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Destination unknown: Pursuing sustainable mobility in the face of rival societal aspirations
Abstract
A growing volume of scholarship and policy practice focuses on developing societal capacity to guide transitions of socio-technical systems toward more sustainable alternatives. Because several prominent modes of transportation are widely regarded as systemically problematic, the notion of sustainable mobility has received considerable attention from the standpoint of system innovation. Sustainability though constitutes only one of many contemporary political objectives and public commitment to goals consistent with such a future is highly equivocal. A related challenge arises from the ambivalence that sustainability champions often harbor on an individual level. It is probable that efforts to facilitate sustainable mobility will need to be reconciled with rival societal aspirations such as the pursuit of faster and more convenient forms of travel. Drawing on insights from the multi-level perspective, this article contrasts the relatively static automobility system with its more dynamic aeromobility counterpart and explores why evidence of an incipient transition is more apparent within the realm of aviation. In particular, the diffusion of "personal aeromobility" involving the use of small airplanes for on-demand, point-to-point air travel raises perplexing questions for the governance of sustainable mobility.
... Civil aviation has experienced continued growth since its inception, with passenger traffic increasing threefold over the last 25 years alone, and this trend is predicted to continue (Bows, Anderson, & Mander, 2009;Chapman, 2007). 1 Yet, while aviation was still seen as a valued icon of globalization in the early 2000s, the industry has become, within a strikingly short time, a highly visible symbol of environmental degradation and a target of environmental activists (Walker & Cook, 2009). In spite of continuous incremental efficiency gains made by the industry, the projected growth in both passenger and freight traffic indicate that the overall contribution of aviation to climate change emissions will probably increase significantly in the future (Bows et al., 2009;Chapman, 2007;Cohen, 2010), leading to claims that aviation is "the most unsustainable mode of transport currently available" (Chapman, 2007: 361). ...
... Protest campaigns against the expansion of the sector have been pursued by large generalist NGOs, such as Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, and by smaller NGOs targeting the transport sector or aviation specifically, such as AirportWatch, the Aviation Environment Federation, or the European Federation for Transport and Environment (Boons, van Buuren, & Teisman, 2010;Griggs & Howarth, 2004;May & Hill, 2006). Governments' actions to promote the "greening" of aviation have ranged from supporting carbon offsetting programs offered by airlines (Cohen, 2010;Gössling et al., 2007) to the establishment of new fuel and ticket taxes (Cohen, 2010), and to inclusion of aviation in national or regional emissions trading schemes (e.g., Buhr, 2012). Normative pressure arising from environmental issues in aviation emanates from the general public as well. ...
... Protest campaigns against the expansion of the sector have been pursued by large generalist NGOs, such as Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, and by smaller NGOs targeting the transport sector or aviation specifically, such as AirportWatch, the Aviation Environment Federation, or the European Federation for Transport and Environment (Boons, van Buuren, & Teisman, 2010;Griggs & Howarth, 2004;May & Hill, 2006). Governments' actions to promote the "greening" of aviation have ranged from supporting carbon offsetting programs offered by airlines (Cohen, 2010;Gössling et al., 2007) to the establishment of new fuel and ticket taxes (Cohen, 2010), and to inclusion of aviation in national or regional emissions trading schemes (e.g., Buhr, 2012). Normative pressure arising from environmental issues in aviation emanates from the general public as well. ...
We seek to understand how actors' interpretations of contentious issues evolve over time within organizational fields and how these interpretations lead to field settlement. Empirically, we examine how groups of actors in the field of civil aviation interpreted the environmental issues of noise and emissions over the period 1996-2010. Actors employed various cultural frames to interpret these issues as they rose and fell in prominence within the field. We develop a framework to track actors' framing trajectories over time, in particular the extent to which these frames reveal actors' stance towards buffering versus integrating issues into their core operations, and describe four such prototypical framing trajectories. We find that actors' framing trajectories were influenced by the extent to which these actors were directly linked to issues in societal discourse and had direct contact with concerned audiences. Based on our analysis, we build theory of how actor framing of issues evolves over time and leads to field settlement of contentious issues.
... Organizational structure institutionalizes practices that may act as innovation barriers. For example, barriers between departments can hinder required coordination and communication (Dougherty and Heller, 1994;Figueroa and Conceição, 2000;Kim et al., 2005;Panizzolo, 1998) can impede organizational learning (Maurie, 2010). According to the concept of dynamic capabilities, organizational structure and strategy alter an organization's resources (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000). ...
... The absorptive capacity of an organization is strongly linked to abilities and attitudes of the individuals in the organization (Maurie, 2010) as well as their interactions and how they share expertise (Maurie, 2010). ...
... The absorptive capacity of an organization is strongly linked to abilities and attitudes of the individuals in the organization (Maurie, 2010) as well as their interactions and how they share expertise (Maurie, 2010). ...
Minimizing factors (barriers) disrupting innovation is a key to success. Drawing on stakeholder theory and dynamic capabilities, we propose the EOI barrier model for identifying barriers at multiple levels of analysis: the external environment (external stakeholders), the organization (managerial levers based on dynamic capabilities) and the individual (employees’ attitudes and abilities, management commitment). By applying this model to the German biotechnology industry, we examine how barriers manifest themselves in specific settings and demonstrate the context specificity of barriers. Using interview data, we identify 39 barriers across the three levels of analysis. The findings highlight the importance of secondary stakeholders.
... It simultaneously creates new opportunities and destructs existing structures. This ambiguous, 'Faustian character' (Blok 2020: 79) of innovation is often neglected in transitions research (Walker and Shove, 2007;Cohen, 2010;Bening et al., 2015;Kenis et al., 2016;Schlaile et al., 2017). ...
... On the contrary, we argue that transitions research is actually quite well-positioned to handle the SI dark sides. First of all, its 'proinnovation bias' should not be overstated, given the proliferation of work on transition failures (Weber and Rohracher, 2012), transition backlash (Pel, 2021), undesirable transitions (Cohen, 2010) and dark sides of transitions (Marín and Goya, 2021;McGowan and Antadze, 2023). Meanwhile, the SI dark sides are quite regular topics in studies on the politics and the ethics (Bening et al., 2015;Kanger and Sovacool, 2022) of sustainability transitions. ...
Social innovation is gaining attention as a pivotal dimension of socio-technical transitions with renewable energy prosumerism as a prominent example. However, this example also highlights that social innovation evokes concerns about purposes, beneficiaries, normative dilemmas and legitimacy. This paper addresses recent calls to confront the perceived 'dark sides' of social innovations. As debates on these dark sides often get stuck in either naive optimism or paralyzing critique, the paper investigates how transitions theory can inform nuanced understandings. The key concept is transitions directionality. The analysis shows how it conceptualizes the dark sides as manifestations of socio-technical path dependence, as disempowering ideological 'landscape' factors, as internal contradictions within institutionally complex regimes, as niche-regime di-alectics, and as transition phases. Rather than proposing a particular normative position, the paper presents a heuristic that supports well-considered engagement with the dark sides.
... Geels (2002) uses personal land transportation as an example of a sociotechnical system, showing how the notion of personal driving binds together vehicle technologies, infrastructures for road and fuel, systems of regulation, distribution networks for vehicles and supplies, and cultural meanings concerning freedom and independence. Cohen (2010) points to the growth of private commercial aviation as an example of a niche innovation that contributes to less sustainable outcomes as it prioritizes other objectives. Several scholars have considered transportation in relation to strategic niche management. ...
... One of the challenges of considering telework as a niche innovation is that telework is a hybrid of organizational and technological innovations. However Witkamp et al. (2011) and Cohen (2010) have shown that niches include social innovations. Niche actors promoted several different telework configurations during the period covered by this study. ...
This article presents telework advocacy in the United States as a case of strategic niche management that contributed to an incremental transformation of office work location practice in the United States. In its first decades, telework advocacy showed elements of strategic niche management including vision and expectations, learning processes, and social networks. Supported by environmental and economic landscape pressures, trip reduction and travel demand management policies opened up protected spaces at the local, state, or federal levels for the practice of telework, with public agencies as experimenters. Niche and incumbent actors shared a strategy of promoting telework in structured circumstances and spoke to organizational and employee benefit alongside societal benefits. Yet as landscape pressures lessened, incumbent actors took greater ownership of the innovations of telework, and shifted their vision to one that considers telecommuting as a function of human resources rather than a societal imperative.
... While aviation used to be seen as a valued icon of globalization until the early 2000s, it is now receiving growing scrutiny by environmentalists and other observers (Litrico & David, 2017). The environmental footprint of flying is heavily debated (Bows, Anderson, & Mander, 2009;Cohen, 2010;Walker & Cook, 2009). Because of this contestation, the notion of sustainability for aviation represents a "rich discursive battleground" (Walker & Cook, 2009), and provides an ideal setting to observe how industry actors interpret a management concept that threatens their legitimacy. ...
... While industry representatives cast air transport as a modest contributor to climate change with 2% of global carbon emissions, some environmentalists argue that other calculations may lead to four or five times this figure; and they point to the forecasted increase in air traffic as the fastest growing source of carbon emissions (Walker & Cook, 2009). Furthermore, analysts agree that reducing aviation's environmental impact cannot be realized by any existing technology, but instead will require a combination of scientific research, technological innovation, innovative regulatory policy, and novel forms of international and interorganizational coordination among diverse stakeholders (Chapman, 2007;Cohen, 2010;Green, 2009;Lawrence, 2009). In sum, aviation is an industry with a salient history that is starting to face acute legitimacy pressures because of its perceived unsustainability (Litrico & David, 2017). ...
In this paper, we examine the interplay between external legitimacy judgments, internal identity beliefs, and conceptions of sustainability. Based on observation at industry events and interviews with key stakeholders, we examine how organizational actors interpret the concept of sustainability in civil aviation, an industry subject to intense legitimacy threat for its environmental impact. We find that the concept of sustainability is interpreted through a process of naturalization, by which conceptual ties to past practices are forged, and the concept becomes corrupted. We describe three mechanisms (relabeling, bundling, zooming out) through which concept naturalization occurs, and we show how this process creates resonance between sustainability and an industry ethos, which captures the aspirations, ideals and values of the industry.
... 10 (Sheller and Urry 2006, 208) On a critical interpretation, the mobilities turn is appreciated particularly for its broad and nuanced approach to mobile reconfigurations. As regards broadness, it helps articulate that current mobility problems encompass far more than ecological damage, safety hazards and travel time losses alone (Cohen 2006(Cohen , 2010. Instead, mobili-15 ties scholarship highlights the very multiplicity of mobile reconfigurations, the typical intertwinements between socio-technical structures, and the diverse and dispersed nature of their (side-) effects. ...
... Firm diagnostics of system pathologies, let alone formulations of remedial 15 strategies, it tends to refrain from, however. Inversely, research into sustainability transitions rather tends to lack this diagnostic finesse, generally targeting ecological degradation, car dependency and sustainable energy as the key mobility issues (Cohen 2010;Geels et al. 2012). It typically focuses on system dynamics and the associated scope for remedial strategies. ...
The ‘mobilities turn’ has reinvigorated the social critique on the automobility system. Theorizing its profound reconfigurations of social life, relationist commitments invite a certain silence regarding the associated social pathologies, however. This article explores a critical-theoretical interpretation of the mobilities paradigm. It proposes the ‘interactive metal fatigue’ (IMF) concept, which theorizes the emergence of ‘interpassive’ social relations as socio-technical dialectics. Taking into account the contradictions that surround the critical-theoretical project, IMF paves the way for balanced critiques of mobilities. This will be shown through the case of Shared Space, an attempt to free public space from traffic management colonization.
... Following up on Schot and Geels'(2008, 545-7) call to zoom out from singular innovation journeys towards their interplay with ongoing developments, multiplicity is studied on the level of evolutionary patterns and 'transition pathways' (Geels and Schot 2007). Transitions researchers have taken to studies into patchworks of regimes and clusters of niches (Geels and Raven 2006;Konrad, Truffer, and Voβ 2008;Raven 2007;Raven andVerbong 2007, 2009;Sandén and Hillman 2011;Verbong, Geels, and Raven 2008), and irregular and compounding system dynamics (Cohen 2010;Penna and Geels 2012;Røpke 2012;Shove 2012). Q2 These studies typically aim to establish patterns of co-evolution, and refine the understanding of the causal mechanisms involved. ...
