Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
cost-benefit ratio to guide investment, seems to be giving undue emphasis to the natural science
perspective and ignoring major issues concerning the climate and built fabric. But this is the
basis of much of our decision-making, and of course is the subject of millions of pounds'
worth of engineering, planning and economic analysis. The so-called 'intangibles' are often
the most important factors, and they include the impact on travel distance, traffic volumes,
mode share, development patterns, CO2 emissions and casualties. In much of the current
analysis they are all perceived very much as secondary issues, even within a supposed
'systematic' and wide-ranging multi-criteria analysis, particularly if particular issues cannot
be quantified effectively.
There are fundamental implications in a changed view of transport behaviours and costs,
of incorporating uncertainty, and the need to achieve different futures, and these are only
beginning to be thought through. Different approaches need to be developed, with a reduced
focus on extrapolation of existing trends and observed behaviour, and a greater emphasis on
understanding why people travel by particular modes, how this might change, and how transport
Hence there are many complexities to think through. We can try to understand why people
might not rationalise their travel choices in a manner that we would expect. People are not
fully informed, they are inattentive to information and they do not perfectly discriminate between
options. We often fail to understand the importance of context, judgment, practice, habit, trial
and error, experience, common sense, intuition and bodily sensation. All of these are excluded
in our analysis of 'rational' travel behaviour (Flyvbjerg, 2001; Schwanen et al., 2012). This
causes many problems within the conventional application of transport planning, and provides
a great challenge to transport planners, including in re-conceiving strategy development,
transport appraisal and implementation. How many projects have been built that are overused
or underused relative to the original forecast? Why does car use prove so attractive to the
majority of people? Why is it so difficult to reduce the use of the car? Why does transport
investment fail to support urban design, or progress towards societal goals? How can we better
deliver alternative transport futures, with a greater use of public transport, walking and cycling?
All of these are questions requiring fundamental rethinking of conventional approaches to
transport in a resource-constrained world. Hence:
By taking seriously how people feel about and in cars, and how the feel of different car
cultures elicits specific dispositions and ways of life, we will be in a better position to
re-evaluate the ethical dimensions of car consumption [. . .] only then can we consider
what will really be necessary to make the transition from today's car cultures (and the
automotive emotions that sustain them) to more socially and environmentally 'responsible'
transportation cultures.
(Sheller, 2004)
Finally, in addition to the concerns over why people travel and new social science based
methods, there is the issue of governance, in terms of how we might deliver new and more
attractive transport futures. Foucault (1966; 1991) develops a critique of convention, and of
mainstream thought, through the concept of exploring discourse. This might help us to
understand how issues can be thought through differently. Foucault, for example, considered
how the means of government (the bureaucracy that governs), the governance (what the
government does), and the governmentality (the art of government) might change to help
address issues in a different manner. Two broad concepts, in particular, were developed:
