Maladaptive Planning and the Pro-Innovation Bias: Considering the Case of Automated Vehicles

This article argues that a more critical approach to innovation policy within planning is needed and offers recommendations for achieving this. These recommendations entail rethinking the values, focus, speed, and legitimacy of innovations. It takes a critical perspective on how contemporary societies treat rapid innovation as having necessarily positive results in the achievement of objectives such as sustainability and justice. This critical perspective is needed because innovation can both contribute to and drive a form of maladaptive planning: a collective approach to reality that imposes constant and rapid changes to societal configurations due to an obsession with the new and with too little rapport with the problems in place or that it creates. A maladaptive direction for transport planning is used as a sectorial illustration of the broader conceptual ideas presented: for both sustainability and social justice reasons, it would be desirable to see peak car occurring. However, the car industry is presenting driving automation as an innovation with the potential to restore the vitality of the private vehicles market while creating effective means to dismiss alternatives to car dominanc

Every-day mobility anecdotes: Addressing the blind spot of goal- and expert-oriented mobility research

Every-day mobility anecdotes provide in-depth insights into, and a deeper connection with, the complex reality of how mobility practices are conceived and perceived in a way that more aggregated research approaches overlook in their quest for the summary of travel patterns. Drawing on a study conducted between 2017 and 2019, this article proposes the use of a research method that adds rich insights into understanding travel mode choice from the users' perspective in a way that primarily expert-oriented perceptions of sustainable mobility may not. Furthermore, this method encourages an inter- or post-disciplinary understanding of reality, which researchers have indicated may also contribute to a more sustainable future