... As already indicated in the seminal Schot and Geels (2008, 544), this creates practical dilemmas between too little and too much diversity. Intersections analysis only underlines the acute navigational challenges involved: addressing the directionality of transformations (Stirling 2011), it also highlights their still somewhat disregarded discontinuities, fluctuations and ambiguities (Cohen 2010;Meadowcroft 2009;Røpke 2012;Shove 2012). Arguably, the various manifestations of 'emergent incoherence' (Kern and Howlett 2009) require modes of management that are less occupied with the cultivation of particular niches or the dismantling of particular regimes (Hargreaves et al. 2013). ...
Current persistent sustainability challenges are widely understood to require transitions and system innovations. As these systemic changes typically emerge from multiple co-evolving innovations, Schot and Geels [2008. Strategic niche management and sustainable innovation journeys; theory, findings, research agenda, and policy. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 20, no. 5: 537–54] urge to study the interactions between innovation journeys. Their call for multiplicity has been met through several studies. Yet considering that these analyses still leave the attendant navigational challenges underexposed, this article demonstrates the usefulness of nested-case methodologies. Focusing on the ‘intersections’ between interpenetrating case histories, in-depth investigation is combined with broader attention to next-order changes. The relevance and implications of these intersections are illustrated through four innovation journeys in the Dutch traffic management field: unfolding largely in parallel, but sometimes intersecting, they yield a mixed picture of trajectory formation and fragmentation. The phenomenon of emergent incoherence is identified as a key strategic challenge in system innovation processes.
... The multi-level perspective (MLP) is an important conceptual lens for work on socio-technical transitions, especially for scholars looking to identify so-called sustainability pathways (Geels 2002(Geels , 2005a(Geels , 2010Geels and Schot 2007;Schot and Geels 2008;Genus and Coles 2008;Scrase and Smith 2009;Foxon, Hammond, and Pearson 2010;Verbong and Geels 2010;Cohen 2010;Hodson and Marvin 2010;Lauridsen and Jorgensen 2010;van Bree, Verbong, and Kramer 2010). The MLP consists of three hierarchical tiers: the macro-level landscape, the meso-level regime, and the micro-level niches. ...
... In recent years, scholars have employed a socio-technical transitions perspective to study various facets of the contemporary transport system as well as specific features of the predominant automobile (Rosen 2001;Brown et al. 2003;Geels 2004;Vergragt and Brown 2007;Nykvist and Whitmarsh 2008;Hillman and Sanden 2008;Bergek, Jacobsson, and Sanden 2008;Sovacool and Hirsh 2009;Cohen 2009aCohen , 2010van Bree, Verbong, and Kramer 2010;de Bruijne et al. 2010;Schreuer, Ornetzeder, and Rohracher 2010;Sovacool and Brossmann 2010;Tuominen and Ahlqvist 2010;Sanden and Hillman 2011). In conjunction with this work, historical analyses of prior mobility transformations have exposed factors that have 'locked-in' (and 'locked-out') specific innovations and revealed the contingent qualities of past conversions (Geels 2005b,c;Carolan 2009;Ivory and Genus 2010). ...
Automobile society has been triumphant for a century. While this success is often ascribed to entrepreneurial tenacity and indefatigable demand, it is more correctly credited to auspicious political, economic and cultural trends. The macro-scale factors responsible for the entrenchment of automobility in developed countries are now moving in reverse direction. A socio-technical transitions perspective emphasises how declining industrial influence, stagnating wages, growing income inequality, increasing vehicle operating costs and changing sociodemographics are now undermining the foundations of automobile society. Three expressions of this process are considered: claims that transport planners are engaged in a ‘war’ against the automobile, emergent evidence that vehicle use is reaching saturation (the so-called ‘peak car’ phenomenon) and apparent disinclination of youth to embrace automobile-oriented lifestyles. Although these developments suggest some instability in the socio-technical system, the lock-in of key features and the paucity of practicable alternatives suggest that declarations of a pending transition are premature.
... Most of these contributions are rooted in STS perspectives, in political science or in public administration. They have yielded mutually reinforcing arguments for more fine-grained analysis (Genus & Coles, 2008, Kern & Howlett, 2009), more fluid system understandings (Smith & Stirling, 2010, Guy, 2011, greater reflexivity on the side of the researcher , 2008, more sensitivity to the erratic behavior of nested, complex systems (Meadowcroft, 2009, Cohen, 2010, Shove, 2012, more attention to heterogeneity in transition contexts (Smith et al., 2005, Smith, 2007, Maassen, 2012, Jørgensen, 2012, Späth & Rohracher, 2012, Coenen et al., 2012 and a greater sensibility to the inclusion of marginal and subaltern actors (Hendriks, 2009, Avelino, 2009). ...
... The 'faces of interference' thus represent diverse viewpoints within the diverse cases. Meanwhile, several authors have exposed why especially the traffic management field, or at least the wider field of mobility governance, is bound to yield a considerable deal of interferences (Hajer, 1995, van Wee, 2002, Goldman & Gorham, 2006, van den Bergh et al., 2007, Valderrama & Jørgensen, 2007, Cohen, 2010. The ones encountered concern road design (section 3), traffic information arrangements (section 4), speed policy (section 5) and cross-boundary mobility policy (section 6). ...
This paper addresses a recurring theme in system innovation and sustainability transitions research, pertaining directly to the politics of system innovation: The issue of ‘barriers’ and ‘resistance’ to change. Framed as such, they appear as accidental and unfortunate phenomena, as obstacles on the road towards transformative change. These framings do not do justice to the multisided and contested nature of system innovation processes, however. Introducing a unidirectional ‘race-track metaphor’ (Stirling, 2011), they normatively dismiss the voices of actors experiencing interference from change attempts. Taking a more polycentric perspective, by contrast, ‘resistance to change’ can be appreciated with more nuance, through the bidirectional concept of ‘interference’. Based on four in-depth case studies into innovation attempts in the Dutch traffic management field (Pel, 2012), it is argued that alleged ‘resistance’ and ‘barriers’ are by no means accidental, but are only regular manifestations of innovations interfering with stakeholders: Interference occurs even in cases of seemingly ‘incremental’ innovation. Compared as sequences of translations (Callon, 1982, Akrich et al, 2002a,b), the cases bring forward various faces of interference. The key conclusion is that management of system innovation involves not only avoidance and reduction of interference, but also its somewhat paradoxical counterpart of interference-seeking. The term ‘interference management’ denotes the integrated handling of interference, offering both a framework for analysis and a repertoire for action.
... Could the electrification of mobility bring along changes in travel demand as well (Geels et al., 2012)? How and why are the advances towards sustainable surface mobility about to be overtaken by the rise of personal aeromobility (Cohen, 2010)? These inquiries mark how transitions theory takes a particularly critical and politically oriented view on innovation success. ...
How does the transitions theory perspective enrich existing insights on the success, failure and societal impacts of innovations in transportation? The chapter shows how this systemic perspective challenges conventional insights regarding 1) the rationale, 2) governance philosophy, 3) relevant dimensions and 4) scope of transport innovation. It proposes to move from ecological modernization to ‘system innovation’, from evidence-based improvement to experimentalist governance, from sustainable technologies to social-institutional transformation, and from innovation to exnovation. After highlighting the added insights of the transitions-theoretical ‘bigger picture’, the chapter also provides some critical reflections on its limitations.
... Disruptive niche innovations can support the transformation of socio-technical systems towards fundamentally improved environmental and social sustainability. In transport and mobility, such sustainable innovations have been called for over a decade (Cohen, 2010;Sandén and Hillman, 2011;van den Bergh et al., 2007), with recent attention to new service-and intelligent transport-based innovations (Audouin and Finger, 2018;Sochor et al., 2015). Here, we aim to investigate the interplay of policy experimentation and institutional change in the context of an in-depth case study of the development of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) in Finland. ...
While experimentation is at the heart of sustainability transitions, little attention has been paid to policy experimentation and its effects in advancing transitions. Drawing on the literatures on policy experimentation and institutional change in the context of sustainability transitions, we analyse an in-depth case study of the development of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in Finland – one of the first countries globally to advance MaaS by government support. Our findings show how a potentially disruptive innovation, MaaS, can be traced back to a longer process of administrative reorientation and restructuring, i.e. gradual transformation in institutions, and has benefitted from cycles of policy experimentation, combined with the sequencing of policy strategies and further changes in the policy mix. Administrative restructuring has enabled policy experimentation that has led - via new vision building, networking and learning - to major regulatory change allowing market creation for MaaS. We conclude that the dynamics of policy mixes in transitions are influenced by short-term policy experimentation and long-term institutional change. More generally, institutional change is vital for enabling a favourable context for policy experimentation in sustainability transitions that in turn provides cognitive and normative learning to inform further institutional change.
... Maurie J. Cohen, for instance, speaks about (personal) aeromobility as "an increasingly stable socio-technical regime with an interlinked network of companies, personnel, customers, manufacturers, airports, agents, brokers, publications, trade associations, fi nancial institutions, and legal conventions." 19 Similarly, in his numerous texts, Weiqiang Lin repeatedly points out the complex character of aeromobility, claiming, for instance, that "extending from this technical realm are yet other legal and operational elements, including air rights, airways, control zones and air traffi c control procedures, which just as crucially order the conduct of aeromobilities." 20 Julie Cidell adds another important "component of the aeromobility system that is most relevant to non-travelers . . . the noise." ...
Ever since the term “aeromobility” was first used in the early 2000s as a parallel to automobility, it has developed into a multilayered concept and even an individual field of research. Yet, the meanings ascribed to the terms “aeromobility,” “aeromobilities,” or “aeromobile” vary significantly depending on the scale, context, and approach of particular studies and their authors. Using elements of discourse analysis, the article explores these meanings across a wide range of academic publications and identifies four main discourses of aeromobility in mobility studies. These are the mobility-system, the norm, the embodied practice, and the lifestyle discourse. While synthesizing the different discourses, their contributions, biases and possible future routings, the article intends to inspire more abstract thinking about aeromobility and offers several suggestions to open it up as a concept with socio-cultural implications.
... These frameworks (TIS, MLP, and Learning Pathways Matrix) provide methods for identifying factors and agents important to the successful development and deployment of new technologies and the barriers hindering less successful technologies. There is now a considerable literature which uses the TIS (Gallagher et al., 2012;Jacobsson and Bergek, 2011;Hekkert et al., 2007;Jacobsson and Lauber, 2006) and MLP (Smith et al., 2010;Späth and Rohracher, 2010;Cohen, 2010;Hodson and Marvin, 2010;Lauridsen and Jørgensen, 2010) frameworks in particular to examine the success, failure or future prospects for innovation in a range of energy technologies. It is important to note that these frameworks, and indeed all of those identified in this Section, are NOT theories of technology cost reduction, but rather of innovation and penetration into socio-technical systems. ...
Making informed estimates of future energy technology costs is central to understanding the cost of the low-carbon transition. A number of methods have been used to make such estimates: extrapolating empirically derived learning rates; use of expert elicitations; and engineering assessments which analyse future developments for technology components' cost and performance parameters. In addition, there is a rich literature on different energy technology innovation systems analysis frameworks, which identify and analyse the many processes that drive technologies' development, including those that make them increasingly cost-competitive and commercially ready. However, there is a surprising lack of linkage between the fields of technology cost projections and technology innovation systems analysis. There is a clear opportunity to better relate these two fields, such that the detailed processes included in technology innovation systems frameworks can be fully considered when estimating future energy technology costs. Here we demonstrate how this can be done. We identify that learning curve, expert elicitation and engineering assessment methods already either implicitly or explicitly incorporate some elements of technology innovation systems frameworks, most commonly those relating to R&D and deployment-related drivers. Yet they could more explicitly encompass a broader range of innovation processes. For example, future cost developments could be considered in light of the extent to which there is a well-functioning energy technological innovation system (TIS), including support for the direction of technology research, industry experimentation and development, market formation including by demand-pull policies and technology legitimation. We suggest that failure to fully encompass such processes may have contributed to overestimates of nuclear cost reductions and under-estimates of offshore wind cost reductions in the last decade.
