughout the paper and a summary of the key policy dimensions needed to start moving these cities towards more balanced and sustainable mobility patterns is provided at the end

Gasoline Consumption and Cities Revisited: What have we learnt?

This article provides a personal reflection 30 years after we created the concept of automobile dependence. The paper entitled “Gasoline Consumption and Cities: A Comparison of US Cities with a Global Survey and Its Implications” and an associated book “Cities and Automobile Dependence” stirred up transport planning, especially in the US. We examine the criticisms, this evoked at the time within the perspective of what has happened in cities since then. Key policy prescriptions of re-urbanizing cities and prioritizing transit, walking and cycling, have been largely mainstreamed, though not without some painful changes in professional practice such as road capacity increases being seen as the only solution to traffic. Urban planning and transport policies adopted in innumerable cities worldwide have moved to reduce automobile dependence, though academic and policy debate continues. The future is likely to continue this debate, especially over autonomous cars where there will remain a fundamental need to keep cities on a path of reduced automobile dependence by ensuring that hard-won principles of re-urbanization of corridors, integrated with new transit alternatives and walkability at precincts/stations, are given the highest priority

In a city like Delhi: urban spirituality, sustainability and women

This paper is intended to be provocative as a way of exposing any fatal flaws in its logic. It advocates a pragmatic foundational role for spirituality upon which sustainable development can be built. It goes on to assert the importance of articulating spiritual dimensions of urban communities as integral to the spiritual and general sustainability of cities

In a City Like Delhi

This paper is intended to be provocative as a way of exposing any fatal flaws in its logic. It advocates a pragmatic foundational role for spirituality upon which sustainable development can be built. It goes on to assert the importance of articulating spiritual dimensions of urban communities as integral to the spiritual and general sustainability of cities. The pape

Dimensions of urban mobility cultures – a comparison of German cities

In the context of the immense economic and social challenges urban transport faces in the near future, the analysis of city-specific differences in supply and usage of urban transport systems is a promising approach for identifying potential strategies for establishing more sustainable transport systems and mobility patterns. This study aims to address such differences by a comparative approach and is, to our best knowledge, the first one capturing the subjective dimension of urban mobility by integrating satisfaction and perception-related indicators at a city-level. Drawing on the socio-technical concept of urban mobility cultures, which combines socio-economic and urban form characteristics, mode-specific infrastructure supply, as well as the travel behaviour and underlying attitudes of a city’s inhabitants, we collected a set of 23 indicators from several sources, mainly from the early 2000s. These data have been applied to a sample of 44 German cities. As a result of a factor and cluster analysis we identified six groups of cities ranging from relatively mature and homogenous socio-technical settings, referred to as ‘cycling cities’ or ‘transit metropolises’, to rather less well-defined urban mobility cultures such as ‘transit cities with multimodal potential’, whose forthcoming development is not yet directed towards a specific future and, therefore, is open for political debate. The mismatch between objective and subjective indicators of urban mobility culture that has been shown for some city groups is another starting-point for changing urban mobility cultures in terms of taking people’s perceptions and evaluations of the local transport system more seriously

Peak Car Use and the Rise of Global Rail: Why this is happening and what it means for large and small cities

The 21st century promises some dramatic changes—some expected, others surprising. One of the more surprising changes is the dramatic peaking in car use and an associated increase in the world’s urban rail systems. This paper sets out what is happening with the growth of rail, especially in the traditional car dependent cities of the US and Australia, and why this is happening, particularly its relationship to car use declines. It provides new data on the plateau in the speed of urban car transportation that supports rail’s increasing role compared to cars in cities everywhere, as well as other structural, economic and cultural changes that indicate a move away from car dependent urbanism. The paper suggests that the rise of urban rail is a contributing factor in peak car use through the relative reduction in speed of traffic compared to transit, especially rail, as well as the growing value of dense, knowledge-based centers that depend on rail access for their viability and cultural attraction. Finally, the paper suggests what can be done to make rail work better based on some best practice trends in large cities and small car dependent cities

The Rise and Decline of Car Use in Beijing and Shanghai

Chinese cities have primarily evolved around walking, bicycling and public transport with their dense, linear form and mixed land use. The recent urban growth spurt has involved private motorisation, but because of land constraints and not fearing urban density, as in Anglo-Saxon cities, the same dense urbanism has been maintained. This means that automobiles do not easily fit into this traditional fabric and especially the historic walking fabric. Issues like congestion and air quality have become major constraints to further growth. Using Beijing and Shanghai as case studies, the next phase of urban and transport development now appears to be to reduce car use with the dramatic growth in urban rail as in most developed cities in the twenty-first century. This decoupling of car use from economic growth is consistent with other developed cities but is a first for emerging cities, hence the paper aims to explain this pattern from the cultural, political and especially urban fabric perspectives. The application to other Chinese cities and emerging cities is now possible following Beijing and Shanghai’s lead

Growth of a Giant: A Historical and Current Perspective on the Chinese Automobile Industry

The automobile industry in China has marched into its 5th decade since 1956 and in 2009 surpassed the USA as the giant of global automobile production and consumption. Rapidly increasing motorization in China exerts unprecedented economic, social, and environmental effects at home and abroad. This paper aims to provide a synoptic overview of the Chinese automobile industry, classifying it into four distinct phases, which are characterized by the prevailing institutional environments. These are the Start-up Phase from 1956 to 1978, Growing Phase from 1979 to 2001, Prosperity Phase from 2002 to 2010, and finally the Stationary Phase from 2011 until the present day. It analyses China’s national political, economic, trade, international relations and other factors and how these affected the development of the overall Chinese automobile industry, with a specific emphasis on the formulated and applied automobile industry policies. The dramatic growth in the automobile industry currently faces a potential period of decline as China’s latest industrial policies focus on alleviating the ownership and use of private vehicles, especially in its major cities due to severe congestion and other impacts. Thus, China has entered an era similar to other developed nations and cities, though it has made such economic changes at a speed and scale unparalleled in history