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Degrowth is coming to town: What can it learn from
critical perspectives on urban transport?
Wojciech Kębłowski
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, COSMOPOLIS Centre for Urban Research, Brussels, Belgium
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Institut de Gestion de l'Environnement et d'Aménagement du
Territoire, Belgium
Kębłowski, W., (2023), Degrowth is coming to town. What can it learn from critical
perspectives on urban transport? Urban Studies, online first.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980221149825
CC BY-NC: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon
the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only
so long as attribution is given to the creator.
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Abstract: Degrowth offers a particularly trans-disciplinary and robust critique of growth-
driven configurations of space, society and economy. However, its proponents are yet to
seriously engage with urban environments by clearly outlining how, where, for whom and
under what conditions the principles of degrowth could be applied in urban contexts. In
this article, I focus on transport as a vehicle for understanding and addressing this
challenge, thus contributing to the broader agenda of spatialising and urbanising degrowth.
I turn to the specific case of ‘fare-free public transport’ (FFPT), a policy that exists in full
form in nearly 300 localities worldwide. By referring to empirical material collected in
FFPT programmes in Aubagne (France), Tallinn (Estonia) and Chengdu (China), I show
that fare abolition can act as a policy that contradicts many principles of growth-driven
capitalism by advancing an agenda of inter- and intra-municipal solidarity, working
towards socio-spatial justice. Consequently, I demonstrate that when analysing and
planning urban transport, degrowth may well build on diverse ‘critical’ perspectives on
transport to engage head-on with explicitly political–economic questions underpinning
urban agendas, thus avoiding joining the glossary of de-politicised and technocratic
notions, and disregarding the socio-economic, political and spatial complexity of the
urban. In this way, the article contributes to ongoing reflections about the role of
urbanisation in the degrowth debate.
Keywords: degrowth, fare-free public transport, mobility, transport, urban policy
摘要 : 去增长对以增长为驱动的空间、社会和经济配置提出了跨学科的、有力的批评。然而，去
增长的倡导者尚未认真地参与城市环境治理，他们没有明确提出如何、在何处、为谁以及在什么
条件下将去增长原则应用于城市情境。在这篇论文中，我们重点关注交通，将其作为理解和应对
这一挑战的工具，从而为更广泛的空间化和城市化去增长议程做出贡献。我们将“免费公共交
通”(FFPT) 作为具体案例。全球有近 300 个地区发布了完整的免费公共交通政策。我们收集了欧
巴涅（法国）、塔林（爱沙尼亚）和成都（中国）的 FFPT 计划相关的实证材料，这些材料表明
取消交通费可推进各地区之间和地区内团结议程，是一项与许多以增长为驱动的资本主义原则相
矛盾的政策，有助于实现社会空间正义。因此，我们证明，在分析和规划城市交通时，去增长也
许要基于关于交通的不同批判性观点，直面构成城市议程基础的明确的政治经济问题，从而避免
成为去政治化和技术官僚主义的概念，忽视了城市的社会经济、政治和空间复杂性。通过这种方
式，本文有助于持续反思城市化在去增长争论中所处的角色。
关键词
去增长, 免费公共交通, 流动性, 交通, 城市政策
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Introduction
The idea of ‘degrowth’ articulates a radical critique of economic growth as the primary
organising principle of societies and economies (Demaria et al., 2013). It challenges the
ideology of growth and envisions a downscaling of production and consumption as a
means of achieving environmental sustainability, social justice and well-being (D’Alisa et
al., 2015). It therefore proposes a profound ecological, socio-economic and political
transformation that implies a fundamental change of institutions, norms, lifestyles and
values. This call for a broad transition has increasingly reverberated in academic, activist
and policy circles. However, as outlined in the introduction to this special issue (Kaika et
al., forthcoming), while the degrowth movement is gaining momentum, its proponents
have only recently begun to reflect on questions related to urban development and urban
planning (e.g. Alexander and Gleeson, 2018; Savini et al., 2022). Meanwhile, only a handful
of urban scholars and planners have engaged with the degrowth debate (e.g. Lehtinen,
2018; von Schönfeld and Willems, 2021; Wächter, 2013; Xue, 2014, 2022; Xue and
Kębłowski, 2022).
To advance this dialogue, I focus on transport and mobility as a specific area of urban life.
Transport is central for criticising growth – its infrastructure provides an essential
framework for dividing spaces of urban consumption and production, separating paid
workers from their households and enabling capitalist interests to extract maximum profit
from the workforce. Therefore, I examine what problems and policies the degrowth debate
has identified with regard to urban mobility. I reveal that the degrowth-inspired literature
focusing on transport is expanding, yet in its focus on the detrimental impact of
automobility and its call for stronger links between transport and urban planning,
degrowth largely reflects the perspective of the ‘sustainable mobility paradigm’ (SMP)
(Banister, 2008; Hickman et al., 2013) that remains hegemonic in academic and policy-
making circles alike (Kębłowski and Bassens, 2018). Therefore, despite some notable
exceptions (Chertkovskaya and Paulsson, 2022; Krähmer, 2021), while the questions of
social equity, justice and (re)politicisation of social and environmental challenges are
salient to degrowth, its proponents are yet to explore the political economic contradictions
and tensions that underpin the particular field of urban transport and mobility.