... It is generally acknowledged that the habits and structures of mobility are highly relevant when considering sustainable lifestyles and imaginaries of sustainable futures (Manderscheid 2018;Hajer and Versteeg 2019;Graf and Sonnberger 2020). Furthermore, needs related to the mobility sector have shown a high degree of inelasticity and immutability (Cohen 2010;Mullen and Marsden 2016;Sheller 2018). Why is that? ...
This article explores the picture of sustainable mobility drawn by the world's biggest toy company, Lego, and how this picture is potentially received and consolidated by Lego players. The company has already attracted the attention of scholars and activists alike regarding their influence on attitudes toward gender and race. The question of their influence on sustainable development, however, has not yet been tackled, amidst the overdue socio-cultural transformation of sectors such as mobility. We combine research on discursive business power from the field of international political economy with insights into the rituals of play from social psychology as well as science and technology studies. The heuristic device of the re-signification process of discursive power aligns these perspectives and generates sub-questions for the empirical investigation. As outlined in our methodology section, we deliver a qualitative-hermeneutic analysis of Lego building sets and commercials. In the results section we show, that playing with Lego products encourages children to re-signify the norms of unsustainable mobility, especially the dominance of the car. In the discussion and conclusion of our contribution we argue that the normalization of car-centered built environments and associated lifestyles, as well as omnipresent fossil-fuel dependency, hinder Lego's potential to deliver transformative stimuli that promote a more sustainable mobility sector. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Such reification and 'misplaced concreteness' (Stirling 2011) neglects how technologies are only contingent outcomes, emerging out of a range of possible socio-technical configurations. Socio-technical multiplicity has been highlighted in analyses of translation processes (Smith 2007;Raven et al., 2011;Pel 2016;Hoffman & Loeber 2016), of ambiguous transitions (Røpke, 2012;Cohen 2010; of interactions between multiple niches (Pel 2014;Hodson et al. 2017) and of multi-actor innovation systems (Kern 2015;Musiolik et al. 2018). Along this first angle, transitions directionality manifests through competing socio-technical configurations, pursued by particular actor coalitions (Hess 2014) in various (overlapping) 'arenas of development' (Jørgensen 2012). ...
Current sustainability challenges call for transitions in locked-in socio-technical systems. The governance of transitions often remains limited to the cultivation of sustainable 'niche' innovations, however. This paper explores how to handle transitions directionality, i.e. the diversity of possible socio-technical development paths. It reaches beyond hitherto rather abstract and fragmented insights. STS, political-science and systems-evolutionary angles are combined into an integrative framework. Concrete directionality challenges are identified through the analysis of socio-technical multiplicity, divergent normative appraisals and process dynamics. The driverless car transition provides an exemplar case. As highlighted through qualitative evidence from the Dutch Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) sector, common innovation discourses of a 'race to automation' misrepresent the pace and direction of the nascent transition. The transition requires much more than the cultivation of driverless vehicles: Next to the commercial development of vehicle automation, it involves governmental traffic management ambitions and public-private collaboration towards 'cooperative systems'. Other insights on directionality-conscious transitions governance pertain to the sustained synchronization between institutionally diverse actors, and to the changing material conditions for steering. The overall conclusion is that the framework provides a useful lens to explore the governance of directionality in socio-technical transitions. Future studies should explore its usefulness beyond the ITS domain.
... Transport is a major cause for air and noise pollution and significantly contributes to climate change (Batty et al., 2015;UN., 2013;Banister & Thurstain-Goodwin, 2011;Oskamp, 2000). The transport system could play a central role in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions (Cass & Faulconbridge, 2016;Cohen, 2010;Schwanen, Banister, & Anable, 2011). Emissions from global transportation will likely grow by 60% between 2015 and 2050 with the number of motor vehicles on the road predicted to increase from 1 billion in 2015 to 2.5 billion in 2050 (ITF, 2017). ...
A critical step to mitigate climate change is to reduce automobile pollution emissions. The transportation sector produces 23% of world energy‐related CO2 emissions with three quarters of the emissions coming from road transport, specifically passenger cars and light‐duty trucks. The daily commute constitutes a significant portion of the traffic demand in cities, as people's use of private cars remains an integral part of daily life. Using theories of practice, this paper investigates the range of elements (meanings, competencies, and materials) that collectively shapes the practice of daily commuting. Adopting a qualitative approach, the research comprises 21 interviews with United Arab Emirates residents. Our findings reveal two major insights: (a) “meanings” play a more dominant role in shaping the practice of daily commuting; thus, competencies and materials are integrated in a way that addresses these meanings, and (b) practices are simultaneously interconnected with other practices and often compete for the finite resources of consumers. The paper provides insights to the barriers to sustainable commuting practices and outlines significant opportunities for intervention.
... As propulsive efficiency of air vehicles will always be inferior to ground-based vehicles, this disadvantage has to be made up by direct routing and added value to the customer like increased travel speed, choice of travel time, convenience, etc. Following an analysis by Cohen [8] the pursuit of sustainable development is one of many contemporary political goals but the realization of ODAM services will be likewise triggered by rival societal aspirations, i.e. the afore mentioned added values such as increased travel speed and convenience. Forecasts of ODAM market demand usually assume the passenger to decide like a homo economicus, which leads to conservative estimates since decisions concerning mobility often are not based on pure ratio (cf. ...
At the RWTH Aachen University in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Aachen the "Silent Air Taxi", a small aircraft for on-demand air mobility (ODAM) service for 4 passengers plus pilot, is developed up to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 9. Based on preliminary requirements analysis, design studies have been performed with the aircraft design code MICADO. Hybrid electric propulsion provides a viable option for an air taxi with 500 km range. At speeds ≤ 300 km/h distributed propulsion did not show benefits. Pilot onboard is initially foreseen, but automation level allowing zero onboard-pilot is required to close business case for operators.
... Researchers of transitions aware of this and have sought to explain the reasons why through listing various barriers or problems that prevent it. Within academic literature, barriers to sustainable transitions are often considered within the context of a specific case or cases [such as (Berry, Davidson and Saman 2013); (Burch 2010a)], geographies [such as (Farla, Alkemade and Suurs 2010); (Bai, Roberts and Chen 2010)], and/or sectors [ (Cohen 2010); (Chalmers 2013)]. Moreover, while much of the literature uses the term barriers [such as (Farla, Alkemade and Suurs 2010); (Bai, Roberts and Chen 2010); (Burch 2010a); (Chalmers 2013)], others use terms such as challenges [(Kemp and van Lente 2011); ; (Bolton and Foxon 2015)] or frame them as must have capacities [such as (Middlemiss and Parrish 2010)]. ...
A transition to a low-carbon society is needed to address the urgent issue of climate change. Community-based initiatives (CBIs) offer one potential pathway to achieving such a transition. CBIs do the work of experimenting and institutionalizing grassroots innovations, which are alternative practices and technological novelties that have the potential, should they replace the current regime, to make society more sustainable. However, despite research branches focusing on how to govern such a sustainability transition, barriers have prevented CBIs and their grassroots innovations from bringing about a transition. This thesis will explore the research question: what are the causes of barriers experienced by community-based initiatives and through what process do they hinder community-based initiatives from contributing to a transition to a low-carbon society? It will do this using discourse analysis, process-tracing, and grounded theory, and by using data from semi-structured interviews, structured interviews, academic articles, newspaper articles, and websites. The goal of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of the causes of barriers to community-based initiatives and of how barriers impact CBIs and transitions.
... De acordo com Cohen (2010), a dependência das pessoas no modelo individual baseado no uso do automóvel contribuiu para que a indústria automotiva atingisse uma posição monopolista na mobilidade e não enfrentasse uma série de desafios a sua liderança Centro Universitário SOCIESC -UNISOCIESC Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brasil ISSN 2237-5163 / v. 07, n. 02: p. 382-395, ano 2017DOI: 10.14521/p2237-5163.2017 por muitas décadas. ...
... Hence co-operation (Faulconbridge et al., 2009) and alliance between travel and technologically-facilitated interactions has been highlighted. Workers and firms, therefore, find themselves in the difficult situation of wanting to reduce travel for a variety of reasons, but being unable to imagine conducting business without mobility (Cohen 2010;Lassen, 2010). ...
To date, virtual ways of working have yet to substantially reduce demand for business travel. Emerging research claims that virtual and physical work complement rather than substitute for one another. This suggests travel demand stems from business strategies and achieving business outcomes. In building on these ideas, this chapter draws upon Schatzki’s conception of timespace to capture changes in how two UK-based global construction and engineering consulting firms organise work and the implications in terms of demand for business travel. Over time, particular forms of spatially stretched organisations which have developed are found to require the interweaving of timespaces through travel. As such, how each firm has evolved has in turn created the contemporary situation of significant and hard to reduce demand for travel.
... In Shanghai, a local economic model of state-led industry that includes a powerful incumbent SOE ICE-automotive industry raises serious questions about the extent to which, for all its stated goals of prioritizing EVs, policy actually supports EVsnot just in the abstract, but in competition with ICE cars (Cohen, 2010). Conversely, Shenzhen's strength lies in the absence of a major state-owned automotive corporation and the presence instead of digital capital giants and an entrepreneurial culture. ...
Efforts at urban e-mobility transition in China are of crucial global significance. Exploring these developments, however, demands significant reframing of dominant theories of socio-technical system transition to accommodate the strikingly different socio-political context of China to that of the global North where these theories have been developed. In particular, greater attention must be paid to issues of power, conceptualized as dynamic power/knowledge relations constitutive of social formations and evolving in interactive parallel with specific innovation trajectories. We illustrate such a productive reframing focusing on complex processes of empowerment and highlight that there remains relative stasis in the grand plan of a rapid transition to electric cars (EVs) in China's growing cities, with the EV still widely regarded as "risky" mobility. At the same time the EV in China is becoming a constituent of a new kind of digitized and smart mobility, as Chinese ICT companies emerge as globally powerful players establishing alliances with traditional automobile companies.
... Following up on these critiques, Pel and Boons (2010) and Pel (2012b) addressed the practical implications of system demarcations and 'sustainability' understandings in transitions theory (see also Ulrich 2003 on this critical systems thinking). Furthermore, various authors have stressed the directionality of transitions (Stirling 2009(Stirling , 2011Cohen 2010;Røpke 2012). The key message is then that once transitions theory starts to obscure the diversity of possible transition pathways and the attendant political choices, it will lose its critical contents. ...
Since its emergence as a theory of sustainability transformation, transitions theory has started to gain currency with both policymakers and researchers. As transitions approaches become established in research and policy, a process of institutionalization can be witnessed. Yet notwithstanding this mainstreaming, transitions theory continues to be controversial. Questions have been raised about its theorization of agency and transformation dynamics, and especially about the normative assumptions underlying its intervention strategies. Arguably, these recurring questions call for ‘critical approaches’ to transitions theory. This contribution explores these, guided by a constructive attitude. The argument starts from the consideration that transitions theory harboursdistinctly ‘critical’ elements, and that polemical juxtapositions between critical and uncritical transitions approaches are unnecessary: What are the critical contents of transitions theory? How can the critical contents of transitions theory be retained and developed further? These questions are answered through a historical comparison with the critical-theoretical project as initiated by Marx, Horkheimer and Adorno, amongst others.As with transitions studies, this project was meant to diagnose the social problems of its time, and to articulate corresponding remedial strategies. It ran into various internal contradictions, however, and these provide useful insights for the further development of critical transitions. The main conclusion is that transitions theory is well equipped to deal with these critical-theoretical paradoxes, but also displays tendencies towards relapsing into the pitfalls.
... Lansing & Vries, 2006;Novelli, 2005;Sharpley, 2006;Weeden, 2002;Yeoman & McMahon-Beattie, 2006). Despite these interests, and assertions that sustainability can become in vogue (Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007), the larger PhD project posits that while current transitions around tourism continue towards further unsustainability (Cohen, 2010), and indeed while growth continues to remain an objective of general macro-economic sustainability (Dale, 2012, presentation), the use of ethical consumption as a genuine avenue for increasing sustainability in the luxury hotel sector is questionable. It argues that by reducing the uncertainty related to the degree to which consumers (Global-Elites) value ethical consumption, luxury hotels will be able to assess the suitability of marketing and communicating such strategies to their customers. ...
