Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
dream'. But the ideology as represented in the advertising - and as often believed by the
public - can be very different to the realisation: 'All these dizzying careers have been history
for a long time; millionaires long ago became a closed caste that governs the country; people
have been inheriting their millions for a long time' (Wolf, 2007, p. 27).
Why is this interesting for a discussion on transport and climate change? Well, similarly,
the motorisation reality is often very different to the dream that is sold. Of course there are
major benefits to car ownership and use, and they differ according to individual and requirements
and context. We are only just beginning to understand these issues, but the implications for
city planning are fundamental. We know that, at times, travel can be more than a derived
demand (Mokhtarian and Salomon, 2001); that there are instrumental factors to travel (the
convenience and flexibility of getting from A to B) and affective factors to travel (the relaxation
possibilities, the thrill of driving, the sense of freedom, the 'rite of passage', the ability to
listen to music, or chat on the phone, to be 'in your own space', and to avoid the 'stress' of
travel and life) (Sheller, 2004; Steg, 2005; Anable and Gatersleben, 2005). The combinations
of instrumental and affective factors are likely to differ by mode, individual, context and trip.
Indeed there are likely to be strong interrelationships. Many of the positive elements are high-
lighted and promoted in the advertising of the car. Yet sometimes - perhaps most often in
cities - the reality is of poor driving experiences, sometimes in congested conditions; there
is a huge cost from mass motorisation on the environment, in CO2 emissions from passenger
transport and freight; on the impact of the car and its associated paraphernalia on the urban
fabric (think highways, surface car parks, street clutter and severance of communities). And,
of course, a critical issue that we all seem to forget: that of safety - there are over 1.2 million
deaths per year from road accidents (World Health Organization, 2009). We cannot afford to
ignore all of the above; they represent major costs to our current travel behaviours that need
rethinking.
A parallel can perhaps be taken from Orwell (1937). Again he attempts to take an 'external'
view of the failings of contemporary life, this time manifest in his shock at visiting the working
class and their lives in the northern towns of the UK in the 1920s and 1930s. Like Orwell's
hope for 'a classless society', the transition to sustainable travel is unlikely to be as easy as we
might like to think, or as it first appears: it might be a 'wild ride into the darkness', but also:
'probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared' (Orwell, 1937, p. 215).
Hence, we are hoping to explore the potential for different travel behaviours at the city
level, and within this perhaps a very different role for the car and other modes. How might
this radical change in travel behaviours occur? What might be the equivalent storyline to
Gladwell's (2000) populist recount of the fall and rise in sales of Hush Puppies, the American
brushed-suede shoes? Gladwell translates this same story of the 'tipping point' to the 'white
flight' to the suburbs of the middle class in the older cities of the American northeast in the
1970s; the sale of fax machines in the 1980s; and the fall of crime rates in New York in the
1990s. The wider lessons are in the very real potential for social trends and social behaviours
to change, with niche behaviours becoming mainstream, sometimes over very short timescales.
Gladwell talks of the 'law of the few' (some people matter more than others in leading the
trends), the 'stickiness factor' (making a potentially contagious message memorable), and the
'power of context' (the smallest details of the particular local context are also important).
Perhaps our current travel behaviours, and our dependence on the (petrol and diesel) car, are
not bound to continue. But, of course, this implies major lifestyle changes if radical changes
to travel behaviour are to be achieved, in particular in a mass scale movement away from the
use of the car. This means a major break in the trends, and this is where policy-making and
implementation becomes much harder to tackle.