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To address this challenge, I argue that degrowth may benefit from engaging with critical
perspectives on transport. To explain what this entails, I turn to the specific policy of
providing fare-free access to public transport (PT), known as ‘fare-free public
transport’ (FFPT). While it could be argued that FFPT contradicts degrowth on
environmental grounds, encouraging cost-free and unlimited mobility, diverse urban
movements (Dellheim and Prince, 2018; Santini, 2019) have advocated FFPT as a strategy
for contributing to social and spatial justice, addressing climate change and challenging the
pro-growth logic of urban development. Thus, below I employ it as an example of how
institutional transport planning can work towards spatialising degrowth.
FFPT exists in full form in no fewer than 250 nearly 300 localities worldwide. In this article,
I rely on material gathered during multiple fieldwork stays in three FFPT sites (Aubagne,
France; Tallinn, Estonia; Chengdu, China) in 2016 and 2017. The fieldwork entailed, first,
conducting over 80 interviews with key local stakeholders: municipal officials and
politicians, transport authorities and operators, NGO representatives and activists and
workers of local PT companies. Additionally, the interviews were accompanied by a scan of
local media and official documents provided by local political bodies. From this large
dataset, I extract specific observations and conclusions to demonstrate how and why to
explore transport critically, and what lessons this exercise might bring for degrowth.
Throughout the article I directly address the main goals of the special issue (Kaika et al.,
forthcoming) focused on the question of “spatialising degrowth”. First, I approach
transport as a vehicle for understanding the limits of the current conceptualisation of
degrowth on the urban scale, and by addressing them I hope to contribute to the broader
agenda of spatialising and urbanising degrowth (Xue and Kębłowski, 2022). Second, I add
to the ongoing documentation and critical assessment of urban practices that show
potential to align with degrowth, demonstrating how institutions and policymakers may
connect urban policies with degrowth agendas. I conclude by exploring how FFPT may
inspire a degrowth-driven urban agenda.
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Degrowth and transport: The trap of sustainability
Degrowth and the city
While the degrowth scholars and activists represent heterogenous positions and fields, they
jointly identify growth as a hegemonic tenet of contemporary societies – a foundation of a
profoundly unjust and unsustainable socio-economic paradigm (Flipo and Schneider,
2015). They propose to engage in ‘a collective and deliberative process aimed at the
equitable downscaling of the overall capacity to produce and consume and of the role of
markets and commercial exchanges as a central organising principle of human
lives’ (Sekulova et al., 2013: 1). This vision involves ‘a radical critique of society’ (Flipo and
Schneider, 2015: xxv), recognising ecological planetary limits, emphasising the
environmental destruction spurred by economic growth and calling for consequent
reduction of consumption and production. It is imagined to guide a socio-political process
of profound reorganisation of the distribution of goods and knowledge, whilst ensuring
well-being, social justice and democracy, towards a society and economy built on sharing,
conviviality, care, frugality and simplicity.
This social, economic and political transformation has far-reaching consequences for
urban communities. Yet, the proponents of degrowth are still to provide a serious reflection
on the role of urban development in the transformation they advance. As noted by Xue
(2022), the degrowth literature some times has expressed an anti-urban sentiment,
claiming that ‘cities are considered destined to be environmentally and socially
negative’ (p. 3), and an outcome of a growth-orientated paradigm (Nelson and Schneider,
2018). Degrowth communities are imagined to be located outside of existing urban cores
(Trainer, 2019), in suburban areas (Alexander and Gleeson, 2018) and eco-villages
(Trainer, 2012; Xue, 2014). Several degrowth scholars have explored small-scale practices
developed in the spirit of de-commodification and conviviality of urban space, such as
urban gardening (Anguelovski, 2015), squatting (Cattaneo and Gavaldà, 2010) and eco-
housing (Nelson, 2018). Although these studies have offered inspiring and critical insights
into urban ‘alternatives’ to growth-orientated society, they do not address the issue of the
scalability of particular practices, and their anchorage in local contexts. Some scholars
have reflected on how to apply the idea of degrowth to urban development and planning
(Khmara and Kronenberg, 2022; Savini et al., 2022; von Schönfeld and Willems, 2021; Xue
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and Kębłowski, 2022), focusing on urban compactness (Xue, 2022), critiquing ‘sustainable’
urban development (Krähmer, 2021) and developing the notions of ‘polycentric
autonomism’, ‘finity’ and ‘habitability’ (Savini, 2021). Research addressing potential socio-
spatial tensions, contradictions and inequalities generated by the degrowth transition has
focused primarily on housing (Cucca and Friesenecker, 2022; Martínez Alonso, 2022; Mete,
2022), without much consideration for other domains of the production of urban space and
society, including transport and mobility. As a result, even though degrowth scholars
recognise that ‘spatial planning plays a crucial role in imagining, promoting’ (Savini, 2021:
1077), a plethora of issues remains to be explored to articulate the relation between
degrowth and the urban.
Degrowth and transport: From radical foundations …
I attempt to strengthen the link between degrowth and urban studies by focusing on
transport and mobility, which I approach as a vehicle for, first, understanding the political
economic dynamics in urban settings and, second, addressing the limitations of the current
conceptualisation of urban degrowth. While ‘urban mobility has not been addressed
extensively in the literature on degrowth’ (Chertkovskaya and Paulsson, 2022: 443), an
increasing number of degrowth scholars have nonetheless referred to urban transport
challenges. Although these observations might be scattered, offered as part of research
exploring diverse areas of urban life, they nonetheless provide a clear image of what
mobility problems and solutions are identified by the proponents of degrowth.