... This can have major implications for the selection of solutions for sustainable tourism and mobility because intervention selection is tied in to the degree of consensus between government and industry parties and scientists (Shove, 2010), and the pressures placed on decisionmakers by commercial and political interests in competition with, and often separate from, scientific advice. As Cohen (2010) highlighted with respect to the prospect of mobility transitions, "sustainability is only one of numerous political objectives and public commitment toward this particular set of goals is extremely equivocal… It would be a strategic mistake to regard efforts to foster sustainable mobility as impervious to rival societal aspirations" (p. 460). ...
Given tourism's growing emissions and contribution to environmental change, the positive potential of behavioural interventions, and especially social marketing, has increasingly become a focus for sustainable tourism and mobility research. This paper uses the lens of social marketing to investigate the capacities of tourism researchers to contribute to sustainable tourist behavioural change. Several key and interrelated issues are identified: the nature of socio-technical systems and regimes, understanding what constitutes a successful behavioural intervention, the role of theory and belief systems in interventions, and the potential role of upstream social marketing in policy learning and system change. In the case of social marketing, the essentially political nature of engaging in communications on sustainability is also highlighted. This has implications for the social marketing knowledge base on which sustainable tourism behaviour research draws, such as the value of political marketing and psychology, as well as the challenge that this provides for notions of “value-free” or “objective” tourism research. The need for behavioural change by tourism researchers, as well as by governments, the industry, and tourists is noted. These issues are critically evaluated and expanded upon to aid academic researchers in understanding and promoting behaviour change in tourism studies.
... It is now widely recognized that in the context of targets to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, the transport system and its decarbonization has a major role to play (Cohen, 2010;Schwanen et al., 2011). Of course, it is also widely recognized that changing travel behaviors from automobile to lower carbon bus, cycling and walking mobilities is extremely difficult (Cabinet Office, 2009;Whitmarsh and Kohler, 2010). ...
The automobile commute makes an important contribution to carbon emissions but has proven stubbornly resistant to modal shift policy initiatives. In this paper we use theories of social practice to develop insights into why this stubbornness might exist, and what might help accelerate transitions to bus-and cycle-commuting. By analyzing qualitative data about everyday mobility in two UK cities, we examine how the availability of the constituent elements of bus-and cycle-commuting practices is crucial for modal shift to occur, but they are often absent. We also draw attention to time-space contingencies that render recruitment to low-carbon commuting practices more or less likely, including how commuting is sequenced with other social practices and how the sites of these practices interact with the affordances, and spatial infrastructure, of bus-and cycle-commuting. These insights lead us to argue that choice and land use planning focussed policy initiatives designed to invoke modal shift need to coexist in integrated policy configurations with initiatives designed to reshape both mobility and non-mobility practices. This means addressing the structural barriers caused by the lack of availability of the elements that constitute bus-and cycle-commuting, and intervening in the timing and spatiality of a range of social practices so as to reduce the tendency for commutes to have spatial and temporal characteristics that militate against the use of bus and cycle modes.
... In short, then, to see early glimmerings of an emerging regime (shift) demands: on the one hand, attention to how new assemblages of heterogeneous power technologies are mediating self-sustaining trajectories of 'low-carbon' automobility innovation; and on the other, their potential impacts regarding political economy, the reciprocal emergent changes in consumer preferences and cultural politics of automobility and the emergent evidence of new and changing power blocs, social identities and 'classes', all of which are enabling a self-sustaining dynamic of their strategic growth; and not just in the context of, but also set against and dynamically responding to, incumbent structures, imaginaries and discourses and their strategic action of self-preservation (Cohen 2010). In the rest of the paper, we briefly illustrate this perspective regarding China, E-Mobility transition and an emerging liberalism 2.0. ...
A mobility low-carbon transition is a key issue both socially and for mobilities research. The multi-level perspective (MLP) is justifiably a leading approach in such research, with important connections to high-profile socio-technical systemic analyses within the mobilities paradigm. The paper explores the key contributions that a Foucauldian-inspired cultural political economy offers, going beyond central problems with the MLP, specifically regarding: a productive concept of power that affords analysis of the qualitatively novel and dynamic process of transition; and the incorporation of the exogenous ‘landscape’ into the analysis. This move thus resonates with growing calls for attention to power dynamics in mobilities research and a ‘structural’ turn. In making this case, we deploy the key case study of contemporary efforts towards mobility transition in China. This not only sets out more starkly the importance of MLP’s gaps but also provides an empirical case to illustrate, albeit in the form of informed speculation, possible routes to low-carbon urban mobility transition and the inseparability from broader qualitative power transitions at multiple scales, including the global.
... Technical solutions are changing social interaction patterns (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) and work routines (e.g., mobile customer relationship management) (Thurner and Chaffey, 2013). For more than three decades, sociotechnical research has stressed the interrelatedness and interconnectedness of social and technical systems (e.g., Bostrom and Heinen, 1977;Cohen, 2010;van de Poel, 2003). Technology masterminds such as Bill Gates believe that technology has the power to transform society and solve many of today's social problems (Gates, 2013). ...
This paper identifies technologically reflective individuals and demonstrates their ability to develop innovations that benefit society. Technological reflectiveness (TR) is the tendency to think about the societal impact of an innovation, and those who display this capability in public are individuals who participate in online idea competitions focused on technical solutions for social problems (such as General Electric's eco-challenge, the James Dyson Award, and the BOSCH Technology Horizon Award). However, technologically reflective individuals also reflect in private settings (e.g., when reading news updates), thus requiring a scale to identify them. This paper describes the systematic development of an easy-to-administer multi-item scale to measure an individual's level of TR. Applying the TR scale in an empirical study on a health monitoring system confirmed that individuals' degree of TR relates positively to their ability to generate (1) more new product features and uses, (2) features with higher levels of societal impact, and (3) features that are more elaborated. This scale allows firms seeking to implement co-creation in their new product development (NPD) process and sustainable solutions to identify such individuals. Thus, this paper indicates that companies wishing to introduce new technological products with a positive societal impact may profit from involving technologically reflective individuals in the NPD process.
... Lansing & Vries, 2006;Novelli, 2005;Sharpley, 2006;Weeden, 2002;Yeoman & McMahon-Beattie, 2006). Despite these interests, and assertions that sustainability can become in vogue (Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007), the larger PhD project posits that while current transitions around tourism continue towards further unsustainability (Cohen, 2010), and indeed while growth continues to remain an objective of general macro-economic sustainability (Dale, 2012, presentation), the use of ethical consumption as a genuine avenue for increasing sustainability in the luxury hotel sector is questionable. It argues that by reducing the uncertainty related to the degree to which consumers (Global-Elites) value ethical consumption, luxury hotels will be able to assess the suitability of marketing and communicating such strategies to their customers. ...
... Most previous studies have so far focused on the technical opportunities and challenges. Although a few studies have addressed the issue of sustainability in the broad transport sector (Cohen, 2010;van den Bergh, van Leeuwen, Oosterhuis, Rietveld, & Verhoef, 2007), very few research exists on the financial sustainability of ITS. The business and the wider social issues have not been adequately investigated so far. ...
Intelligent transport systems (ITS) are technologies, applications and systems for accident warnings, reduction of driving workload, congestion avoidance and traffic management. The infrastructure also opens up opportunities for new digital services to users and for new ways of managing and maintaining transport infrastructure. Despite the significant potential benefits identified by previous research since the 1980s, the market for ITS has so far failed to take off, and a robust business case for the full-scale development of ITS remains absent. This is important because the potential benefits of ITS can only be realized if the technologies and services are widely used. Today, many ITS are still too expensive to purchase and install, often requiring substantial upfront investment, but the returns could take many years to materialize. This paper will provide a systematic overview of previous research on ITS and propose a holistic business model framework to help make a business case. This is still a rapidly evolving area, and a new research agenda will be discussed.
... A theories of practice informed analysis of the socio-technical constituents of mobility has been gradually gaining traction over recent years (see, Birtchnell, 2012;Shove et al., 2012;Watson, 2012), something which builds on and subtly reconfigures earlier work on mobility systems (Cohen, 2010;Urry, 2004). Underlying a practice perspective is an insistence that the development technological systems of mobility, such as those detailed in table 4, is interpreted through a lens that connects their use to wider forms of meaning and competency. ...
... First, aeromobility is perhaps the most studied form of executive mobility (see Adey et al., 2007;Bowen, 2010;Cwerner, 2009;Derruder et al., 2011) and the existing literature provides a useful starting point for developing an interpretation of its normalization as a way of doing business. Second, aeromobility is a practice that has received most attention both in terms of its detrimental social impacts on executives (Espino et al., 2002;Gustafson, 2006) and its related environmental impacts in terms of greenhouse gas emissions (Cohen, 2010). Any new insights that a practice perspective can provide into the normalization of aeromobility will, thus, be potentially useful as part of attempts to reconfigure mobility systems so as to minimize their harmful effects. ...
... Past literature considers the significance of institutional rules to the functioning, disappearance and emergence of energy systems (Schreuer, Rohracher, and Späth 2010), employing illustrative historical case studies and latterly socio-technical scenario analysis to inform this work (Hofman and Elzen 2010). Certain contributions suggest the need for closer attention to the co-evolution of niches and 'overarching regimes' (Cohen 2010) and of green niches with unsustainable practices in incumbent regimes or alternative niches closely aligned with the interests of actors in extant regimes (Smith, Voss, and Grin 2010). They stress the need to look beyond the internal analysis of niches in evaluating their ability to contribute to regimes shifts. ...
The paper addresses the question of how institutional change relates to the diffusion of microgeneration energy technologies in the UK, posed in a research project comprising interviews with thirty-one respondents connected with the field of microgeneration in the UK. It analyses the nature of institutional rules in the prevailing regime of electricity generation and in microgeneration niches. It examines how such rules might facilitate systems innovation, or contribute to the maintenance of the prevailing system or partial change. The conclusions of the paper inform and deepen understanding of how conformity to or innovation in institutional rules may hamper or potentially contribute to diffusion of environmentally sustainable microgeneration of energy.
... En heeft de Eyjafjallajökull-vulkaan niet onbetwistbaar aangetoond dat er maatregelen nodig zijn tegen de kwetsbaarheid van het internationale netwerk voor vliegverkeer (O'Regan, 2011)? Toch is ook al veelvuldig beargumenteerd dat juist het mobiliteitssysteem op een ongunstige manier 'robuust' en hardnekkig is (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999, Urry, 2005, Adams, 2005, Cohen, 2010, Jeekel, 2011, Davidson, 2011, Geels et al., 2012: Hoe zeer het ook wordt 'verstoord' door pogingen tot hervorming, op de een of andere manier herstelt zich al gauw weer een algehele toestand van autoafhankelijkheid, mobiliteitshonger en expanderend vliegverkeer -met alle schadelijke neveneffecten van dien. In termen van een systeemtransitie is een marginale 'vergroening' nog wel waarschijnlijk, maar de meeste innovatiepogingen worden geabsorbeerd (Geels et al., 2012). ...
Zowel in mobiliteitsonderzoek als in de beleidspraktijk valt er recentelijk een onmiskenbaar streven naar 'robuustheid' waar te nemen. Dit streven is vaak een reactie op een als zeer dynamisch ervaren omgeving. Het is daarbij echter opvallend dat er zeer uiteenlopende invullingen aan dit concept worden gegeven. Dit roept de vraag op of het concept ‘robuustheid’ wel van toegevoegde waarde is voor het bestuur in het mobiliteitsdomein. Maar vooral roept het de vraag op hoe het dat kan zijn. In deze bijdrage wordt geredeneerd vanuit de complexiteit van een samengesteld mobiliteitssysteem: De gehanteerde premisse is dat pogingen om mobiliteit te sturen of te beïnvloeden plaatsvinden in dynamische en slechts deels controleerbare omgevingen. Het streven naar robuustheid is zo beschouwd dus begrijpelijk, maar ook inherent moeizaam. De centrale vraag die moet worden beantwoord is: “Hoe kan het concept ‘robuustheid’ helpen richting te geven aan het handelen in een samengesteld, gelaagd en padafhankelijk mobiliteitssysteem?”
