In this article, we critically discuss the role of collaboration in Germany’s path towards a post-carbon economy. We consider civic movements and novel forms of collaboration as a potentially transformative challenger to the predominant approach of corporatist collaboration in the mobility and energy sectors. However, while trade unions and employer organizations provide a permanent and active arena for policy-oriented collaboration, civil society groups cannot rely on an equivalently institutionalized corridor to secure policy impact and public resonance. In that sense, conventional forms of collaboration tend to hinder the transformation towards a post-carbon economy. Collaboration in the German corporatist setting is thus, from a sustainability perspective, simultaneously a problem and a solution. We argue for more institutionalized corridors between civil society and state institutions. Co-creation, as we would like to call this methodical approach to collaborating, can be anchored within the environmental and industrial policy arenas.
Business voices often oppose a redistribution of urban traffic space in favor of active transport modes. We surveyed 145 traders about their perceptions of their customers' mobility behavior and interviewed 2,019 shoppers on two shopping streets in Berlin, Germany. Our results indicate that traders overestimate car use and underestimate active transport. Further, potential customers more often live close to their shopping destinations than retailers perceive. Our findings can help explain the opposition of local business to sustainable transport infrastructure and offer a knowledge basis for better informed decision-making regarding urban land use in cities.
ZusammenfassungDer Anstoß für Deutschlands erstes Fahrradgesetz kam aus der Zivilgesellschaft. Der Impuls entstand aus dem weiterhin ungeklärten Konflikt zwischen der Autofixierung der konservativen deutschen Verkehrspolitik und dem progressiven Wunsch nach einer nachhaltigen Mobilität, die sich an den Bedürfnissen der Bürger*innen orientieren soll und eine Umverteilung des Straßenraumes zugunsten des Radverkehrs erforderte. Dass Verkehr nachhaltiger gestaltet werden muss, war Konsens. Über das Wie gingen die Meinungen stark auseinander.
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