Early degrowth writing was remarkably radical in its vision of mobility. Both André Gorz
and Ivan Illich, two thinkers that laid the foundations for early conceptualisations of
degrowth, wrote about the centrality of mobility in challenging the growth paradigm. Gorz
(1980) identified automobility as a prime reason behind the dependence of contemporary
societies on fossil fuels, criticising the spatial imprint of car infrastructure. Illich (1973)
offered a critique of speed as of key social and economic value around which transport is
developed. He advocated a systemic slowing down of mobility not only as a way of limiting
the environmental impact of transport but also, even more importantly, as an element of a
broad challenge to ‘a worldwide class structure of speed capitalists [prioritising the]
exchange-value of time’ (Illich, 1973: 29), whose privilege hinges on ‘hours of compulsory
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consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the
transportation industry’ (Illich, 1973: 19).
Gorz’s and Illich’s ideas reverberate in some of the contemporary discussions about the
role of transport in the anticipated degrowth transition. Notably, Sekulova and her
colleagues suggest ‘redirecting investment away from infrastructure in fast and car-based
modes of transport to slow-mode ones’ (Sekulova et al., 2013: 5), while Chertkovskaya and
Paulsson (2022: 4) propose an ‘overall presumption of reduced mobility, associated both
with a smaller material throughput’. Schneider (2008: 30) questions alleged rebound
effects related to the improvement of transport infrastructure, arguing that ‘rapid means of
transport create the potential to save time, but very often the time saved in faster
transportation is used to travel greater distances’. Relatedly, Moriarty and Honnery (2013:
20) discuss the limits of technical solutions to decreasing transport-related emissions,
claiming that ‘the time-savings benefits are ambiguous, since faster modes of travel do not
necessarily lower total daily travel times’.
… to the trap of ‘sustainable’ mobility
However, when focusing on specific questions regarding urban mobility, the degrowth
literature appears somewhat less attached to the movement’s radical roots. Rather, it
proposes a general vision of urban development that is PT-orientated, compact and dense
(Moriarty and Honnery, 2013; Xue, 2022), identifying private motorised mobility as the key
problem threatening urban ‘liveability’, ‘happiness’ and a ‘good life’ (Sekulova et al., 2013) –
to the detriment of ‘health and wellbeing’ (Nørgård, 2013: 68). Degrowth envisions a
transition towards urban mobility systems characterised by scaled down car infrastucture,
which is to be achieved through a modal shift from private cars to PT and other low-carbon,
‘shared’ and ‘convivial’ transport practices and systems (Cattaneo et al., 2022; Jackson,
2015; Khmara and Kronenberg, 2022; Schor, 2015), reducing overall dependence on
automobility. In this perspective, particular attention is paid to the importance of cycling
and walking (Khmara and Kronenberg, 2022; Samerski, 2018; Sekulova et al., 2013),
following Illich’s (1973) identification of the bicycle as an ultimately convivial and simple
mode of travel which is a vital element and potent symbol of degrowth. In sum, degrowth
imagines a shift towards a bicycle-based, ‘car-free city’ (Schneider, 2008) in which urban
space ‘liberated’ from cars is reclaimed by urban inhabitants.
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At first glance, this vision is highly desirable from both a social and an environmental
perspective. It would be unreasonable to argue against planning cities that are less car
orientated. However, I argue that this vision is underpinned by at least two problems. First,
its main tenets bear a striking resemblance to those of the SMP, conceptualised over a
decade ago (Banister, 2008; Hickman et al., 2013). Similarly to degrowth, the SMP
emphasises the need to reduce the environmental impact of mobility, notably through
curbing societal dependence on automobility and aviation, and reducing travel needs by
creating stronger links between land use and mobility policy. This is a striking parallel,
given how strongly the degrowth proponents criticise sustainable development, identifying
it as ‘a fallacious strategy’ (Krähmer, 2021: 6) that ‘depoliticizes genuine political
antagonisms about the kind of future one wants to inhabit [and] renders environmental
problems technical, promising win–win solutions and the (impossible) goal of perpetuating
development without harming the environment’ (Kallis et al., 2015: 9).
Reflecting the SMP, degrowth shares its considerable limitations. Crucially, the SMP rarely
engages with the diverse social, spatial and political factors that shape how urban transport
is organised and practised (Kębłowski and Bassens, 2018; Kębłowski et al., 2022). Similarly,
degrowth fails to acknowledge the uneven socio-spatial distribution of anti-car measures
that often focus on ‘saving’ particular urban areas and population groups from
automobility (e.g. urban cores, which in many European cities are inhabited by more
mobile and wealthier residents), while sustaining its presence elsewhere (e.g. in suburban
areas, often populated by less mobile and poorer inhabitants who cannot afford living in
gentrified urban cores). The seemingly enticing vision of creating ‘convivial urban
landscapes that are made for people and communities, not cars’ (Alexander and Gleeson,
2018: 80) is drawn without much discussion of the audience and opponents of this
imagined transformation. As little reference is made to how its benefits and costs would be
distributed across the intersectional spectrum of class, sex, race and age, the revolutionary
transition envisioned by degrowth is allegedly consensual – few social conflicts or
contradictions are articulated. Recent degrowth-inspired writing on urban mobility is more
cognisant of these issues. For instance, inspired by the urban experience of Barcelona,
Cattaneo and his colleagues (2022) build on Illich’s work to assess diverse means of urban
transport against their autonomy and collective property, embracing a series of ‘shared’
means of transport as a way of ‘freeing’ urban space from motorised vehicles, and
considering the (in)justices related to the distribution of public space among different
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transport modes – even if they pay very little attention to how shared mobilities have been
embraced by capitalist interests and actors across urban contexts, further exacerbating
socio-spatial inequalities. Chertkovskaya and Paulsson (2022) examine such tensions in
Moscow, where they observe how an urban regime composed of public and private actors
effectively dismantled the local trolleybus network, despite opposition from local social
movements. Krähmer (2021) offers a degrowth critique of Copenhagen’s mode of
‘sustainable’ urban development, which to a large extent hinges on transport policies. His
research demonstrates the contradiction between the popularity of ‘soft’ modes in inner-
city neighbourhoods and the plans for expanding the local airport, embedded in the
agenda of competition-driven urban entrepreneurialism geared towards boosting the city’s
‘global’ status.