De vraag wordt beantwoord vanuit een theoretische reflectie op de verschillende verschijningsvormen en interpretaties van ‘robuustheid’. Vanuit onze empirie (in zowel weg, water als rail) komt dan naar voren dat robuustheid soms meer en soms minder dynamisch wordt ingevuld, dat soms fysieke, soms juist sociale dimensies worden benadrukt, en dat het onder uiteenlopende randvoorwaarden wordt vormgegeven. Daarbij valt ook op dat robuustheid in deelsystemen niet altijd tot algehele robuustheid leidt, en vaak deeloplossingen biedt. Sterker nog, in de meer omvattende analyses van het mobiliteitssysteem is de systemische robuustheid eerder deel van het probleem dan de oplossing. Op ‘robuustheid’ gericht mobiliteitsbeleid betreft gewoonlijk het managen van deelsystemen. Deze doorgaans lokale en tijdelijke robuustheid zal bijsturing, onderhoud en aanpassing vergen. Maar daarbij zal ook beseft moeten worden dat deze robuustheid gelijktijdig weer deel uitmaakt van een gelaagd, vervlochten en in sommige opzichten ook wel hardnekkig mobiliteitssysteem.
... However, there is little research on innovation transition after the jet age. Cohen (2010) and Kivits et al. (2010) are two of the few papers to address this issue. Kivits et al. (2010) assessed aviation energy alternatives and concluded that consensus and perceived needs among the aviation industry are important, but very difficult due to the long product lifecycle and huge sunken costs (Kivits et al. 2010). ...
Sustainability science requires the development of a theoretical framework to understand, analyze, and design innovation to solve social, economic, and environmental issues. This paper extends the framework of multi-level perspectives (MLP) by introducing a technology readiness level (TRL), and analyzes the innovation of the advanced turboprop (ATP) engine in the aviation industry, also known as a propfan or an open rotor engine, which is one of the most promising engine innovations expected to mitigate climate change. The concept of TRL was introduced to explain the mechanisms of ATP failure in the late 1980s as well as the transition of the geared turbofan (GTF). In this paper, we discuss why ATP and GTF faced different fates although both were developed under the same landscape in the aviation industry. We also discuss the different roles of the socio-technical regime, such as uneven and dynamic opportunity windows, technological readiness, niche stock, institutional support of export products, and the risk of a 'launch' cus-tomer, at different TRLs. As illustrated in this paper, MLP with TRL is expected to facilitate future interdisciplinary collaboration between social scientists and engineers, and also transdisciplinary expertise between academia and prac-titioners by supporting analysis and design of the industry's transition toward a more environmentally friendly regime as well as its effective management.
... Being the transport negative impacts greater than the positive ones, specially at the urban scale (Rodenburg et al. 2002), many attempts have been made to achieve a radical shift towards SM, that is any strategy which tries to «disconnect transport from its harmful effects» (Maciulis et al. 2009;Grimes-Casey et al. 2009;Wiegmans et al. 2003), including: transport policies, technological innovation, changes in the physical infrastructure, and land use, social, cultural, and institutional changes (Vergragt and Brown 2007). Moreover, it is difficult to reconcile the efforts towards SM with the rival societal aspirations, such as the pursuit of faster and more convenient forms of travel (Cohen 2010), because, for example, the unabated use of automobiles is a consequence of an unfortunate preference for short-term gains by car users versus long-term losses to the whole society (Steg and Gifford 2005;Steg and Tertoolen 1999). Consequently, when adopting a SM strategy, a large number of stakeholders is affected by its impacts and many conflicts could easily arise. ...
In the last decades, many projects of urban development, following the principles of sustainability, have been realized in Europe. Specifically, it has been demonstrated that sustainable strategies can have significant results if they are carried on at neighbourhood level. When adopting a SM strategy, a large number of stakeholders is affected by its impacts and many conflicts could easily arise. Therefore, participation plays a crucial role, firstly, because it is the most effective means to gain, deliver and sustain benefits deriving i.e. from SM interventions; secondly because some tendency for individuals is proved in adjusting their preferences to the average of the social group they belong to, thus sparking off a virtuous circle towards SM. Within this context, the present paper analyses a panel of 37 European neighbourhoods, which are considered best practices for sustainability, in order to evaluate their SM strategies, and specifically investigate the role played by participation and collective actions in enhancing and achieving SM. To do so, specific SM strategies and related indicators have been identified, according to two previous papers written by the authors (Maltese et al., 2011; Bolchi et al., 2011), and an empirical investigation on the SM strategies is presented. In particular, the empirical analysis underlines the role played by participation in enhancing SM and the commonalities and differences among the neighbourhoods.
... As Cohen (2010) points out, challenges emerge for emancipatory ecological politics in the ambivalence between a move towards sustainability and rival societal aspirations pertaining to individual needs and wants in a consumer culture where ease and speed are cherished (see Urry 2003 on 'path dependency' in this regard). In regard to the two track thinking presented here, young people do feel responsible for the future in both tracks. ...
This article discusses young people's attitudes towards the future in terms of two distinct risks: on the one hand, their perceptions of achieving their ambitions, on the other, their perceptions of the future of the world, particularly in terms of environmental issues. The data are discussed as a disjuncture between these issues where the positive perceptions of the likelihood of achieving ambitions are rarely linked to their pessimistic visions of societal collapse. This is discussed through the lens of social theories about risk, reflexivity, ambivalence and governmentality. It is argued that the ‘experts’ in young people's lives – namely parents, teachers, politicians and media – discursively create a hierarchy of risk that legitimises individual choices about managing one's own life trajectory while delegitimising action towards large scale social issues. Despite considerable awareness of coming environmental problems and frustration over inaction, young people tend to prioritise the management of individual issues that works towards the maintenance of a governmentalised subjectivity. When faced with the ambivalences inherent in a risk society, the reflexive quest for order is governmentalised.
... 122, 131). This resonates with the socio-psychological literature concerning dissonance, ambivalence and climate change (Stoll-Kleeman et al. 2001, Walker and Shove 2007, Carolan 2010, Cohen 2010. Our data can also be seen as supporting the theory of individual and societal self-deception elaborated by Blu¨dhorn (2007, cf. ...
Leading sociologists have approached the climate crisis by emphasising a way forward and identifying hopeful directions. What sense is to be made of suggestions that we are instead on the brink of a ‘collapse’ in which the crisis is not resolved but leads to the end of existing civilisation? Partly based on three studies of contemporary opinion in the Hunter Valley in Australia, a coal industry centre, this discussion is also based on an examination of the public response to climate change world wide, the nature of the crisis as understood by science, the political response so far and the economic problems of replacing fossil fuels. What social theories might help explain what is happening? It is concluded that ‘collapse’ can be understood by conceiving capitalist society as a social machine, informed by a ‘social imaginary’.
... The term "intelligent vehicles", on the other hand, refers to in-vehicle systems and applications, such as satellite navigation devices, intelligent speed adaptation (ISA), adaptive cruise control (ACC), forward collision warning (FCW), pedestrian detection systems (PDS) and lane departure warning (LDW). Despite the fact that a few studies have discussed issues of sustainability in the broader transportation sector [3,4], not enough research exists on ITS sustainability. A systematic literature review on ITS showed us that the business side of ITS has been ignored, as the vast majority of journal papers target ITS from an engineering perspective. ...
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are technologies for efficient traffic management, e.g. accident and congestion prevention, reduced emissions, traveler information etc. Despite the potential benefits identified by previous research, there is a remarkable lack of a robust e-Business case for ITS. Although the necessary technology exists and the internet provides opportunities for more cost effective integration of systems and services, many ITS are not sustainable and great ideas do not develop further. Many applications are still too expensive to purchase and install, they require substantial upfront investments and the returns will take many years to materialize. This paper emphasizes the need for ITS to take advantage of the developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the internet, and proposes some e-Business model framework for ITS. We also address sustainability issues and aspects of the network economy for ITS companies. Finally, we present a stakeholders’ analysis and a future research agenda.
Within the context of the transition from internal combustion engine vehicles to alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs), this article investigates the interactions between government regulations and the research and development (R&D) investment of car manufacturers in a green-sensitive and heterogeneous market. Given that an unjust transition is not sustainable, the triple bottom line of the said regulations and manufacturers’ policies is analyzed via a system dynamics simulation model with government data, thus acknowledging the trade-offs inherent in such a context. Policy makers should use regulatory instruments cautiously, depending on the pursued objective. Moderate levels of government intervention and manufacturers’ investment worked best, with both mild and aggressive policies compromising the
sustainability
of the transition. Furthermore, manufacturers’ profits were not adversely affected by cannibalization in the long term, mainly due to an increase in consumer environmental awareness and the enforcement of government standards. Moreover, maximizing profits and/or minimizing emissions resulted in lower quality and higher prices than when social factors were considered simultaneously with them via the developed sustainable transition indicator. This article offers indicators and insights to help manufacturers improve their strategic R&D decisions in line with regulatory frameworks, while ensuring just and sustainable transitions toAFVs.
Die imperiale Lebensweise westlicher Industrienationen, die sich durch ein permanentes Streben nach Wirtschaftswachstum ausdrückt, bringt den Planeten an die Grenzen seiner Tragfähigkeit. In den letzten Jahren wurden jedoch – bestärkt durch die Weltwirtschaftskrise 2007/08 – Alternativen zum Modell des permanenten Wachstums immer populärer, die sich anstatt auf ökonomischen Wohlstand vermehrt auf soziale und ökologische Belange des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenlebens fokussierten. Unter dem Begriff der Postwachstumsbewegung sammelten sich Ansätze, Ideen und Akteure, die gemeinsam für eine Zukunft fernab jeglicher Wachstumszwänge und innerhalb der planetaren Grenzen kämpfen. Vor dem Hintergrund der zunehmenden sozialen und ökologischen Herausforderungen wurden nun erstmals sozial-ökologische Nischenakteure aus drei unterschiedlichen Bereichen der Postwachstumsbewegung gemeinsam in einem Forschungsvorhaben – unter besonderer Berücksichtigung gesellschaftlicher, organisatorischer und territorialer Einbettungsprozesse – untersucht. Eingebettet ist diese Untersuchung in den theoretisch-konzeptionellen Ansatz der sozial-ökologischen Transformation, deren inkrementeller Wandel mithilfe der Multi-Level-Perspektive beschrieben werden kann. Die Kombination dieses spezifischen theoretisch-konzeptionellen Ansatzes und der empirischen Erhebung ist das Alleinstellungsmerkmal der vorliegenden Untersuchung. Es zeigte sich, dass alle untersuchten Nischenakteure eine deutlich progressive Unternehmungsphilosophie vertreten, die häufig in einer Unternehmungsorganisation mit flachen Hierarchien und konsensbasierten Entscheidungsfindungen mündet. Besonders gesellschaftliche Einbettungsprozesse bedingen den Erfolg oder Misserfolg der Nischenentwicklung. Organisatorische Einbettung kommt derweil vor allem im Aufbau weitreichender Netzwerkstrukturen zum Tragen, die die Innovationsfähigkeit und Stabilität der Nische unterstützen. Eine starke territoriale Einbettung steigert den lokal-regionalen Einfluss der Nischeninnovationen und generiert Rückhalt in der Bevölkerung.
Purpose
Time analysis and institution analysis as well as journal analysis allow the study to show literature distribution in this research area. Research hotspots and trending among different times are revealed by network-structural properties and network-temporal property. The study aims to shed light on international cluster research progress on strategic niche management (SNM).
Design/methodology/approach
Using searched literature data on SNM from 1991 to 2018 from the database of Web of Science (WOS), the article maps the citation network and completes the citation analysis based on bibliometric citation analysis.
Findings
These eight research streams reveal the development of SNM from theoretical description to target-oriented study and finally diversification analysis.
Originality/value
The paper identifies eight continuous research streams in SNM: sustainable transition, dynamical diversity, complexity, social-technical system, social innovation, social-cognitive evolution, emerging market and policy mix.
