Highway to Hell? Mobility Perspectives World-Wide
-- a _kt75 | reprint
There is not a single future of mobility. Transport will vary according to settlement size, geography, culture and the existing infrastructure and services that will evolve to provide future mobility.
There tends to be a future view of mobility that centres around high-rise megacities and high-tech transport systems - hover cars, jet packs, railroads in the sky. This view has remained the same for almost a century - but I believe the future is oversold and under-imagined.
The world's population is growing and becoming more urban. There are currently seven billion people living on the planet, with just over half in urban areas - but beware the word urban, it has no single definition and can refer to quite small settlements. Only 5% of the world's population live in megacities (using the UN definition of more than 10 million people). In Europe, two thirds of the urban population live in settlements of fewer than 500,000 people.
Forecasts for 2050 predict a world population of 9.3 billion, with 6.25 billion (nearly 70%) in urban areas - 1.13 billion in more developed countries and 5.12 billion in less developed countries. That would be more than half the world's population living in towns and cities in less developed countries - these are the people we need to consider most when we think of the future of mobility. How can we make transport safe, efficient and sustainable, while catering for increasing demand?
Rather than specific transport modes or solutions, I think of guiding principles for city transport strategies:
- Transport policies are part of urban management and must focus on outcomes of city prosperity and wellbeing for all residents.
- Transport policies must support other policies - economic vitality, regeneration, environmental issues (carbon, air quality, noise), health (active travel), access to education etc.
- Transport planning must be inclusive, taking into account all residents and users - the old, the young, the poor etc.
- There should be less focus on ownership and more focus on accessibility to a good or service - for example car clubs or cycle hire schemes. Such collaborative consumption means that assets - vehicles, urban space - are well-utilised.
- Technology benefits must be harnessed for all users, not just the affluent elite. There is much talk of "smart cities" and I think the key question is how can smart mobility help to make urban areas more sustainable and better places to live for all inhabitants?
- Having all aspects of transport under the jurisdiction of one organisation is fundamental to a quality integrated transport system. And ideally all city areas under the governance of a single authority.
- Fundamentally we need to plan for people, not just plan systems. And we need to recognise what drives behaviour. People are not always rational in their decision-making so we need to understand that the heart and the gut can be a greater influence than the mind.