Despite these notable exceptions, much remains to be done in terms of connecting
degrowth debates with research into political economic dynamics underpinning urban
mobility. At present, while degrowth offers a particularly trans-disciplinary and robust
critique of growth-driven configurations of contemporary societies, when discussing urban
mobility it draws too strong a parallel with the largely depoliticised paradigm of
‘sustainable’ mobility – a limitation for both spatialising degrowth and ‘degrowing’ urban
studies. I argue that the path ahead lies first and foremost in connecting the degrowth
debate to critical approaches to urban transport (Kębłowski et al., 2022), which constitute
the analytical framework for the remainder of this article. Their ‘critical’ capacity lies in the
attempt to de-centre the transport debate by demonstrating that urban transport policies
and projects are part and parcel of growth-driven capitalism, hinging on capital
accumulation, elite entrepreneurial agendas and urban regimes (Enright, 2016). This
means analysing specific transport agendas, policies and practices not just in terms of their
impact on mobility patterns – for instance on how they facilitate a modal shift away from
private cars and promote the use of collective and ‘soft’ modes of transport – but first and
foremost as a vehicle of urban governance, exploring the political institutions and
mechanisms that articulate and apply transport agendas and projects. This approach
contextualises individual mobility behaviour within broader social and political structures,
scrutinising how the organisation of mobility often (re)produces spatial and social
inequality, and the politics of class (Reigner et al., 2013), becoming an inherent element of
spatial revanchism (Soja, 2010).
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The critical connection between degrowth and urban transport: Exploring the
case of fare-free public transport
Introducing fare-free public transport
To explore these questions while stimulating the degrowth debate, in the remainder of this
article I centre upon the policy of FFPT. Unsurprisingly, FFPT is often met with criticism,
usually voiced by transport economists and engineers, who deem it largely unsustainable
and uneconomical (Cats et al., 2017; Fearnley, 2013; Storchmann, 2003). Its advocates
belong to different academic fields, social movements and public institutions, located in
very diverse locales (Dellheim and Prince, 2018; Enright, 2019). They claim that offering
fare-free access to PT acts towards social and spatial justice, helps to mitigate the climate
crisis and challenges the pro-growth logic of urban development. Some of these actors
argue that FFPT questions the hegemonic role of technological efficiency and financial
profitability achieved through economic growth, and at the same emphasises the public
role of PT by making it unconditionally open to all (Santini, 2019).
Below, I follow the perspective of ‘comparative urbanism’ (McFarlane, 2010; Robinson,
2011), which emphasises the importance of contributing to urban theory by drawing from
diverse localities, especially those outside the global North. Accordingly, rather than
provide an in-depth analysis of a single case, I offer empirical observations across three
urban contexts: Aubagne (France), Tallinn (Estonia) and Chengdu (China). By juxtaposing
and emphasising the particularities of why and how FFPT has been applied, I aim to reach
a more complete understanding of FFPT as a policy, rather than universalising
observations from any of the three case studies.
The three cases differ, first, in geography and scale. Aubagne is a small town (population of
45,128 in 2014) located in the periphery of Marseille, and a centre of an agglomeration of 12
peri-urban municipalities (further 58,890 inhabitants). Tallinn (443,932 inhabitants in
2020) is the economic and political centre of Estonia and the country’s largest city.
Chengdu (11.2 million inhabitants in 2020), the capital of the Sichuan province and one of
the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in China, is one of the largest cities in the world to
have experimented with partial fare abolition.
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Second, in each case FFPT operates differently. In Aubagne, the local PT network has been
unconditionally free of charge for all passengers since 15 May 2009, and no tickets apply. At
the time of this research, the network consisted of 20 regular bus routes, 10 school routes
and a single tram line. In Tallinn, FFPT was introduced on 1 January 2013 in a much larger
network of 74 bus routes, four tram routes and four trolleybus routes. Crucially, free rides
are available to officially registered city residents, who have the right to purchase a ‘zero
ticket’ that has to be validated before each trip. Visitors and tourists continue to pay fares,
and therefore the ticketing system has been maintained. Passengers in Chengdu have fare-
free access to only a part of the local PT network. The fare-free regime embraces 116
‘community buses’ (社区巴士, shèqū bāshì) that operate on short routes of 1–3 km long. The
service can be used by validating an electronic ticket used in paid PT modes (other bus
routes and the metro). Otherwise, passengers must pay €0.24 per ride in cash. The
1
ticketing system continues to operate and bus drivers check the tickets upon front-door
boarding.
Exploring fare-free public transport: From transport sustainability …
As I argued above, most degrowth proponents that explore transport in urban settings
essentially mirror the perspective of the SMP, identifying automobility as the major
problem to be addressed by academics and policy-makers, and conceptualise PT first and
foremost as part of a broader strategy for generating a modal shift away from private cars.
Curiously, it is precisely on these grounds that FFPT has been strongly criticised by the
SMP advocates. Although these arguments have not been explicitly raised by the degrowth
debate, I argue that they are largely in line with much of degrowth writing about transport
and mobility, as outlined in the previous section. First, the proponents of the SMP have
claimed that instead of improving the experience and overall quality of collective
transport, abolishing fares devalues the transport service while endangering local transport
operators and local governments by reducing or even eliminating income from PT tickets
(Fearnley, 2013; van Goeverden et al., 2006). Second, as car drivers are more responsive to
improvements in service frequency, speed and overall comfort – rather than to a decrease
In the discussion about Chengdu’s FFPT, all figures have been converted from RMB (Chinese Yuan)
1
according to the rate that applied at the time of research: €1 = 7.5 RMB.
11
in price – zeroing fares has supposedly little to no impact in terms of attracting car users to
PT. Instead, FFPT is accused of creating ‘useless mobility’ (Duhamel, 2004: 6) by
generating additional inessential and excessive mobility, attracting predominantly PT
passengers, pedestrians and cyclists (Fearnley, 2013; Storchmann, 2003; van Goeverden et
al., 2006).
To address this critique, I turn to the evidence from Aubagne, Tallinn and Chengdu. In
Aubagne, the decision to abolish fares initiated a long-term strategy of redesigning the PT
system. In turn, the local authorities received a strong mandate for renewing the bus fleet,
re-designing routes to cover the whole territory of the surrounding agglomeration,
significantly increasing service frequency to satisfy the increased demand and – last but not
least – building the network’s first tram line. Similarly, Tallinn’s FFPT programme was
preceded and later accompanied by a long-term agenda of improving the quality of PT.
Back in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rolling stock was old,
unreliable, poorly heated and ventilated, and energy inefficient. In the years preceding fare
abolition, the Tallinn municipality began to renew the PT fleet, designate priority bus lanes
and introduce an electronic information system on vehicles and at key stations and stops.
Abolishing fares may therefore be understood ‘as the final stage in a sequence of steps
aimed at making PT in Tallinn more attractive and affordable’ (Cats et al., 2017: 1092).
Importantly, municipal officials claim that many of these steps could not have been taken
without fare abolition, since the abolition of fares constituted a crucial event that firmly
positioned collective transport in the public debate. In this sense, as in Aubagne, FFPT can
be interpreted as a policy that enabled – rather than impeded – continuous development of
PT. It gave legitimacy to renewing vehicles, increasing their frequency and capacity, adding
new routes and facilitating and promoting new transport modes.
In Chengdu, too, a transition to partial FFPT ran in parallel with an overall increase in PT
quality. As discussed by Jing and Van de Ven (2014), in the years preceding fare abolition,
the bus network had been transformed from a conglomerate of competing bus operators,
both private and public, into a unified system run by one public company. This allowed the
urban authorities to optimise and integrate bus routes and fares, upgrade the bus fleet,
increase its punctuality and frequency, and improve the drivers’ working conditions,
thereby reducing the number of road accidents. Furthermore, electronic tickets were
introduced to improve data collection and enable passengers to transfer for free (up to two
12
times) on a single fare. Thus, the policy of partial fare abolition in Chengdu both originated
from and contributed to the municipality’s long-term commitment to developing PT.
Second, evidence from FFPT programmes confirms a fundamental observation that fare
abolition is ‘virtually certain to result in significant ridership increases no matter where it is
implemented’ (Volinski, 2012: 2). In Aubagne, prior to fare abolition, the local PT network
‘was hardly used’ (semi-structured interview with a representative of the local PT operator
(TransDev), March 2016). Introducing FFPT triggered a stunning increase in ridership.
From 1.9 million passengers transported in 2008, passenger volumes increased to 4.48
million in 2011 (+135.8%) and stayed at this level throughout 2012 and 2013. The
construction of the city’s first tram line led to a further increase from 4.8 million trips in
2014 to 5.5 million in 2015. Consequently, the ridership nearly tripled (+189.5%) between
2008 and 2015 and remained stable in the following years (6.27 million passengers in 2018
and 6.57 million in 2019) (Façonéo, n.d.), which suggests that the impact of FFPT is long-
lasting. In Tallinn, officials at the municipal transport department also attribute to FFPT a
strong increase in passenger volumes (+6.5%, from 133.923 million in 2012 to 142.675
million in 2013), while Cats and his colleagues (2017) refer to a 14% increase in the number
of trips on PT in the same time period. Here, too, the passenger volumes remained stable
until the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 142.4 million in 2019 (Aktsiaselts Tallinna
Linnatransport, 2020). An even higher growth of passengers was observed on trains that
enter the city’s administrative limits. After they were incorporated into Tallinn’s FFPT
system in October 2013, the number of travellers who began and ended their journey
within the city borders, effectively using local trains as their means of urban transport,
increased by 944.9% from 160,000 in 2012 (averaging 438 trips per day) to 1,671,834 in
2014 (averaging 4580 trips per day). As a result, FFPT boosted the popularity of an
underused travel mode.
Third, the evidence partly responds to the critique that new passengers do not shift to PT
from private cars. In Aubagne, before the abolition of fares, the modal split was dominated
by private vehicles (71% of trips) and walking (22%), with only a minor share of PT (5%)
and cycling (2%) (ATT – CAREX, 2006). It is difficult to determine how the introduction of
FFPT affected this situation, as the local authorities only conducted occasional surveys that
never reached more than 1000 respondents. Even though this data is limited, it shows that
among passengers who began to use PT only after the introduction of the fare-free system,
13
50% previously used private cars or motorcycles, 20% walked and 10% cycled (CAPAE,
2012), which partly refutes the accusations that FFPT primarily attracts cyclists and
pedestrians (Fearnley, 2013; Storchmann, 2003; van Goeverden et al., 2006). Among car
drivers who did not use collective transport prior to fare abolition, 20% became its
passengers precisely due to FFPT. Nonetheless, as 61% of them continued to use cars,
automobility ‘remains a privileged mode of transport’ (Mark&Ter’ and Transdev, 2013: 11),
and only a small shift from cars to PT has been observed. In Tallinn, one year before fare
abolition the share of PT usage amounted to 55%, followed by cars (31%), walking (12%)
and cycling (1%). One year after the fares were abolished, the modal share of PT increased
by 8%. Free access to PT attracted some car users (+3% increase of modal share), yet the
modal shift from walking was somewhat larger (+5%).
In Chengdu, officials claim that the provision of free community buses ‘has achieved only
limited results’ with regard to attracting car users (semi-structured interview with a
member of the board of Chengdu’s public bus operator (Chengdu Bus Group), November
2016). PT is considered one of the key instruments that can help facilitate urban growth,
yet partial abolition of fares was never expected to curb automobility. Characteristically for
large-scale urban areas across China, car ownership is rising sharply. According to official
estimates between 2015 and 2018, the number of motor vehicles registered in Chengdu
increased by nearly half, from 3.29 million to 4.88 million (Sichuan Provincial Bureau of
Statistics, 2016, 2019), with almost 1500 new vehicles registered in the city every day,
although the actual figure is likely to be much higher.
Overall, this data shows that even though the overall effect of fare abolition in terms of
attracting car drivers to PT is small, its impact on the increase in PT usage is unequivocal.
Moreover, FFPT contributes to existing efforts towards increasing the quality of PT service,
instead of impeding its quality. Put simply, the supposed contradiction between quality of
service and its fare-free character has not materialised in any of the three cases analysed.
… to urban tensions and contradictions
Even though the evidence explored above may suggest that FFPT has a somewhat limited
capacity to alter urban transport systems, as alone it cannot curb the detrimental
environmental and social impact of automobility in a short time scale, I argue that this
14
reflection should be placed in the context of broader political economic dynamics observed
in specific urban settings. Below, I refer to FFPT to demonstrate that critical analysis of a
transport policy – which can hopefully inspire the degrowth debate – entails examining not
only its impact on mobility patterns but also its spatial and social embeddedness in
mechanisms and agendas of urban governance.
This means, first, exploring the spatial dimension of transport governance – an aspect that
is not explicitly articulated by most voices in the degrowth debate. Aubagne’s FFPT
programme was clearly framed as a strategy for inter-municipal solidarity and spatial
inclusion. Until 2014, the town formed part of the Communauté d’agglomération du pays
d’Aubagne et de l’ Étoile (Agglomeration community of Pays d’Aubagne et de l’Etoile,
CAPAE) composed of 12 municipalities that are largely unequal in terms of their size and
political influence, as nearly half of CAPAE’s population resides in Aubagne. Instead of
reflecting this inequality, CAPAE’s transport policy directly addressed it. Already in the
years preceding fare abolition, the local PT network was redesigned to provide an on-
demand PT service to the most remote areas of the agglomeration, while several of its
municipalities became connected with Aubagne by express bus services (Claux, 2014: 230–
237). One of the key objectives of fare abolition was to strengthen this approach by offering
spatially inclusive PT services. Importantly, the policy embraced both urban cores and
suburban settlements: ‘it was not only about Aubagne, it was about the whole territory of
CAPAE’ (semi-structured interview with a mayor of one of the CAPAE municipalities,
March 2016). As expressed by one of the authors of the local FFPT programme, it ‘acts as a
glue that keeps our society and our territory together’, facilitating links between its
municipalities, building links across the territory and preventing ‘the emergence of
enclaves’ (semi-structured interview with a mayor of one of the CAPAE municipalities,
March 2016). The FFPT-led integration thereby acquired an inherently social dimension –
as opposed to the situation in Marseille, where many of the youth are isolated in their
neighbourhoods, and cannot afford high PT fares, ‘here, a lot of young people discovered
different villages within the agglomeration’ (semi-structured interview with an ex-member
of the CAPAE council, March 2016).
Seen through the same spatial lens, the FFPT programme in Tallinn reveals a strikingly
different image: inter-territorial competition is more apparent than solidarity. Fare-free
tickets are offered by Tallinn authorities only to formally registered residents. This
15
limitation is fundamental to the political economy of FFPT, as the national authorities
transfer to the municipality part of each resident’s annual income tax, amounting to
approximately €1600 per resident (data for 2017, Tallinn City Government, 2017). As
changing one’s official address in Estonia is a simple online procedure that is not followed
by strict administrative or police verification, within three years following the abolition of
fares Tallinn gained as many as 25,000 registered inhabitants, which translates to an
additional annual income of €40 million. As a result, as explained by a local official,
‘[thanks to FFPT,] Tallinn has earned […] a substantial addition of funds to invest in [PT].