Az információs és kommunikációs technológiák (IKT) olyan általános célú technológiáknak tekinthetők, amelyek sokrétű társadalmi-gazdasági és környezeti hatásokkal járnak életünk számos területén. Az IKT gyűjtőfogalmával jelölt technológiák az internet és a szélessávú távközlési hálózat mint új információs infrastruktúra megjelenése óta a korábbiaknál erősebb belső kapcsolatokkal összetartott rendszert alkotnak. Az új infrastruktúra kialakulása párhuzamosan ment végbe az IKT széles körű integrálódásával a hétköznapi életbe, miközben a fogyasztói igények meghatározó szerepet játszottak az IKT fejlődésében. Ez a tanulmány az IKT körében bevezetett újítások és a szélessávú átmenet környezeti vonatkozásait vizsgálja, elsősorban az energiafel-használásra kifejtett hatásokra összpontosítva. Szerzője amellett érvel, hogy az újítások jelentős része fenntarthatatlan irányba viszi a fejlődést, és az állami szabályozás messze elmarad a kihívásoktól. A fenntarthatatlan innovációk hátterét az átmenetelmélet eszközeivel elemzi, s ugyanezeket alkalmazza azoknak az okoknak a számba vételére, hogy a szélessávú átmenet megvalósításakor miért nem fordítanak nagyobb figyelmet a környezeti hatásokra. Végül megvizsgálja, hogy az IKT alkalmazásában rejlő pozitív fenntarthatósági potenciál kiaknázásával hogyan lehet befolyásolni az újítások irányát.
Identifying previous research subjects on innovation management in air transport provides not only updated references on new technologies in this industry, but also indicates which areas need to be prioritized in future research. A systematic literature review of publications in this field over the past decade, from 2005 to 2015, including 2016 publications in progress, was carried out, adopting as a control document the proceedings from the 19th ATRS World Conference, held in Singapore in 2015. The searches were done on ScienceDirect and included reports from over 2,500 journals. The abstracts, titles, and keywords were considered, and Boolean connectors were used. The term “innovation” was combined with at least one of eight different strings: air* (e.g., airport, airline, and aircraft), flight, transport, aviation, carrier, lcc, fsc and seat, which were identified as the terms with the highest frequency of incidence in the 129 files in the control document. From the 731 articles identified and analyzed, 92 were considered as directly related to innovation management in air transport. The results showed that the areas with a higher incidence of studies were the aircraft industry (energy efficiency, industrial process, and noise and pollutant emission reduction), airlines (business model, IT and planning and management), policies (sustainable transport, incentive mechanisms and societal aspirations), and airport (services, security, self-financing and air traffic control and projects). From this review, it was determined that, in addition to the limited studies on this subject, there is also a lack of research on innovations in airport structure, such as runway pavements and the optimization of airport sites, as well as on new forms of disposal of wastes generated during the flight, crew training and integrated innovation planning in the sector. These can direct future studies on the subject in the four application areas identified and promote the development of an integrated innovation system in air transport management.
In this paper, we investigate the ongoing endeavor to transition from conventional transportation to more sustainable systems. In addition to the traditional environmental objective, we propose a novel measure to quantify the social performance by using the concepts of Distributive Justice (DJ) and Sustainable Transition (ST) to investigate the adoption of alternative fuel vehicles (AFV). In our context, DJ is defined as fair access to transportation, the latter being a vital means for people to realize their full capabilities in the society. Furthermore, ST measures the social dimension through DJ and the environmental dimension through AFV sales. To model the complex network of relationships characterizing this framework, we use System Dynamics methodology to study the long term impact of considering DJ and ST. Our findings show that policy makers should adjust their targets to consider DJ criteria along with environmental objectives, thus aiming at a sustainable transition. By doing so, they can control and hasten the transition to AFV. Finally, we evaluate the contribution of each policy instrument to guide the policy-making process and catalyze this transition.
A indústria automotiva exerce papel central na questão da mobilidade sustentável. No entanto, tradicionalmente líder em inovações, a indústria automotiva ainda se posiciona de forma tímida em relação aos desafios emergentes para o tema, vivenciados especialmente nos grandes centros urbanos. Desse modo, entende-se a necessidade em se aprofundar no conhecimento de como esse setor industrial têm enfrentado os desafios impostos pelas incertezas geradas frente às emergentes demandas da sociedade, não só por melhorias na mobilidade, mas que sejam feitas de forma sustentável. A pesquisa parte de uma abordagem descritiva e foram analisados os relatórios corporativos globais de três montadoras. Como principais resultados de pesquisa, evidencia-se a maior concentração em inovações incrementais nas tecnologias a base de motores a combustão e nos esforços de pesquisas para o desenvolvimento e aprimoramento da tecnologia do produto. No entanto, vale o questionamento sobre o baixo índice de integração do uso do carro com outros modais de transporte e a pouca ênfase em relação ao uso racional do carro.
In the past fifty years, long-range commercial airliners have changed only incrementally from the paradigmatic design - a tube fuselage with swept wings and mostly-aluminium construction. Reducing the environmental impact of airliners may require radical innovations and a new paradigm, but the transition to a new paradigm is fraught with risks. This paper analyses how key risks have shaped and limited efforts to transition toward three types of radical innovations that would significantly improve airliner fuel effciency. We use these three cases to reassess the dominant framework for analysing sociotechnical transitions - the multi-level perspective (MLP) - in light of methods and theoretical perspectives drawn from Science and Technology Studies (STS). We argue that if the MLP is to provide a robust framework for analysing sociotechnical transitions, it must be refined in three ways. First, it must 'open the black box' to account for the ways that technologically-specific risks shape the transition process. Second, rather than predefining particular innovations as radical or conservative, 'mature' or 'immature,' it should attend to how actors conceive of such terms; an innovation which appears 'mature' to one group may appear 'immature' to another. Third, the MLP would be strengthened by additional case studies such as ours, which examine incomplete or failed transitions.
The notion of sustainability transition was introduced as a response to major socio-economic challenges including depletion of certain critical natural resources and global climate change. The idea is that systems of transportation, agriculture and energy have to be superseded by other systems. Such encompassing transitions have occurred in the past, such as the shift from sailing boats to steamships during the nineteenth century, the shift toward individual, motorized mobility from 1890 to 1960/1970 and the change from coal to natural gas for space heating after World War II. And thus, the argument goes, they are likely to happen again. Such systemic changes have been studied by evolutionary researchers, historians and other scholars in the fields of science, technology and society. Frameworks such as the multi-level perspective (MLP) and strategic niche management (SNM) highlight both the persistence of incumbent regimes, as well as their vulnerability. The guiding assumption is that it is possible – based on an understanding of the systemic and dynamic properties of existing and emerging systems – to guide or actively encourage a transition from the current to a new system (Rotmans et al., 2001; Rotmans and Loorbach, 2009). To do so will be a major challenge that goes well beyond the capability of governments and individual actors.
Julkaisussa tarkastellaan systeemisen innovaatiotoiminnan ja muutosten taustaa,
dynamiikkaa sekä vaikutusmahdollisuuksia luomalla katsaus teemaa käsittelevään
tutkimuskirjallisuuteen. Systeemisellä muutoksella viitataan laaja-alaiseen
toimintamallien, rakenteiden ja näiden vuorovaikutuksen samanaikaiseen muutokseen.
Systeemisyyden luonnetta lähestytään kolmen tutkimussuuntauksen kautta.
Ensimmäinen niistä koskee innovaatiojärjestelmien tutkimusta. Se pohjautuu
pitkälti institutionaaliseen ja evolutionääriseen taloustieteeseen sekä tieteen ja
teknologian sosiologiaan. Toinen tutkimussuuntaus on liikkeenjohdon sekä teknologiajohtamisen
tutkimus, jossa näkökulmana on yrityksen liiketoiminnan ja
tuotekehityksen organisointi. Kolmas tutkimussuuntaus, sosioteknisten järjestelmien
muutos, on näkökulmista laajin, ja se pyrkii käsitteellistämään yhteiskunnallisen
ja taloudellisen muutoksen luonnetta sekä luomaan käsitteitä kokonaisvaltaisten
siirtymien hallintaan.
Kysymys innovaatiotoimintaan vaikuttavista tekijöistä on niin laaja ja monisyinen,
että yhden tutkimussuuntauksen varassa sitä ei ole mahdollista tyhjentävästi
selittää. Kullakin esitellystä kolmesta lähestymistavasta on omat vahvuutensa,
jotka täydentävät kuvaa systeemisten innovaatioiden luonteesta. Ne tarjoavat
toisiaan täydentäviä näkökulmia sekä tutkimukseen että yhteiskuntapoliittiseen
keskusteluun ja päätöksentekoon.
This paper explores the relationship between diversity, locality, scale and sustainability in human systems. Using examples from brewing, steel production, and printing it suggests mass production economies of scale has peaked, creating new opportunities and challenges for sustainability science. It is concluded that there is a potential research agenda in seeking to understand where, how, why, at what cost and under what conditions smaller scale may yield sustainability advantages.
Information and communication technology (ICT) can be seen as a general-purpose technology with wide-ranging socio-economic and environmental implications across sectors. ICTs also constitute a system of technologies with stronger internal links since the emergence of the Internet and broadband as a new information infrastructure. The new infrastructure has co-evolved with widespread integration of ICTs in everyday life, and consumer demand has been decisive for ICT innovation. This article explores the environmental directionality of ICT innovation and the broadband transition, focusing mainly on energy impacts. It is argued that much innovation tends to develop in an unsustainable direction and that public regulation falls far short of the challenge. Transition theory is applied to analyze the background for the unsustainable development and the reasons why environmental concerns do not figure more prominently in the broadband transition. Finally, it is discussed how the direction of ICT innovation could be influenced in order to realize more of the positive sustainability potential.
This paper summarizes both the vision and the early public-private collaborative research for the small aircraft transportation system (SATS). The paper outlines an operational definition of SATS, describes how SATS conceptually differs from current air transportation capabilities, introduces four SATS operating capabilities, and explains the relation between the SATS operating capabilities and the potential for expanded air mobility. The SATS technology roadmap encompasses on-demand, widely distributed, point-to-point air mobility, through hired-pilot modes in the nearer term,and through self-operated user modes in the farther term. The nearer-term concept is based on aircraft and airspace technologies being developed to make the use of smaller, more widely distributed community reliever and general aviation airports and their runways more useful in more weather conditions, in commercial hired-pilot service modes. The farther-term vision is based on technical concepts that could be developed to simplify or automate many of the operational functions in the aircraft and the airspace for meeting future public transportation needs in personally operated modes. NASA technology strategies form a roadmap between the nearer-term concept and the farther-term vision. This paper outlines a roadmap for scalable, on-demand, distributed air mobility technologies for vehicle and airspace systems. The audiences for the paper include general aviation manufacturers; small aircraft transportation service providers; the flight training industry; airport and transportation authorities at the federal, state, and local levels; and organizations involved in planning for future national airspace system advancements.
A new premium offer of high end service in which passengers are permitted to use very light jets (VLJ) that would connect with the mainline carrier's business-class service is under consideration by Lufthansa airlines. The offer is planned on the lines of its highly successful first-class-focused Private Jet program that was started two years ago. This success has led Lufthansa to expand its Private Jet following partnership with NetJets Europe that provides aircraft ranging in size from a Cessna Citation Bravo to a Dassault Falcon 2000EX. Strong potential market in the US and China can open overseas opportunities for Private Jet though there are some regulatory hurdles. As Lufthansa does not possess traffic rights to fly beyond the initial point of entry with its long-haul service, it cannot provide the offer at present.
This book examines the two current major threat to the viability of the motor industry. These are defined as lack of profitability and environmental concern. The theme is focussed on the industry's concern with technology, which is regarded by the authors as a weakness, which makes it dependent on volume demand. This leads to a reassessment of the role of Henry Ford as the father of mass production and looks at the philosophy of E.G.Budd. The analysis is set within the context of the causes and implications of globalization and of changes in the relationship between car manufacturers and their supplies. The authors explore the solution for more sustainable mobility, using existing ideas about alternatives to the modern cart. Future scenarios are formulated in which technological as well as legislative and social change are discussed. The need to meet the demand for personal mobility is highlighted in its conclusion.
Think Global, the Norwegian electric vehicle manufacturer, has appointed Ford Motor Company executive, Richard Canny, as its president and Chief Operating Officer. The company's leadership team has also appointed Mikael Ekholm and Arne Degermosse, two leading automotive professionals from Sweden. The appointment of Canny will help the company, to accelerate its growth plans and compete globally in the emerging electric vehicle market. The company informed that significance experience of Canny will help it, to emerge as a leading manufacturer of electric vehicles in the world. His experience in the field of strategic planning and operations at Ford Motor Company will help the company to grow and compete in the global market effectively.
