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Unlocking Transport Innovation: A Sociotechnical Perspective of the Logics of Transport Planning Decision-Making within the Trial of a New Type of Pedestrian Crossing
Abstract
This paper reports on research that utilises an in-depth case study and key informant interviews to assess the difficulties encountered during an innovative transport planning project in Auckland, New Zealand. Analysing the architecture of decision-making, the research illustrates how existing sociotechnical solutions within the transport planning assemblage can support ‘institutional obduracy’ through the everyday work practices of transport engineers. A network of ‘tools of trade’, regulatory provisions, organisational values and processes and professional norms are found to shape the decisions they make. The paper also examines the interface between central-local government roles and responsibilities in determining the approval or rejection of non-standard street treatments/devices.
... Within these programmes, infrastructural and system support for active travel are poor and rates of walking, cycling and scooting are generally low. In many (sub)urban neighbourhoods, particularly on the city fringe active travel is not a feasible mode choice [47,48]. Likewise, variable access to frequent public transport services limits its utility in many outer city locations [49]. ...
... The infrastructure re-design was paired with a research project to understand the effect of the street changes on traffic behaviour, pedestrian and cyclist usability, traffic crashes, mode use, levels of physical activity, and community perceptions of safety and social connection [54]. Future Streets encountered several obstacles in the design and delivery of the intervention including funding uncertainties, conflicts around project governance, regulatory barriers, and rigid project management processes which resulted in delays to implementation [48,51]. Ultimately, the infrastructure was delivered between 2016 and 2017. ...
... For Future Streets in particular, there were conflicts between the intention to be innovative and nimble, and the delivery system's requirement for consistency and repeatability. There was also a lack of clarity about the trial system [48], and innovative techniques such as using temporary measures were therefore not possible within the delivery expectations of the project. ...
Taking a socio-technical systems approach, the aim of this chapter is to describe the barriers and enablers to innovative street projects that promote wellbeing. We explore these barriers and enablers through the lens of five proposed, current, or delivered niche street re-design projects or programmes in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a thematic analysis of project and programme information, the key themes of leadership, funding, policies and procedures, organizational norms, community and delivery tensions, and social environment emerged. These themes were used to analyse the extent to which the projects and programmes succeeded as niches and influenced the wider system. While there was varying success across the projects and programmes in influencing the wider regime and social landscape, the analysis found that niches need to be supported within government planning systems as a way of managing investment risk and testing future scenarios. The lessons provide direction for those seeking to expedite transport system change so that positive health, safety, environmental, and social outcomes can be realised.
... Each theme of the framework comprises social (e.g., relationships, power dynamics) and technical elements (e.g., technology, physical outcomes) that together form a web where non-linear relationships between elements endure and flux (Anderson and Spray, 2020;DeLanda, 2016;Hughes, 1986). Socio-technical and assemblage theories are familiar in health-promoting local environments discourse (Ergler and Smith, 2023;Mackie et al., 2021;Opit and Witten, 2018) and we highlight this theoretical position as useful in three ways. Firstly, it supports the view that social processes are not mere background to technical aspects in urban assemblages, they are equally important and co-constructive (Opit and Witten, 2018). ...
... Socio-technical and assemblage theories are familiar in health-promoting local environments discourse (Ergler and Smith, 2023;Mackie et al., 2021;Opit and Witten, 2018) and we highlight this theoretical position as useful in three ways. Firstly, it supports the view that social processes are not mere background to technical aspects in urban assemblages, they are equally important and co-constructive (Opit and Witten, 2018). Our findings indicate that adult perceptions of children's capacity limit their influence, corroborating social processes as fundamental (Derr and Tarantini, 2016). ...
Our study sought to understand adult decision-makers' views on what was important for actualising children's ideas using co-design, towards creating health-promoting local environments. Ten adult decision-makers, experienced in co-design with children aged 5-13 years in Aotearoa New Zealand, participated in individual interviews. We generated three themes (Empowering children within co-design; Being intentional about children's influence; Curating who is involved) using reflexive thematic analysis. Our themes informed a novel framework of 'impactful co-design' accompanied by a practical checklist for adult decision-makers (practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers). Study findings affirm co-designing local neighbourhoods as an inherently social and technical endeavour, advocate for greater consideration of inclusivity and cultural context, and highlight the need for co-design with children to include safety, empowerment, and evaluation. We position impactful co-design as one useful process to enact children's meaningful participation.
