Track 4c
'Transportation and mobilities: capacities for sustainable development'
Track Chair
Dr Crystal Legacy, RMIT University, Melbourne
Approach, goals and objectives of the track
What role can and should transport play in a city's sustainable development pursuits? Achieving sustainable transport goals is more than simply transitioning into less carbon dependent vehicles. Dominant forms of transport are tightly embedded and reconstituted by long held social, cultural and economic norms about mobility, freedom of travel and city productivity. Achieving a transition into a kind of mobility that is less dependent on carbon-based travel, and also supports equitable access to jobs and services and promotes healthy urban living for city dwellers raises many questions. Addressing these questions and the tensions these introduce forms the basis of this track.
- First, technological innovation has long been hailed as one way to minimize negative impacts on the environment by motorised vehicles. This raises a key question: in what ways has technological innovation shaped the way humans engage in movement within the city (spatially, behaviourally)? And what impact has this had on the natural environment and to the social sustainability of cities?
- Second, recent research into institutional barriers to sustainable transport reveals significant difficulty in both achieving but also facilitating a paradigm shift towards sustainable transport provision. What are the opportunities for institutional change? How are cities which have formally existed as typically car-dependent shifting their policies and budgets to support low carbon forms of mobility or complimentary land use patterns?
- Third, as cities and countries around the world recover from the Great Recession, how are cities achieving a transition to sustainable transport in a landscape of austerity governance? In what ways are new ideas on funding and financing changing the governance and implementation of sustainable transport goals? What are the potential and possible limits to contemporary transport governance and delivery arrangements? What role does community play in the policy making and project delivery of transport projects (large and small, local and cross regional)?
Contributions from the following areas are sought after
- Low carbon mobility policy and implementation
- Innovations in transport financing, funding and provision in a period of fiscal constraint
- Transportation in the ‘urban age'
- Mega-transport projects, land use and strategic planning
- Case studies of transportation and land use integration
- Accessibility and equity
- Politics, advocacy and the community in transport policy and implementation
- Sustainable transport transitions
Contact: Dr Crystal Legacy crystal.legacy@rmit.edu.au
You may submit your abstract by visiting the Ex Ordo abstract submission system (you will be required to setup an account first): http://isdrs2015.exordo.com/