Tesla Motors is set to build an environmental friendly car that does not compromise on looks, performance, or efficiency. This car named Roadster will provide up to 250 miles on a single charge and last up to 100,000 mile. It includes 6831 batteries and weighs about 1000 £. A three-phase, four-pole ac induction motor provides 248 hp peak and a 13,500 redline. The car attains a velocity of 0 to 60 miles per hour in about 4 seconds and operates at a top speed of 130 miles per hour. An air pressure sensor system keeps tabs on the car's four Yokohama Neova tires. The car's visual system reports all the vital information that the driver needs. Roadster comes with a Blaupunkt radio with an iPod connector. The car has zero emissions. Roadster has double the energy efficiency of popular hybrid cars. This car is expected to be available in early 2007 with a starting price of about $ 100,000.
The aviation industry needs to prepare sustainable designs of airports, to reduce the environmental impact of air transportation. Sustainable airport designs can have a significant impact on issues, such as energy, air quality, water and resource conservation, and pollution prevention. The industry need to adopt environmentally-friendly standards, while designing airports. Sustainable airport designs can avoid jet fuel and glycol runoff, while containing storm water on site. Parking lot runoff can also be controlled, using planted swales, or rain gardens. Pervious pavement, along with vegetated green building roofs can also be used, to limit runoff and avoid the impervious paving of runways and taxiways in airports. Light-colored, solar-reflecting materials for pavements and roofs also help to reduce urban heat island effect, lowering energy use.
General Motors (GM) and Sandia Laboratories are jointly developing advanced hydrogen-storage tank capable of storing more on-board fuel than traditional compressed-gas or liquid-hydrogen approaches. The aim is to find a way of storing enough on-board hydrogen to enable a fuel-cell vehicle to match or exceed the driving range of petrol or diesel-fuelled internal-combustion-engine vehicle. Hydride storage works on the principle that some metal alloys and other metallic materials are able to absorb large amounts of hydrogen by forming metal-hydride compounds.
Embraer's year-old very light jet/light aircraft programs are boosted by air taxi start-up JetBird's large commitment to the Phenom product line. The deal also boost the market segment in Europe, where the response to the small jets was expected to be more hesistant in the U.S. Jetbird is planning to field 15 Phenom 100 very light jets and then grow at a rate of about 20 aircraft annually. The company also stated that its fleet of Embraer Phenom 100 VLJ will serve 800 destinations in Europe. The company also plans to hire an interior designer, but has not decided if it will outsource the eventual work or keep it inhouse.
Although the aviation sector is one of the fastest growing climate change contributors in Europe, it is not covered by the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS). Therefore the European Commission suggested including aviation in the EU-ETS and announced the aim of putting forward a legislative proposal by the end of 2006.
In this article the legal aspects, which have to be considered for an successful inclusion of aviation into the EU-ETS, will be reviewed. This includes the legal framework for the inclusion of aviation into the EU-ETS which consists of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and the Community Law. Important legal aspects are also possible legal obstacles like the existing traffic rights in the different Member States, bilateral air transport agreements like the Open Skies agreements and the Chicago Convention. Another crucial legal point of the inclusion of aviation into the EU-ETS is the interplay of the EU-ETS and the Kyoto Protocol. Furthermore the legal aspects regarding the scope and certain design points of emission trading scheme will be reviewed. This includes the obliged parties, the allocation and certain points of the administration.
The US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) promotes nanoscale science and technology by organizing and funding considerable research on the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) aspects of nanomaterials. Nanotechnology is a thoroughly social phenomenon that helps in identifying and addressing social and ethical issues associated with nanotechnology. A significant feature of the social context into which nanotechnology is emerging is that enormous inequalities in the distributions of environmental hazards is allowed, enabled, and encouraged by the existing social institutions and practices. Within the NNI, there is a a substantial and apparently genuine commitment to promoting nanotechnology as a social welfare, and considerable effort in support of responsible development will facilitate public acceptance of the technology.
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The growing global demand for business aviation is driving efforts to develop, certify and produce aircraft from very light jets to supersonic transports. Embraer has developed a very light jet (VLJ), Phenom business jet, that provide quick turnaround times, high utilization rates and low direct operating costs. Aerion Corp has also established the design of a supersonic business jet, photo 2, at a target price of $80 million, with entry into service scheduled for 2012. Raytheon Aircraft Co officials are also anticipating FAA certification and production approval of the Hawker 4000, photo 3, and has got orders for 74 of them including 50 from fractional ownership operator NetJets. The twin-engine jet features a composite fuselage with a super-midsize cabin, a range of 3,400 naut. mi. and a cruise speed of 484 KTAS. Adam Aircraft also reports 72 orders for its A500 twin-engine bizjet, photo 12, which features a centerline thrust configuration for its two piston engines.
The aviation industry in UK is finding an ecological imperative to conserve resources by finding a renewable alternative to hydrocarbon-based fuels. The industry is planning to use bio-fuels or synthetic fuels using the Fischer-Tropsch process. NASA's Denis Bushnell proposed a radical solution to use biomass for satisfying the world's energy requirements. Another alternative fuel is ethanol that has been extensively used in cars and ground vehicles. Hydrogen is also proposed as an alternative fuel as this has the advantages of having an extremely high energy content for its weight. It is also a perfect fuel in terms of waste products. Boeing is working on all-electric demonstrator aircraft to validate some of the technology. In addition to this, the Helios UAV has demonstrated solar powered flight and an attempt for flying around the world in a manned aircraft, the Solar Impulse.
The National Business Aviation Association's 2005 meeting forecasted business to gain strength as demands for aircraft services and flight operations showed signed of stability. The meeting discussed about user fee proposals that is expected to come up at the Congress next year, apart from airports and airways. The members of the association were urged to become more political active to defeat the movement before fee user proposal gained traction in the Congress. The association also discussed other issues including sales of Airbus Corporate Jet, introduction of Encore+ by Cessna Aircraft Co., and development of supersonic business jet by Aerion Corp.
The flying car concept combines man's fascination with automobiles and flying machines. To date, the term flying car has been applied to a number of designs, both built and unbuilt, which have appeared over the years. This paper covers variations of the so-called tandem fan arrangement which evolved as a direct spin-off of the one-man flying platforms successfully tested by the United States military during the 1950s and 1960s. Past designs tested by the military are explored. Furthermore, similar designs which may yet find their niche in tomorrow's market for affordable vertical flight are described.
Autonomus civil aircraft is the technology with the ability to perform all the typical functions required for safe flight while flying in conformance with national airspace constraints, without having a human in control loop. This technology has the ability to accomplish complex tasks under reasonable changes in the operating environment and in system capability. Some human monitoring of the autonomous aircraft will be required to ensure that safe operation is maintained in unforseen circumstances and that systems are performing as expected when internal and external conditions change. Autonomous transports could reduce air cargo expenses andd transit time, lowering costs to consumers. Autonomous passenger aircraft could lower operating costs making air travel affordable to a broader segmentof the public. Implementation of these intelligent adaptation will however require developments in areas such as mission planner, flight control system, and autonomous propulsion system.
Jatropha oil-algae mix, processed by one of Houston's contract biooil refineries, was used in a full-flight regime on No. 2 CFM56-7B engine on Continental's Boeing 737-800. UOP, a Honeywell subsidiary that has provided refining technology to the oil industry, oversaw the processing of fuel for a December 30, 2008, Air New Zealand demo flight using a Boeing 747 powered by a jatropha mix. Continental 737 used the biofuel mix from engine start through climbout, cruise, and a series of inflight tests, including engine shutdowns and restarts, to assure that the fuel do not affect performance. UOP expects to seek a technical license for a biofuel for aviation by mid-2009 and has anticipated a 2-2.5-year certification process. It is found that Jatropha plants take 2.5 years to mature and are productive for 35 years, while a 1,000-acre algae field produces 350 barrels of oil.
The future technology advancement and research in aircrafts design is discussed. The noise of the aircrafts is reduced by cutting airframe vibrationa and placing engines on the top of the wing in a soundproof housing. A blended wing-body designed aircraft which can offer transport for upto 800 passengers, is designed to meet the increasing passengers capacity. Pollution reduction from jet engines, flying cars, aircrafts design of next generation and air traffic control technologies are also discussed.
For the past 50 years civil air transport has been dominated by the combination of the gas turbine and the B-47 airframe configuration. Both these machines owed their creation to WW2 and both represented revolutionary concepts at the time. Oyer the years, the engine and the airframe have undergone considerable detailed refinement. The changes have resulted in very impressive improvements in performance. However, it is now very clear that both are close to some well defined asymptotic limits that bound their performance. The result is that further potential improvements are smaller in percentage terms, become harder to achieve technically and, consequently, come at increasingly higher cost.
A hugely successful global industry has developed around this standard configuration. Increasingly, more and more companies use aircraft and, as their businesses grow, the demand for aircraft and air transport increases. However, the ability of the environment to absorb this growth is beginning to be questioned and new ideas are required if aviation is to be regarded as an unbounded and a truly sustainable activity.
The first meeting of the Systems for Green Operations Integrated Technology Demonstration (SGO-ITD) project team implemented a €300-million European research program in September, 2008 for developing an all-electric aircraft at the earliest. This is one of the six technology-related projects that make up the European Commission-supported €1.6-billion 'Clean Sky' initiative. The SGO-ITD project team is led by Liebherr Aerospace and Thales. The project team is also focusing on developing new all-electric systems, to replace the existing hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical networks and components that are heavy, inefficient, and environmentally wasteful. The project for developing an all-electric aircraft will derive information from earlier EC-sponsored research, such as the Power Optimized Aircraft (POA) studies and considerable work that manufacturers and research agencies have done on electrically driven actuation systems, brakes, flying controls, and fuel cells.
The aviation industry has grown at nearly two and a half times the average economic growth rates since the 1960s. However, together with this growth is the 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide coming from the 16,000 commercial aircraft across the globe. Nitrogen oxides that are emitted by these aircraft produce ozone which can trigger the formation of condensation trails and contrails. Nitrogen oxides even traps the heat within the earth's atmosphere which will eventually affect the temperature of the earth's surfaces. With this, the European Commission had extended the scope of the European Union's emissions trading scheme within the aviation industry in September 2005. The emission trading aims to make businesses reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Lufthansa joint ventured with fractional ownership operator NetJets to give premium passengers the opportunity to charter business jets. The service known as Lufthansa Private Jet will offer flights from the carrier's Munich hub and point-to-point services. The two companies have identified 1,000 European airports that will be accessible from Munich. A flight from Munich to Lugano in Switzerland will cost between €4,550 and €5,650 depending on the aircraft type, while a flight from Dublin to Billund in Denmark will cost €9,530.
AN INCREASING NUMBER OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS across the United States, big and small, young and old, have adopted ordinances reflecting principles of new urbanism. Some address new urbanism in the context of greenfield development, others address it in the context of infill development. This article is the second in a series of articles by the Sub-committee on New Urbanism, examining the influence of new urbanism on land use law. The first article examined changes in state statutory enabling law to promote new urbanism. This article focuses on efforts by local governments to implement new urbanism by amending local ordinances. These amendments reflect the popular acceptance of at least some of the new urbanist ideals. The amendments also indicate a recognition that local ordinances need to change to take into account new urbanist ideas.
In recent decades, large techno-industrial projects such as power stations, dams, and airports have been confronted with fierce opposition. Resistance against such projects, however, also occurred in earlier periods, though in different forms. This article overviews both historical and contemporary oppositional groups fighting against large projects. When looking at the long-term development over roughly a century, it becomes obvious that resistance against large projects has changed profoundly. In earlier periods, resistance occurred in relatively few cases, was mostly confined to small territories, included few people, and was generally moderate in its forms of action. In recent decades, another picture prevails. Resistance is nearly ubiquitous; it ranges from the local to the national and, sometimes, the international level; it can involve masses of people from very different social strata; it is based on a broad spectrum of mostly interlinked groups; and it may include disruptive and even violent forms of action. For several reasons related to the protesters themselves and their wider environment, efforts to prevent or reduce the negative impacts of large projects have changed greatly from the first half of the twentieth century.