... In this chapter we will first outline the socio-technical entanglements 4 of travel environments and then discuss the need for a cooperative, collective approach 1 Active travel is defined as any form of mobility that has an active component e.g., walking, biking, scootering, and skateboarding. 2 Ideally, 6-8-year-olds are engaged in activities of moderate-to-vigorous intensity-activities that make children 'huff and puff-for at least an hour a day. 3 By inclusive community we envision a neighbourhood in which children of all ages and abilities can walk or wheel to school, run errands, play safely not only on playgrounds or in their homes and socialise with friends and community members of all walks of life (see also Bartlett 1999, Freeman andTranter, 2011). 4 By socio-technological entanglements, we mean the interconnection between the social (e.g., norms; practices; politics etc.) and the technical (e.g., institutional structures, systems and policies) physical fabrics of transport (e.g., devices, transport infrastructure) (see Opit & Witten, 2018). This means that the everyday lived realities and practices and the macro-level transport environment in the widest sense (policies, legal and physical infrastructures etc.) are one co-constituted entity that creates, sustains, but is also able to disrupt these systems of practice across scales (e.g., everyday socio-technical relationships can translate and activate policies developed at the macro-level and vice versa). ...
... Concurrently, increasing research interest in understanding the changing nature of children's mobilities, particularly reductions in school travel mode and independent mobility (e.g., children getting around without supervision 5 ) in many western countries were taking place (Badland et al., 2016;Brown et al., 2008;Hillman and Policy Studies Institute (Great Britain), 1993;Rothman et al., 2018). In other words, the focus shifted beyond the binary thinking of society (practices, norms, values) and technology (including but not limited to policies, infrastructure, political systems) towards understanding how the socio-technical entanglements create certain travel practices, logics and processes (Opit & Witten, 2018). ...
Educational facilities generate traffic to and from school by car, on foot and on wheels. Which mode of travel dominates in a school community depends on several different factors including but not limited to the neighbourhood design, traffic safety, employment structures, community norms, and school policies. This chapter traces the socio-technical entanglements of traveling to school. We focus on the barriers to, and benefits of, active travel (i.e., walking or wheeling for transport) and showcase what children value on their route to school. Additionally, we highlight how built environments and social practices need to be transformed for creating sustainable, healthy and inclusive urban environments. We argue that to foster inclusive communities and to create a sense of belonging outside the school gates, a multi sector approach is needed to challenge and transform current travel norms and practices together with the physical environment of neighbourhood travel.
... Firstly, the aspiration for experimentation among planners and decision-makers may conflict with responses to professional liability pressures. Secondly, the choice and use of DST are decisions often made among urban planning teams, with no reference to strategic guidelines provided at organisational or institutional levels (Opit & Witten, 2018). Thirdly, there is a lack of DST adaptable to multiple local contexts , which has prompted stakeholders to choose and use a broad range of tools to best suit their diverse planning needs. ...
Urban planning stakeholders can use decision-support tools (DST) to foster transformation towards sustainable urban morphologies. This paper proposes an analytical framework to support urban planning practitioners in assessing how the use of DST might impact planning outcomes due to path dependence. We identify five key dimensions of path dependence in a spatial socio-technical system as analytical framework to assess the influence of DST on planning outcomes. Potential impacts on urban planning outcomes are analysed by applying the proposed framework to a particular spatial socio-technical system, namely New Zealand's use of DST to support urban planning decision-making towards sustainable urban morphologies. The assessment framework and comparative case study analysis illustrate how the interaction between planning culture and some DST features can influence decisions pertaining to urban morphologies and raise awareness about DST-induced path dependence.
... • A community engagement process that went far beyond normal practise, seeking to integrate local and professional knowledge to optimise design • Taking a team approach to design, with urban designers, human factors specialists, engineers, public health specialists and social geographers all contributing to the design process • taking an area-wide design approach, to capture a range of local end to end journeys • using green spaces as part of the transport system, • prioritising pedestrians on side roads (although the final solution was somewhat over-engineered) • testing uni-directional protected cycle lanes • Bus-stop designs that integrate protected cycle lanes • integrating placemaking and cultural components within a transport project Some aspirations for the project did not come to fruition. New designs for crossings on the major arterial road and on side roads were not permitted to proceed through the planning process for complex reasons (Opit and Witten, 2018) and novel designs to afford pedestrian priority on side-roads were rejected due to incompatibility with rules. Despite these failures, good provision for pedestrians was still provided using treatment options more routinely available. ...
