Transportation geography: local challenges, global contexts

Abstract

I DeparturesA key characteristic of human movement over the past century has been the shift from rural spaces to urban places. As the twentyfi rst century unfolds, more people now live in urban environments than in rural settings, with dozens of cities housing 10 million inhabitants or more scattered across the globe. Combined with the impacts of economic and cultural globalization, the growth of urban centers has spurred transportation geographers to develop new theories and methodologies to help explain the changing dynamics of accessibility and mobility. One of the more signifi cant challenges involves rethinking the local within the context of the global, particularly in terms of how transportation supply and demand mechanisms are shaped by decisions made at myriad scales. Although transportation policies are not always made with local conditions in mind, these policies invariably have local implications.Two previous reviews in this three-part series have examined transportation research at the global and regional scales. They highlighted the signifi cant progress made by transportation geographers since the 1980s in developing theories and methodologies that provide context for movement and interaction at local scales. Although sophisticated interconnected global networks have evolved that shape and infl uence new regional mobilities, from a practical standpoint the demand for, and supply of, transportation is always grounded in the local! In this fi nal review, progress in transportation research along the urban-rural continuum at the local scale is emphasized. Urban transport issues have tended to dominate the discourse, in part because of the sheer size and complexity of urban growth and change. Yet rural accessibility and mobility challenges have also garnered significant attention from transport geographers as agricultural changes, migration, and resource depletion, among other issues, have restructured the local development matrix. II Journeys: new paradigms, familiar pathwaysArguably the most signifi cant, and controversial, theoretical development to infl uence transportation research at the local scale

Delivering lower carbon urban transport choices: European ambition meets the reality of institutional (mis)alignment

“…Any analysis of the UK's approach to transport policy compared with its continental neighbours must recognise Britain's attempts to reconcile its twin primary external influences of Atlanticist, neo-liberal approaches prioritising laissez-faire and minimalist regulation, with the more avowedly social-democratic, interventionist perspective of the European centre(left) mainstream (see Grengs, 2005;Jessop, 2002;Keeling, 2009).…”

Transport geography and new European realities: a critique

“…In recent years, Keeling (2007Keeling ( , 2008Keeling ( , 2009) has helped to redress this with considerations of transport geography at different spatial scales. However, some of these, and earlier, evaluations have not been necessarily flattering to the sub-discipline, or perhaps more accurately to the practitioners of transport geography and the image of the sub-discipline they are perceived to have projected.…”

“…Earlier, Rimmer (1978Rimmer ( , 1988 was also critical of the role of quantitative modelling, calling for a more 'humanistic' transport geography. This is clearly a debate that extends across Europe and is not just an Anglo-American issue (Graham, 1999;Goetz, 2006;Keeling, 2008Keeling, , 2009. For example, Kaufmann et al (2008, p. 15) from Lausanne, Switzerland, in evaluating French transport policy research during the 1990s pointed, pejoratively, to an ''obedience to the technico-economic reality".…”

Transport in a sustainable urban future

“…Since the aftermath of the previous major global economic crisis in the 1970s, the macroregulation of transport has been shaped by the rise of neoliberalism and policy themes derived from it, such as the notion of city competitiveness in the 1990s and 2000s (Jessop, 2002;Keeling, 2009), and the impact of three decades of neoliberal-inspired governance continues to shape contemporary debates on what a sustainable future might look like (Docherty et al, 2004;Jessop, 2002;Siemiatycki, 2005;Grengs, 2005;Keeling, 2009). In the late 1970s/1980s, transport was something of a pioneer in implementing the radical new neoliberal political economy.…”