Airbus is evaluating various technology options for its proposed A350XWB inflight connectivity offering to offer all-wireless connectivity and inflight entertainment. Airbus in planning to integrate A350 with the connectivity element with other cabin network systems, in particular, the Cabin Management System, to give crew a single interface to manage large amount of data. Airbus is following developments such as the emergence of the wireless internet IEEE 802.11n standard, which offers higher speed than the current 'b' and 'g' standards. The aircraft will be fitted with a satellite antenna allowing a connection to Inmarsat satellites. Airbus is also working to integrate the cell phone and Internet/PC systems into a common, scalable platform, which will give the airlines a choice to offer cell phone/push-e-mail service, Internet, or both.
DayJet, the Delray Beach, Florida, is hiring and training the crew who will fly and service the aircraft, as well as support its customer. DayJet is set to pursue the market for business travel in Florida, with an existing roster of about 700 individual customers from 140 Florida companies. One flight-service professional will be designated pilot in command for the flight, and the crew-members will fly alternate legs. DayJet considers that focusing the operation of all equipment and controls on the flying crew-member minimizes distraction for the monitoring crew-members. DayJet will manage its data link to each aircraft through the Iridium satellite system and collect data in real time. Other markets are expected to arise naturally from within the initial business base as individuals elect to make personal use of the service, without recruiting the members in consumer markets.
This article examines the campaign against the construction of Manchester Airport's second runway. Articulating insights from rational choice theory within a framework of discourse theory, it provides a set of theoretical tools with which to problematize and explain the Manchester case. Attention is focused on the strategic construction of group identities and interests by leading protest brokers who organized and orchestrated the campaign. The article offers explanations of how and why conservative local residents and radical eco-warriors were able to form an unlikely working coalition to resist the expansion of the airport. The article concludes with an examination of the overall impact and significance of the campaign for local residents and green protesters.
In a world of increasing traffic congestion, a grassroots movement is carving out a niche for bicycles on city streets. Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities. explores the growing bike culture that is changing the look and feel of cities, suburbs, and small towns across North America. From traffic-dodging bike messengers to tattooed teenagers on battered bikes, from riders in spandex to well-dressed executives, ordinary citizens are becoming transportation revolutionaries. Jeff Mapes traces the growth of bicycle advocacy and explores the environmental, safety, and health aspects of bicycling. He rides with bicycle advocates who are taming the streets of New York City, joins the street circus that is Critical Mass in San Francisco, and gets inspired by the everyday folk pedaling in Amsterdam, the nirvana of American bike activists. Chapters focused on big cities, college towns, and America's most successful bike city, Portland, show how cyclists, with the encouragement of local officials, are claiming a share of the valuable streetscape.
Commercially-driven air traffic management (ATM) innovations typically aim to increase air space capacity and/or reduce delays. Here, their potential application for environmental mitigation is discussed. Both carbon dioxide (CO
2
) and non-CO
2
climate impacts are considered, as are noise and air quality issues. We outline the technological, scientific and political barriers to an integrated approach to applying ATM technologies to environmental mitigation. These issues highlight the need to improve comparison and prioritisation of the emissions and effects of aviation.
In the coming century, the impact of air travel on the environment will become an increasingly powerful influence on aircraft design. Unless the impact per passenger kilometre can be reduced substantially relative to today's levels, environmental factors will increasingly limit the expansion of air travel and the social benefits that it brings. The three main impacts are noise, air pollution around airports and changes to atmospheric composition and climate as a result of aircraft emissions at altitude. The lecture will review the work done within the Air Travel - Greener by Design programme to assess the technological, design and operational possibilities for reducing these impacts. The main aeronautical disciplines all have something to contribute hut it is in aerodynamics that the greatest opportunities appear to lie. If these opportunities are pursued, the aircraft in production in 2050 could he very different from those of 2005. It is for the aerodynamicists, supported by the structures and systems engineers and the materials scientists, to make the case for a radical leap.
'Frank Geels's book gives us a new perspective on how society moves from one technological regime to another. Understanding these transitions is essential if we are to get to grips with what we need to do to switch our societies to more sustainable states and how technologies figure in that switch.' - Ken Green, Institute of Innovation Research, The University of Manchester, UK This important book addresses how long term and large scale shifts from one socio-technical system to another come about, using insights from evolutionary economics, sociology of technology and innovation studies. These major changes involve not just technological changes, but also changes in markets, regulation, culture, industrial networks and infrastructure.
This book is organized in three parts. Part I, Car Glut, begins by showing how deeply enmeshed we are in the car culture. Part II, Car Tracks, is a history, tracing the car from Henry Ford's mass-produced Model T in 1908 to the present to depict how this happened. It explores how a benign technology to mobilize Americans would transform a human-scaled landscape into the kingdom of the car. Part III, Car Free, takes its lessons into the future. It offers solutions, some new, some traditional, to show how we can relieve this dependence and destruction and secure human and global well-being. It is this book's conviction that we can find, create, and revive the remedies, and that planning solutions depend, in the end, on land use solutions--on mobility based on human movement and transportation beyond the private automobile. A bibliography and an index are provided.
Americans who now endure the inconveniences of crowded airports, packed airplanes, and missed connections might not realize that flying was once an elegant, exhilarating adventure. In this colorful history, Daniel L. Rust traces the evolution of commercial air travel from the first transcontinental expeditions of the 1920s, through the luxurious airline environments of the 1960s, to the more hectic, fatiguing experiences of flying in the post-9/11 era.
In the beginning, flying coast-to-coast was an exciting yet uncomfortable journey of nearly forty-eight hours that required numerous stops and overnight travel by train. With time and technical innovation, passengers became increasingly removed both physically and psychologically from the raw experience of flying. Faster planes, pressurized cabins, onboard amenities, and stronger safety precautions made flying more convenient and predictable—but also less evocative and sensational.
Prior to the 1980s, Americans dressed for air travel in their formal best and enjoyed such luxurious onboard amenities as delicious meals and ample cabin space. What made air travel glamorous, however, also made it more expensive. With deregulation in 1978, cost reductions reduced flying to a more tedious and, after 9/11, more regimented experience.
Rust’s narrative brims with firsthand accounts from such celebrities as Will Rogers and from ordinary Americans. Enlivened by more than 100 illustrations, including vintage brochures, posters, and photographs, Flying Across America reminds today’s airline passengers of what they have gained—and what they have lost—in the transcontinental flying experience.
This article explores the shift from the utopian theme of the 1939 New York World's Fair to the nostalgic theme of the 1940 New York World's Fair. It argues that both seasons offered narratives intended to neutralize the disturbing implications of world war in Europe. The World of Tomorrow theme, conceived in the mid-1930s, represented an attempt to reconstitute a national narrative of progress shattered by a traumatic past experience (the Great War), an unstable present (the Great Depression), and uncertain expectations for the future (the spectre of ascendant totalitarian ideologies and another world war). The abandonment of the World of Tomorrow in 1940 suggests the failure of this attempt to resurrect a coherent narrative of progress in the face of renewed violence in Europe.
Studies of the New York World's Fair have overlooked how the outbreak of war across the Atlantic fragmented the fairgoers' experience, challenging the promise of wholeness, continuity and coherence offered by both utopian trajectories and nostalgic returns. When the 1939 season opened, Fair officials contrasted a fractious Europe with a harmonious USA, the former representing the dark aspects of modernity, while the latter embodied modernity's promise. Fair-planners had intended the World of Tomorrow to be firmly anchored in the lessons of the past and the potential of the present. As the war broke out and entire nations disappeared off the map of Europe, however, the Fair's theme appeared increasingly a halcyon dreamworld disconnected from the realities of the bloody conflict abroad.
With the effects of war echoing in the empty spaces of the pavilions of 'orphan nations', silences and nostalgic motifs disrupted the original forward-looking theme of the Fair's planners. Towards the end of the Fair's first season, with the war unsettling the utopian premise of the World of Tomorrow, the exposition's organizers increasingly invoked nostalgic themes related to a harmonious pre-industrial past. As the organizers embraced ethnic folk traditions, the particularism characteristic of nostalgia replaced universalist assumptions of progress during the exposition's second season. Similarly, the 1940 Fair organizers rejected the universalistic blurring of ideological distinctions between democratic and totalitarian systems promoted during the first season. The spectre of war cast a growing shadow across the fairgrounds and in the consciousness of fair-goers. War-related discontinuities and anxieties allowed the more troubling aspects of modernity to emerge from the Fair's imaginative cocoon.
The ability to conduct concurrent, multiple aircraft operations in poor weather at virtually any airport offers an opportunity to increase the rate of flight operations, an improvement in passenger convenience, and the potential to foster the growth of small airports. The small aircraft transportation system, higher volume operations concept will increase capacity at the 3400 nonradar, nontowered airports in the United States where operations are currently restricted to a "one-in, one-out'' procedural separation during low visibility or ceilings. The concept's key feature is that pilots maintain their own separation from other aircraft using the air-to-air data link and onboard software within the self-controlled area, an area of flight operations established during poor visibility and low ceilings around an airport without Air Traffic Control services. While pilots self-separate within the self-controlled area, an airport management module located at the airport assigns arriving pilots their sequence based on aircraft performance, position, and Air Traffic Control intent. The higher volume operations concept uses distributed decision making and safe procedures designed to minimize pilot and controller workload and integrates with today's Air Traffic Control environment. This paper summarizes the higher volume operations concept, procedures, research, and results, as well as outlines areas in which future higher volume operations research is required.
In 2002 Responsible Travel became one of the first travel companies to offer customers the option of buying so-called carbon offsets to counter the planet-warming emissions generated by their airline flights. But last month Responsible Travel canceled the program, saying that while it might help travelers feel virtuous, it was not helping to reduce global emissions. In fact, company officials said, it might even encourage some people to travel or consume more. "The carbon offset has become this magic pill, a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card," Justin Francis, the managing director of Responsible Travel, one of the world's largest green travel companies to embrace environmental sustainability, said in an interview. "It's seductive to the consumer who says, 'It's $4 and I'm carbon-neutral, so I can fly all I want.' " Offsets, he argues, are distracting people from making more significant behavioral changes, like flying less. In theory, the purchase of carbon offsets is supposed to cancel out the emissions generated by activities like flying or heating office buildings by directing money to programs that reduce emissions elsewhere, like tree-planting in Africa or a hydropower project in Brazil. An airline passenger might volunteer to pay $5 to $40 to offset his flight, with the price linked to distance. Offsets have played a growing role in the greening of travel because carbon dioxide emissions from airplanes are growing so quickly and there is currently no technological fix that would drastically lower them. In the United States, dozens of hotels and airlines have embraced such programs in the last year or two. United Airlines became the latest American airline to offer one this summer. Globally, offset programs have grown into a multimillion-dollar industry. But it has proved difficult to monitor or quantify the emissions-reducing potential of the thousands of green projects financed by customers' payments, and there are no industrywide standards. Responsible Travel is not the only organization that has changed its mind about the usefulness of offsets: Yahoo and the United States House of Representatives both ended trial offset-purchase programs this year, concluding that the money was better spent on improving their buildings' energy efficiency. Some of the world's leading experts on the emissions issue have reviewed and rejected purchasing offsets for air travel.
Although foresighting has gained widespread acceptance in the context of strategy formulation in industry and governments, its actual impact on technology development remains unclear. The authors propose the approach of strategic niche management in order to couple longterm visions more tightly with short-term and medium-term action. Such coupling, they argue, is strengthened by developing technological niches: i.e. protected spaces in which learning about the technology takes place and its embedding in society can be observed and tested before large-scale diffusion begins. Real-world experiments with new technologies are a major instrument for developing technological niches. Empirical illustration is taken from recent attempts at sustainable technology development in the realm of individual transportation. Many foresighting exercises have identified the electrification of the vehicle drive train as a promising route. Three major experiments with alternative approaches to the electrification of carsbattery-run vehicles, hybrid vehicles and fuel cell vehicleswill be compared with regard to the coupling of viewing and doing. Based on the analysis of these examples, the authors claim that the development of scenarios without an explicit dedication to taking action risks the generation of more confusion than guidance; similarly, experimentation without taking a long-term view will result in very mediocre results, with limited practical impact on sustainable development.