Transforming Urban Transport confronts head-on the dilemma faced by a world wedded to mobility: the danger of continuing along the fossil-fuelled path and the real paucity of viable technological alternatives which can be deployed in time. To respond to the dilemma, the ideal of urban transport must be changed from auto-based mobility to systems of sustainable transport in which public transport, and non-motorised transport work together to reduce climate change pressures, enhance urban quality and preserve life and health. The book challenges the commonly held view that a combination of urbanity and higher residential density expressed in compact cities (expected to have greater public transport use) will resolve urban transport/environment problems, instead showing that transport systems can be changed to meet the environmental imperatives without the massive spatial change implied. But the problem of change of urban transport is profoundly institutional and cultural. Changes in urban mobility and transport require local institutional policy action. To support such action, the book explores new methods of governance of transport in dispersed and concentrated cities, new techniques for assessing transport need, ways of improving childhood mobility, guidelines for political mobilization, and norms of knowledge sharing. Drawing together leading scholars from different disciplines in Australia, Japan and China, this book provides a unique fusion of Asian and Australasian perspectives and engages with the coming needs of transport planning practitioners in both high density and dispersed cities.

Transforming Urban Transport brings into focus the origins and implementation pathways of significant urban transport innovations that have recently been adopted in major, democratically governed world cities that are seeking to advance sustainability aims. It documents how proponents of new transportation initiatives confronted a range of administrative, environmental, fiscal, and political obstacles by using a range of leadership skills, technical resources, and negotiation capacities to move a good idea from the drawing board to implementation. The book's eight case studies focus on cities of great interest across the globe--Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Stockholm, and Vienna--many of which are known for significant mayor leadership and efforts to rescale power from the nation to the city. The cases highlight innovations likely to be of interest to transport policy makers from all corners, such as strengthening public transportation services, vehicle and traffic management measures, repurposing roads and other urban spaces away from their initial function as vehicle travel corridors, and turning sidewalks and city streets into more pedestrian-friendly places for walking, cycling, and leisure. Aside from their transformative impacts in transportation terms, many of the policy innovations examined here have altered planning institutions, public-private sector relations, civil society commitments, and governance mandates in the course of implementation. In bringing these cases to the fore, Transforming Urban Transport advances understanding of the conditions under which policy interventions can expand institutional capacities and governance mandates, particularly linked to urban sustainability. As such, it is an essential contribution to larger debates about what it takes to make cities more environmentally sustainable and the types of strategies and tactics that best advance progress on these fronts in both the short- and the long-term.

'Transforming Cities with Transit' explores the complex process of transit and land-use integration and provides policy recommendations and implementation strategies for effective integration in rapidly growing cities in developing countries.

Transforming Urban Transport brings into focus the origins and implementation pathways of significant urban transport innovations that have recently been adopted in major, democratically governed world cities that are seeking to advance sustainability aims. It documents how proponents of new transportation initiatives confronted a range of administrative, environmental, fiscal, and political obstacles by using a range of leadership skills, technical resources, and negotiation capacities to move a good idea from the drawing board to implementation. The book's eight case studies focus on cities of great interest across the globe--Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Stockholm, and Vienna--many of which are known for significant mayor leadership and efforts to rescale power from the nation to the city. The cases highlight innovations likely to be of interest to transport policy makers from all corners, such as strengthening public transportation services, vehicle and traffic management measures, repurposing roads and other urban spaces away from their initial function as vehicle travel corridors, and turning sidewalks and city streets into more pedestrian-friendly places for walking, cycling, and leisure. Aside from their transformative impacts in transportation terms, many of the policy innovations examined here have altered planning institutions, public-private sector relations, civil society commitments, and governance mandates in the course of implementation. In bringing these cases to the fore, Transforming Urban Transport advances understanding of the conditions under which policy interventions can expand institutional capacities and governance mandates, particularly linked to urban sustainability. As such, it is an essential contribution to larger debates about what it takes to make cities more environmentally sustainable and the types of strategies and tactics that best advance progress on these fronts in both the short- and the long-term.

This work confronts head-on the dilemma faced by a world wedded to mobility: the danger of continuing along the fossil-fuelled path and the real paucity of viable technological alternatives which can be deployed in time.

In From Mobility to Accessibility, an expert team of researchers flips the tables on the standard models for evaluating regional transportation performance. Jonathan Levine, Joe Grengs, and Louis A. Merlin argue for an "accessibility shift" whereby transportation planning, and the transportation dimensions of land-use planning, would be based on people's ability to reach destinations, rather than on their ability to travel fast. Existing models for planning and evaluating transportation, which have taken vehicle speeds as the most important measure, would make sense if movement were the purpose of transportation. But it is the ability to reach destinations, not movement per se, that people seek from their transportation systems. While the concept of accessibility has been around for the better part of a century, From Mobility to Accessibility shows that the accessibility shift is compelled by the fundamental purpose of transportation. The book argues that the shift would be transformative to the practice of both transportation and land-use planning but is impeded by many conceptual obstacles regarding the nature of accessibility and its potential for guiding development of the built environment. By redefining success in transportation, the book provides city planners, decisionmakers, and scholars a path to reforming the practice of transportation and land-use planning in modern cities and metropolitan areas.

This timely book calls for a paradigm shift in urban transport, which remains one of the critically uncertain aspects of the sustainability transformation of our societies. It argues that the potential of human scale thinking needs to be recognised, both in understanding people on the move in the city and within various organisations responsible for cities.