Toward Sustainable Urban Futures

Abstract

This book advances the idea of moving beyond mobility as a platform for achieving more sustainable urban futures. The first chapter adopted the term urban recalibration as a framework for doing so. Rather than sweeping reforms or a Kuhnian paradigm shift, urban recalibration calls for a series of calculated steps aimed at a strategic longer-range vision of a city’s future, advancing principles of people-oriented development and place-making every bit as much as private car mobility, if not more. Rather than driving down sustainability metrics such as vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita in one fell swoop through dramatic changes, it entails a series of 1 to 2 percent recalibration “victories”—intersection by intersection, neighborhood by neighborhood—that cumulatively move beyond the historically almost singular focus on mobility, making for better communities, better environments, and better economies. With urban recalibration, change is more evolutionary than revolutionary.