Otherwise [it would] definitely not be at the same level’ (semi-structured interview with an
official at Tallinn City Office, May 2016). To respond to this policy, suburban municipalities
located in the county surrounding Tallinn, where in the same time period approximately
14,000 residents disappeared from the books (author’s communication with Estonian
Statistical Office), have begun offering resident-only public services such as kindergartens
and sports facilities, effectively competing with the capital city. However, peri-urban and
rural municipalities located at a greater distance from Tallinn, especially those located on
major PT corridors to Tallinn, could not engage in a similar strategy. Suffering from limited
financial resources, they observed a loss of registered population, enticed by Tallinn’s
FFPT programme.
A further contradiction revealed by a critical analysis of FFPT regards its social dimension.
Despite its competition-driven logic in Tallinn, FFPT forms part of the municipal social
agenda developed in opposition to the neoliberal and pro-austerity strategy of the Estonian
state. Rather than approach PT as a product that should compete with private cars and
conceptualise passengers as individual customers whom PT should entice, a fully
subsidised and universal PT service is offered to all Tallinn residents. As a result, the
zeroing of fares has generated more frequent usage of PT among a number of under-
privileged social groups. As shown by data from the annual municipal survey (analysed by
Cats and his colleagues, 2017), within one year after the introduction of free fares, PT
usage had increased among the unemployed (+32%), pensioners (+17%) and inhabitants on
a parental or home leave (+21%). A similar increase has been observed for inhabitants on
low incomes: +26% among residents living on less than €300/month, and +14% among
those with a €300–400/month income. Abolishing fares has made PT more popular among
the youth (+21% among 15–19-year-olds) and the elderly (+19% among residents between
60 and 74 years old). Therefore, FFPT could be argued to introduce a mobility paradigm
16
that is more inclusive of inhabitants across the spectrum of age and income, albeit more
research is needed to understand whether the opening up of PT possibly leads to access to
the city and the diverse spaces and functions it offers.
Chengdu’s FFPT programme – albeit applied only partially, and on a limited scale – reveals
another set of urban dynamics and demonstrates the importance of studying mobility as
part and parcel of urban development. The provision of free access to ‘community buses’
implicitly challenges several principles of urbanisation in China. As observed by
Campanella (2008), ever since the country’s opening up to global capitalism in the 1970s,
its urban development has proceeded at a record-breaking scale and extraordinary pace. As
‘perhaps no other regime has equated national social and political development with
urbanization so explicitly and determinedly as China’s’ (Abramson, 2016: 156), until the
COVID-19 pandemic the urban expansion and sprawl continued nationwide at an
unprecedented scale, strongly relying on the construction of spectacular transport
infrastructure and generating acute intra-urban segregation. For, similarly to other Chinese
metropolises, Chengdu’s fast-paced development hinges on massive migration from rural
to urban areas, controlled by the State by means of the strict segregation and exploitation
of rural migrants. Their disenfranchisement derives from a distinction between rural and
urban citizens defined by the household registration system called hùkǒu (户⼝).
Introduced in 1958, it limits access to urban welfare. As the majority of rural migrants have
very little chance of obtaining an urban hùkǒu, the system is blamed for maintaining an
‘urban–rural apartheid’ (Miller, 2012: 176), identified as ‘a major source of injustice and
inequality, perhaps the most crucial foundation of China’s social and spatial
stratification’ (Wing Chan and Buckingham, 2008: 583). In the particular case of Chengdu,
at the time of research approximately a quarter of the city’s inhabitants did not have the
urban hùkǒu.
The policy of enabling free rides on Chengdu’s community buses stands out as a measure
that does not follow the growth-driven paradigm outlined above. Even though FFPT can be
accessed throughout the city’s extensive urban core, it functions on the scale of particular
neighbourhoods, as community buses are intended to support short-distance trips and are
operated using relatively small vehicles. The fare-free buses have a very mundane
character and lack any spectacular or large-scale elements. FFPT is also a very inexpensive
17
policy that does not entail significant infrastructural investment. Furthermore, providing
free access to a part of the bus network is not motivated by an ambition to contribute to the
city’s land valorisation strategies. Rather than expand the network of collective transport to
open new opportunities for real estate speculation, the goal of partial FFPT is to ‘improve
connectivity within neighbourhoods […], fill gaps in the overall [PT] system, and make it
more operational and flexible at its fringes’ (semi-structured interview with a member of
the board of Chengdu’s public bus operator (Chengdu Bus Group), November 2016). Most
importantly, free rides are available to all users, including inhabitants who do not hold the
urban hùkǒu. While these people continue to be excluded from municipal healthcare,
education and housing services, their personal status does not affect access to FFPT.
Community buses work against existing social inequalities and injustices, ‘providing
welfare to the public’ (Tallinn City Government, 2017) regardless of its formal status. In
this way, FFPT challenges the fundamental principles of Chengdu’s growth-driven urban
development, acting as a policy developed on a small scale, in a largely unspectacular
manner, without contributing to urban sprawl, and tackling social segregation instead of
exacerbating it.
Critical analysis of transport and mobility: What lessons for degrowth?
In this article, I have argued that despite its radical roots, the contemporary degrowth
debate offers a rather limited view on mobility, echoing the currently dominant framing of
transport as a contributor to ‘sustainable’ development by advocating dense and car-free
urbanities (Khmara and Kronenberg, 2022; Nørgård, 2013; Sekulova et al., 2013). While this
viewpoint emphasises important environmental aspects of mobility, it fails to explore
fundamental political economic questions regarding the embeddedness of transport in
urban governance – even if important exceptions to this rule have begun to emerge
(Cattaneo et al., 2022; Chertkovskaya and Paulsson, 2022; Krähmer, 2021).
