Mobility and Environment Humanists versus Engineers in Urban Policy
The transportation revolution does not simply mean taking a bus instead of a car. It means centering the political debate on the necessity to shift dramatically from a technical to a political culture, and from an economic development oriented polic
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Corrado Poli
Mobility and Environment Humanists versus Engineers in Urban Policy and Professional Education
Corrado Poli www.corradopoli.net [email protected]
ISBN 978-94-007-1219-5 e-ISBN 978-94-007-1220-1 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1220-1 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2011929042 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Cover image: © 2011 Jupiter Images Corporation Photo text: Aerial view of downtown Dallas, Texas Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
As always, there were plenty of practical reasons to justify the absurd and lead towards the impossible Marguerite Yourcenar, Mémoires d’Hadrien
Foreword
“Ignoranti quem portum petat nullus ventus suus est”1 Lucius Anneus Seneca “You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows” Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
Goals and Structure As we navigate the Internet, we will find hundreds, if not thousands of web sites proposing alternative traffic policies, new mobility patterns, and innovative transportation plans for European and American cities affected by congestion and pollution problems. Most of the proposals are very interesting. Some are brilliant. All refer to, or even invoke, the magic word: “sustainability”. However, few of these proposals are actually applied. When, on occasion, they are put into operation, they represent a minimal part of the overall traffic and transportation policy which still concentrates on the construction of roads and heavy infrastructures. Why? In this essay I try to explain the gap between the widespread understanding of the need for change and the apparent difficulty of implementing radically new traffic policies. About six years ago I wrote a pamphlet in Italian titled “Rivoluzione Traffico. Meno mobilità più comunicazione” that in English translates as “Traffic Revolution. Less mobility, more communication” (Poli 2006). I claimed that we need a dramatic change in urban mobility policies. My ambition was to propose an utterly new strategy. This new essay is the outcome of further research and proposes a thorough overturning of my previous approach. I no longer focus on alternative traffic policies designed to improve urban quality of life. I consider, instead, the problem of urban
“He who knows not which port he is heading for, never finds a favorable wind”.
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Foreword
traffic as a helpful starting point to understand the contemporary environmental and administrative crisis of cities. The revolution I call for is grounded on the idea that the difference between a superf
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