Transport, climate change and the city - Transport Climate Change and the City - page 12

Figure 1.7 Alphaville , Jean-Luc Godard, 1965. Although set far in the future and on another planet, there
are no special effects or elaborate film sets; the film was shot on the streets in Paris, the night
time becoming the streets of Alphaville, and the glass and concrete buildings represent the city's
interiors. Lemmy is a secret agent, with a code number 003. Coming from 'the Outlands', he
enters Alphaville in his Ford Mustang. The city is run by a central computer system - Alpha 60
- created by Professor Von Braun: 'People should not ask why, but only say because.'
Source : British Film Institute Stills Collection.
of it, and the likely solutions that might be developed. All of these should not be underestimated,
and indeed they are leading in part to our problems in seriously tackling climate change.
A global transport perspective
Modern travel behaviours, though it is often difficult to imagine, have really only developed
over the last 50 years or so, certainly in terms of the growth of mass motorisation, and there
have been large increases in the distances travelled over the last 10-20 years. The first modern
motor car was designed and built in 1885, by Karl Benz in Germany. Just 125 years later and
the car has become central to society and many of our cities. The Fordist vision 7 has had an
incredible prescience over a relatively short timescale: there are now over 600 million motor
cars worldwide, around one per eleven people.
As a result, the transport sector is using a large share of (finite) oil resources, accounting
for over 61 per cent of total oil demand in 2008. This represents a huge increase, from 1,021
million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) in 1973 to 2,162 Mtoe in 2008, an increase of 111