Te Ara Mua - Future Streets is a controlled before-after study of neighbourhood infrastructure changes that aim to make walking and cycling safer and easier and reflect cultural identity in Māngere, Auckland, New Zealand. The project intervention was delivered through an innovative and challenging partnership between the research team and funding/delivery agencies. The purpose of this paper is to explain the underlying concepts behind Future Streets and the process of delivering an area-wide community street retrofit. Project documentation were reviewed so that the key concepts, steps and activities in project delivery could be described. Variations from planned delivery, the reasons for these variations, and broader delivery successes and challenges are also briefly discussed. A substantial community engagement process informed design objectives, which in-turn informed retrofit designs. The street modifications have been implemented and a different streetscape now exists for key routes in Māngere, giving greater affordance to walking and cycling and a more attractive urban realm. The initial response to the modifications from the community are generally positive although the loss of parking in favour of protected cycle lanes is causing concern for some. A range of difficulties in delivering the intervention included unclear governance, different researcher/practitioner cultures, unrealistic timeframes, project funding uncertainties, and regulatory barriers. Nevertheless, Future Streets is positively influencing new delivery projects and transport policy, and for next steps process improvements should be employed to make demonstration projects like Future Streets easier. Closer cooperation between the science and transport sectors are needed to test and progress transport approaches which have the potential to positively influence urban form, and the health and wellbeing of residents of towns and cities.
Abstract. This essay seeks to reframe recent debates on sociospatial theory through the introduction of an approach that can grasp the inherently polymorphic, multidimensional character of sociospatial relations. As previous advocates of a scalar turn, we now ...
Suburban infrastructure holds a position of increasing geographic, political and conceptual importance in a rapidly urbanizing world. However, the analytical significance of ‘suburban infrastructure’ risks becoming bogged down as a chaotic concept amidst the maelstrom of contemporary peripheral urban growth and the explosion of interest in infrastructure in critical urban studies. This paper develops an open and flexible comparative theory of suburban infrastructure. I eschew concerns with definitional bounding to focus analytical attention on the relations between ‘the suburban’ (broadly considered) and multiple hard and soft infrastructures. These relations are captured in two ‘three-dimensional’ dialectical triads: the first unpacks the modalities of infrastructure in, for, and of suburbs; the second discloses the political economic processes (suburbanization), lived experience (suburbanism), and dynamics of mediation internalized by particular suburban infrastructures. Bringing these conceptual frames together constructs a nine-cell matrix that: (1) functions as a heuristic device providing conceptual clarity when discussing the suburbanity of infrastructures; (2) promotes comparative analysis across diverse global suburban contexts; and (3) develops tools to foreground the dialectical relations internalized in the concrete sociospatial modalities of suburban infrastructure. The paper shows that suburban infrastructure can only ever be partially suburban as a result of it co-constituted and over-determined production. I conclude by suggesting how the proposed approach may be mobilized to reimagine and reclaim suburban infrastructure as a crucial context and vital mechanism underpinning a progressive
polycentric suburban spatial polity.
Transforming vehicle-focused street infrastructure to support a shift to active travel modes can pose a complex interdisciplinary challenge requiring innovation and collaboration between residents, researchers and transport design and policy practitioners. Te Ara Mua-Future Streets is a street redesign intervention study that aims to slow traffic, change driver behaviour and make walking and cycling easier and safer in Māngere, a suburban neighbourhood in Auckland, New Zealand. It is a collaborative project between a research team, local community and the city's transport agency. Community engagement, evidence-based design innovation and outcome evaluation are primarily the responsibility of the research team while responsibility for infrastructure funding, procurement and delivery lies with Auckland Transport. Notwithstanding a shared commitment to the project's vision of street design innovation for health gain, the collaboration and implementation process has been challenging. Drawing on analyses of interviews conducted with researchers and transport agency personnel at two time points, the paper documents the collaborative process – factors that threatened to derail the design and delivery of innovative street design and those that ultimately enabled construction of a non-business-as-usual, neighbourhood scale intervention. Differences in the professional norms and practices of transport engineers and researchers, contrasting organisational cultures and approaches to risk, and lack of organisational readiness and capacity challenged the collaboration. Sharing insights on factors that had jeopardised the collaborative processes became a catalyst for change, and, coupled with the determination of individual researchers and engineers, enabled the collaboration to move forward to complete the intervention and identify mechanisms to facilitate knowledge exchange in future transport and health, researcher-practitioner collaborations.
Deleuze and Guattari discuss the rhizome as being "absolutely different from roots and radicles" 6. The rhizome is explained via principles. 1 and 2: connection and heterogeneity.: "any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be". Principle 3: "Principle of multiplicity" "There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines". Principle 4: "Principle of asignifying rupture" "There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome." Principles 5 and 6: Principle of cartography and decalcomania: Where traditional thought is 'tracing', a rhizome is a map. Tracing involves laying onto reality the pattern of structure, itself a construct. "The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious". They take the term plateau from Gregory Bateson, it refers to a sustained intensity. "We call a 'plateau' any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome".
"Write with slogans: Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant!"