To expand this outlook, I referred to the recently conceptualised ‘critical’ perspectives on
urban transport, which thus far have only rarely resounded in the degrowth literature. This
approach explicitly engages with political economic dynamics observed in urban settings,
perceiving mobility as a backbone of the capitalist mode of producing urban society and
space. I examined FFPT as a particular case of a transport policy and an example of how
18
institutional transport planning can act as a vehicle for spatialising degrowth. Looking
beyond its impact on mobility patterns, I explored the social and spatial contradictions of
FFPT. I argued that the controversial nature of fare abolition does not lie in its seemingly
limited capacity to alter transport behaviour. Focusing on its apparent failure to attract car
drivers obfuscates potential long-term effects of providing universal access to PT,
observable only at the scale of decades. Instead, capturing the impact of FFPT requires
2
scrutinising its governance, demonstrating the contradictory role that the State and its
institutions play in supporting policies aligned with degrowth. In some localities, the State
may provide free fares to implicitly challenge austerity-driven agendas, acting as the main
organiser and protector of the publicness of urban services (Tallinn), offering an alternative
to growth-driven, fast-paced, large-scale and socially exclusive urban development
(Chengdu). FFPT has the potential to challenge the mobility-related exclusion of poorer
and disenfranchised urban inhabitants (Chengdu, Tallinn), yet it does not necessarily
involve unconditional access (Tallinn), in line with the universal basic service advocated by
some degrowth proponents (Kallis, 2020). Moreover, while the State may apply FFPT as a
measure expressing inter-municipal solidarity and spatial justice (Aubagne), it can also
abolish fares to engage in an essentially pro-growth strategy of boosting place-
attractiveness and exacerbating territorial competition (Tallinn). Therefore, the potential
of FFPT to form part of a counter-hegemonic narrative and act as an ‘alternative’ urban
policy orientated towards degrowth should be studied case by case (Kębłowski, 2022),
building on empirical material from urban settings across the global North, East and South,
adding to the ongoing efforts to decolonise knowledge about transport (Wood et al., 2020).
The need for further critical research on FFPT is perhaps best evidenced by its very
resilience. FFPT programmes in Aubagne and Tallinn have continued despite major shifts
in local political agendas. Even though the key stakeholders behind Tallinn’s policy,
including the city mayor, have left the political stage, the provision of free fares has not
been questioned. Instead, in 2018 the national administration adopted the policy for
regional buses in 11 out of Estonia’s 15 counties. Aubagne’s fare-free policy has survived the
dissolution of CAPAE and the incorporation of its small municipalities into the Métropole
d’Aix-Marseille-Provence, a much larger administrative unit of the eponymous cities and
their agglomerations, in which Aubagne has very little bargaining power. In Chengdu,
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
2
19
neither the continued development of transport mega-infrastructure nor economic and
pandemic crises have led local actors to question free fares on community buses. Finally, in
each of these localities, FFPT proved to be strongly resilient to the COVID-19 pandemic,
whether in terms of responding to the drastic reduction of passengers (which in ‘classic’
paid PT systems meant a significant decrease of revenue) or ensuring physical distance
between PT staff and passengers.
These findings are relevant for conceptualising a future urban agenda inspired by
degrowth. The vision of urban mobility currently advanced by the degrowth movement
builds on the idea of creating ‘car-free’ cities that are more ‘green’, ‘healthy’ and ‘convivial’
than the currently dominant growth-driven urbanities. It emphasises the need to generate
a shift from private motorised means of transport to more ‘shared’ transport modes such as
PT, cycling and walking. However, I argue that examining transport policies against their
potential to contribute to a fundamental socio-economic transition away from the growth
paradigm requires analysing much more than their impact on travel behaviour. Rather, as
the particular case of FFPT demonstrates, transport policies should be approached as
complex agendas, contextualised in the social and spatial landscapes of specific urban
settings, and analysed through the lens of political economic and governance dynamics.
Put simply, incorporating a critical perspective on transport means analysing mobility
policies that could potentially embrace the degrowth ideology – of which FFPT is but one
example – as multi-faceted urban strategies. Even more importantly, following this
approach means resisting the temptation to remove the urban from transport, to echo the
popular tune of ‘sustainable’ development or, worse yet, to join the glossary of de-
politicised and technocratic notions such as ‘resilience’ and ‘smartness’, which share a
disregard for socio-economic, political and spatial complexity of the urban.
Critical analysis of transport and mobility: What lessons for degrowth?
I would like to thank my hosts and colleagues in different FFPT sites. Without the
assistance and trust of Hélène Reigner (Institut d’Urbanisme et d’Aménagement Régional,
Aix-Marseille Université), Allan Alaküla (Tallinn municipality), Tauri Tuvikene, Tarmo
Pikner (Centre for Landscape and Culture, Tallinn University), She Chen and Ming Zhuang
(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chengdu), studying fare-free public transport
programmes in contexts as diverse as Aubagne, Tallinn and Chengdu would have not been
20
possible. I would also like to thank the participants of the 2017 Summer School on
Degrowth and Environmental Justice in Barcelona and Cerbère. Needless to say, none of
the above bear any responsibility for the arguments developed in the article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, grant numbers
G079720N and 1262821N.
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