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Transport innovations in the cracks: reading for potential post-growth transport and mobilities with Deleuze and Guattari

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En un demi-siècle, depuis les années 1970, des réseaux de transport rapide (autoroutes, TGV, aéroports) ont progressivement tissé leur maillage sur des territoires de la France métropolitaine. L’essentiel des réseaux a d’abord été radial et le reste, avec des liens de Paris vers les régions ; puis des réseaux entre les grandes villes des régions et entre ces grandes villes et celles d’autres pays ont été mis en service. Dans quelle mesure les choix géographiques de ces réseaux ont-ils profité et profitent-ils au développement des territoires en bénéficiant ? Et qu’en est-il des territoires éloignés des réseaux de transport rapide ? Répondre à ces questions permet d’éclairer à la fois les enjeux d’aménagement du territoire et de développement local.
Chapter
The dominant transport planning narrative of our times is based on economic growth and capital accumulation, efficiency and predictability, time value and travel time savings, innovation and techno-centrism. These values are not necessarily problematic in all circumstances; however, we propose that it is necessarily a problem when a key activity sector such as transport becomes entirely subjugated to them. This chapter briefly reviews today’s dominant transport planning narrative and its major alternatives – and reveals that these all have major shortcomings. It therefore proposes an integrative alternative that incorporates the contributions of worldviews that are not in harmony with each other and that are radically dissimilar from the worldview that dominates today. This will lead to what we call clumsy mobility solutions, transposing and expanding existing theories on clumsy solutions to transport planning and mobility. Clumsy mobility solutions are transport-related policies, plans, or initiatives that can be accepted and willingly promoted by individuals and social groups with radically different understandings about the world. These solutions provide an important avenue to surpass the dominance of growth, efficiency, and innovation logics, or of any other specific logic, and to provide truly inclusive opportunities for transport and mobility planning.
Article
Proponents of post-growth economic alternatives have repeatedly distinguished between economic recession – a chaotic and harmful economic contraction – and degrowth. In the literature, the latter is often put forward as a planned and intentional process which increases wellbeing while simultaneously reducing ecological harms. This article pays closer attention to what ‘planning’ and ‘intentionality’ mean in this context, exploring some of the limits of this framing for socio-ecological transformation. First, it notes that many key questions related to power and politics in post-growth transformations are left under-examined by such a framing, and, secondly, it highlights that emergence and uncertainty are inevitable aspects of social change. Building on practice theory, we argue for acknowledging the limits of intentionality in favour of concepts such as ‘degrowth practice’, ‘dual power’ and ‘degrowth strategy’. The article concludes by highlighting room for further degrowth engagement with emerging theories of transformation and participatory research approaches.
Article
In the European rail industry, to enable competition in the market, entrants should be granted access to a large set of complementary services, beyond access to the tracks. For an efficient and effective entry, temporary access to quasi-essential complementary assets like rolling stock, mechanical maintenance workshops, data, schedules, etc. is required. In the liberalized rail sector, several observed anticompetitive practices involve distorted access to these quasiessential facilities. Therefore, competition agencies must deal with litigation between the incumbent and new entrants. Most cases have been settled, resulting in commitments from the incumbent. We argue that such transitory and case-by-case remedies fail to produce favorable conditions for a secure and efficient entry. Thus, we propose to systematize such remedies through asymmetric and enduring ex-ante regulation.
Article
The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to have lasting impacts on energy and the environment at the global scale. Shelter-in-place measures implemented to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have resulted in expectations for 2020 global energy demand to contract by nearly 5% with related global CO2 emissions declining by as much as 7%. Exactly how long and to what extent we will see continue to see energy demand, CO2 and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emission destruction resulting from COVID-19 is uncertain but dependent on global policy responses to the pandemic. Policy responses targeting the transportation sector, particularly ground-based transportation, can stimulate a sustainable mobility transition that mitigates the potential for long-term environmental damage. This paper reviews and examines social and cultural dynamics of transportation and extends state-of-the-art knowledge to consider how events surrounding the Covid-19 crisis may have created a sustainable mobility opportunity though (1) avoiding unnecessary transportation volume, (2) shifting transportation norms and practices and/or (3) improving the carbon-efficiency of transportation systems. Relevant policies for a low-carbon transportation transition are considered and those most appropriate to the current context proposed with consideration of key factors that may help or hinder their implementation success.
Article
Human geography has seen a vitalist renaissance over the past decade; however, geography’s concerns are mounting in relation to vitalism’s critical efficacy and political relevance. This article pushes back against these concerns. Drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, we engage with vitalism as a critical pause and consequently as a vital aspiration in an intellectual climate that is growing increasingly enamoured of negativity as the barometer of serious thinking. In sum, we show how Deleuze’s ‘non-organic vitalism’ promotes a wilder sense of thinking and a more affirmative politics, without acquiescing to the problems of the present.
Article
This paper proposes a case-based degrowth critique of sustainable urban development strategies. Copenhagen, European Green Capital in 2014, is considered a role model of planning for sustainability. Does this hold in a degrowth perspective? Sustainable development assumes that environmental impacts can decline while the economy grows. Degrowth maintains that such a process of absolute decoupling is infeasible. Analyzing Copenhagen’s planning documents in this perspective, I find three factors that make the city’s sustainability strategy ineffective for ecological sustainability. First, Copenhagen’s strategy for climate neutrality is based on externalization: only emissions produced locally are counted. Meanwhile, emissions produced outside of the city for products and services consumed locally remain high. Secondly, policies focus on the efficiency of activities rather than their overall impact: efficiency gains are considered reductions of impact, but really mean slower growth of impact. Finally, sustainability measures are proposed as a ‘green fix’, to increase competitiveness and promote economic growth, leading to increased consumption and impact. Analyzing the critical case of Copenhagen in a degrowth perspective, sheds doubts on sustainable urban development, but does not imply the rejection of all its typical planning measures. This induces reflections on how these results can contribute to a degrowth-oriented urban planning.
Article
It is clear that the larger the economy becomes, the more difficult it is to decouple that growth from its material impacts… This isn’t to suggest that decoupling itself is either unnecessary or impossible. On the contrary, decoupling well-being from material throughput is vital if societies are to deliver a more sustainable prosperity—for people and for the planet. (This article is posted on the Science website: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6468/950).
Article
For decades sustainability has been proposed as a framework for a necessary paradigm shift in transport planning. However, critical scholars have shown how this concept, presented with a strong emphasis on economic growth, has limited capacity to truly challenge the current transport-related environmental and social crises or to constitute an ecological worldview. This paper explores resourcefulness as a complementary concept to inform transport planning and practice. A resourcefulness-based worldview, informed by critical theory and challenging the current distribution of material, intellectual and civic resources, aims to constitute a political shift towards guaranteeing the conditions for challenging crises and for just deliberations concerning ecological futures. The idea of resourcefulness is not proposed as a blueprint for transport planning, nor as a top-down theoretical framework. Rather, with a research approach inspired by Participatory Action Research, it is explored in dialogue with the practices of two grassroots movements: the Urban Mobility Forum and the Move Your City project. These movements have been proposing alternative transport planning views and practices in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and L’Aquila (Italy).
Book
This book addresses a central dilemma of the urban age: how to make suburban landscapes sustainable in the face of planetary ecological crisis. The authors argue that degrowth, a planned contraction of overgrown economies, is the most coherent paradigm for suburban renewal. They depart from the anti-suburban sentiment of much environmentalism to show that existing suburbia can be the centre-ground of transition to a new social dispensation based on the principle of enlightened material and energy restraint.