Assemblage thinking as methodology: commitments and practices for critical policy research. Territory, Politics, Governance. The concept of assemblage has captured the attention of critical social scientists, including those interested in the study of policy. Despite ongoing debate around the implications of assemblage thinking for questions of structure, agency, and contingency, there is widespread agreement around its value as a methodological framework. There are now many accounts using assemblage-inflected methodologies of various sorts as analytical tools for revealing, interpreting, and representing the worlds of policy-making, though few are explicit about their methodological practice. In this paper, we identify a suite of epistemological commitments associated with assemblage thinking, including an emphasis on multiplicity, processuality, labour, and uncertainty, and then consider explicitly how such commitments might be translated into methodological practices in policy research. Drawing on a research project on the development and enactment of homelessness policy in Australia, we explore how three methodological practices – adopting an ethnographic sensibility, tracing sites and situations, and revealing labours of assembling – can be used to operationalize assemblage thinking in light of the challenges of conducting critical policy research.
This paper shows that assemblage thinking and actor-network theory (ANT) have much more to gain from each other than debate has so far conceded. Exploring the conjunctions and disjunctions between the two approaches, it proposes three cross-fertilisations that have implications for understanding three key processes in our socio-material world: stabilisation, change and affect. First, the conceptual vocabulary of ANT can enrich assemblage thinking with an explicitly spatial account of the ways in which assemblages are drawn together, reach across space and are stabilised. Second, each approach is better attuned to conceptualising a particular kind of change in socio-material relations: ANT describes change without rupture, or fluidity, whereas assemblage thinking describes change with rupture, or events. Third and last, assemblage thinking could fashion ANT with a greater sensitivity for the productive role of affect in bringing socio-material relations into being through the production of desire/wish (désir). We demonstrate the implications of these cross-fertilisations for empirical work through a case study of the global market for assisted reproduction.
In critical urban studies, managed urban regeneration has been linked to trajectories of neo-liberalising urban policy and urban entrepreneurialism. While the insights arising from this work have been many and valuable, significant gaps remain particularly in terms of the foci of analysis and the conception of politics. In this paper, we aim to address these gaps and to reposition the conceptualization of regeneration as a performed and emergent consequence of ‘relatedness’ and as subject to a range of relational effects and determinations. To do so we work through four capacities of assemblage thinking that are particularly productive for this task: (i) revealing the relational, multiple and processual nature of urban trajectories; (ii) revealing the multi-scalar labouring involved in configuring the (socio-material) assemblages that constitute regeneration; (iii) identifying openings for multiple possible trajectories of regeneration; (iv) providing critical insights into how regeneration trajectories are constrained. We conclude with reflections on what assemblage thinking offers in terms of critically and generatively rethinking urban regeneration.
The need for effective public transport is greater than ever in the 21st century. With countries like China and India moving towards mass-automobility, we face the prospects of an environmental and urban health disaster unless alternatives are found. It is time to move beyond the automobile age. But while public transport has worked well in the dense cores of some big cities, the problem is that most residents of developed countries now live in dispersed suburbs and smaller cities and towns. These places usually have little or no public transport, and most transport commentators have given up on the task of changing this: it all seems too hard. This book argues that the secret of 'European-style' public transport lies in a generalizable model of network planning that has worked in places as diverse as rural Switzerland, the Brazilian city of Curitiba and the Canadian cities of Toronto and Vancouver. It shows how this model can be adapted to suburban, exurban and even rural areas to provide a genuine alternative to the car, and outlines the governance, funding and service planning policies that underpin the success of the world's best public transport systems.
In this paper I consider what 'assemblage' might offer a conception of the city. Although assemblage is gaining currency in geography and beyond, there has been little effort to consider how it might be conceptualised and what its specificity might be. In offering a conceptualisation of assemblage. I bring assemblage into conversation with particular debates around dwelling and argue, first, that assemblage provides a useful basis for thinking of the city as a dwelling process and, second, that it is particularly useful for conceiving the spatiality of the city as processual, relational, mobile, and unequal. Despite their distinct intellectual histories, I suggest there is a productive debate to be had by bringing assemblage and dwelling into dialogue. I examine some of the ways in which assemblage and dwelling might interact and reflect on particular moments of fieldwork conducted in Silo Paulo and Mumbai and on diverse examples ranging from 'slum' housing to urban policy and mobility.
In this paper we discuss the introduction of the Launceston Bike Network, a local government project progressed in Tasmania, Australia. The project's implementation became subject to intense community conflict, or what we refer to here as white line fever because it arose in relation to the white traffic lines used to mark the on-road bike lanes. Our analysis of textual data gathered from relevant documents and interviews with key stakeholders relies on the development of a sociotechnical perspective. Adopting this perspective allows us to recognise the various agencies emerging collectively from the technical and social aspects and interactions analysed. The findings add to how cycling and infrastructure might be reconceptualised as an urban sociotechnical system, and assist in its transition towards the transport mainstream through policy and planning.