Abstract
European urban regions are becoming more similar to American low-density metropolitan areas in the organization of space and in people mobility. On the other hand, in North American cities, high-density neighborhoods and renewed European-like downtowns have become popular. Everywhere in the Western world, it is difficult for any politician to refuse further development. Therefore, although the most innovative planners in the most environment-concerned cities focus on issues such as neighborhood life and go for mixed-use zones, they are not quite successful in limiting urban and traffic growth. Contemporary society is actually formed by several social groups with preferences, experiences, and values often radically diverse. Thus, we cannot offer one single option for urban mobility to respond to a variegated demand. Nonetheless, the mass-society/mass-transportation paradigms still dominate planning and transportation policies in most urban areas in the world. Because of the major public works funding system, it is difficult to avoid the approval of mobility infrastructure, no matter how detrimental, helpful or useless they are. The public finance problem of how to pay for mobility infrastructure is related to: (a) the production system and technologies; (b) basic political values; (c) administrative geography. According to a common planning approach different scenarios for future city and traffic developments are designed. Then, one of them is selected. Another solution is possible: instead of selecting only one of the scenarios, we should respond to citizens’ diverse needs. This approach responds to the opportunity to favor creativeness in administration.
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Notes
- 1.
According to what I claimed in Chap. 2, we may sustain this trend by enacting “zero growth” municipal laws which forbid any further land development. This would be the seed for an environmentalist “ideology”, or at least a very strong principle to start with. In some European municipalities, this movement is shyly beginning.
- 2.
It is not a thorough paradox to hypothesize that a successful TV movie, which advertizes an environment friendly behavior, would reduce pollution more than some sophisticated International agreement on emissions.
- 3.
Note how recently, both in the US and in Europe, car industry has been straightforwardly subsidized to cope with the 2008 financial crisis.
- 4.
See above Chap. 2, note 4.
- 5.
I interviewed him in May 2007 in Vancouver.
- 6.
One of the first authors who began thinking about reducing traffic is pointedly David Engwicht (1989) from Brisbane. In the following years up to now, Engwicht has been active in promoting and thinking about many projects intending to reduce traffic. His designing activity has been quite influential among environmentalists and his ideas have been applied in several small cities. Engwicht’s work has been political as far as he opened a new way of thinking about traffic, but he did not go beyond the simple proposal of piecemeal, though often witty, solutions. Thus, he fails to elaborate a political thinking about traffic. As a matter of fact, that was not even his goal, while it is the main goal of this essay.
- 7.
Note that Federal funding is made of local citizens’ taxes that are brought back to the community thanks to the political power and ability of the local politicians.
- 8.
Except in the very improbable case that an administrator can prove that the public work financed with Federal funds has such a negative social and environmental impact that is better to refuse the funds.
- 9.
Their capability to impose or suggest the characteristics of the different projects in competition for public money depends on the relations between the central and local governments. The power of the central states and of federations has progressively grown in the last 50 years in Western countries. Moreover, these characteristics and technologies have often been suggested by lobbies which are interested in selling their technologies to the municipalities selected to receive the money. It is much easier for big companies to lobby at the central level rather than responding to thousands of calls for tenders.
- 10.
Most scholars are neither active politically (as they ought to be) nor (consequently) do they show scholarly enthusiasm in studying an alternative fund distribution pattern.
- 11.
Modernity is revolutionary per se. Modernization is a process meant to overthrow old structures and beliefs.
- 12.
In planning, economic and geographical theory, the problem of dimension and a specific threshold theory occupied many scholars in the 1960s and 1970s. For an early summary of it, see Kozlowski and Hughes (1967). At the time the problem was how to overcome a population or an area dimensional threshold that would make an activity or an infrastructure competitive on the market. The leading idea was to attain “increasing returns of scale” – the larger, the more efficient – and the search for bigger dimension was the main goal. However, also at those times, in some situations it was evident that “decreasing returns of scale” were already operating in some situations.
- 13.
There are of course some exceptions like in the celebrated case of Barcelona that in the eighties managed a successful development plan. Now, that major achievement belongs to the past and Barcelona has the same administration problems of any other European metropolitan area as Pascual Maragall – the city Mayor for 1982–1997 and then the President of Catalonia from 2003 to 2006 – also admits. The very fact that Barcelona’s case has been so admired and studied proves that it was an exceptional case. Many tried to imitate the Catalan capital’s strategic planning, but nobody had the same success.
- 14.
In the common sense, most people take for granted a basic idea of contemporary democracy, i.e. that the opinion of the voters’ majority wins the right to be implemented. It is not necessary here to enter a philosophical discussion about this idea and e.g. quote the celebrated pages by Tocqueville (and Mills and others) who warned his readers not to confuse democracy with the “tyranny of majority”. Tyranny of majority is generally rejected and considered against democratic practice, but the reaction to avoid this degeneration or misinterpretation of democracy has mainly been focused on reinforcing the possibility of overthrowing the government and on giving permanent voice to the opposition. The possibility to safely and routinely overthrow a government was a crucial problem at the times when the theory of liberal democracy was elaborated. Two different and yet plausible approaches are instead usually overlooked. First, we do not take into consideration the possibility of ranking and listing decisions according to the majority required to be made. For instance, simple majority is enough to deliberate when the effects of the decisions are easily reversible and there is a possibility of changing one’s mind in a reasonably short time; a supermajority or qualified majority is required for decisions whose effects would last forever, like in the case of the construction of heavy infrastructures. Second, we do not consider the following possible strategy enough: instead of choosing and adopting the single solution, we should operate in order to create opportunities, in the political and geographical space, for the co-existence of more alternative solutions and lifestyles (Poli 1994c; also published in INSEE Paris Sorbonne 1994).
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Poli, C. (2011). Urban Space and Mobility Policies in Europe and in North America. In: Mobility and Environment. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1220-1_6
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