Class 2
Is Urban Transportation Sustainable?
Ref: Low and Gleeson, Making Urban Transportation Sustainable, Palgrave MacMillan, pg. 1 – 12.
Introduction
Low argues that personal mobility is a freedom bestowed by modernity.
In older or less advanced society mobility is the privilege of the elite that
the masses strive to attain for themselves. According to Low we travel in
pursuit of social values including access to work, friends, childcare,
education, recreation, and for supplying the home.
He also points out that freight transportation and especially, road
transportation, has provided a level of flexibility that keeps profit up and
costs down and is essential in supplying the consuming city.
But like Good, Low points out that this freedom and flexibility can be
illusionary if the opportunity cost of providing unending mobility is never
considered. These opportunity costs include increasing distance to be
covered, travel becoming compulsory, stressful, dangerous, and
expensive. The problem is also compounded by the fact that the cost of
mobility is often shifted from the individual to society and the
environment.
He suggests that we need to protect the real benefits of mobility, contain
and allocate the costs properly. This suggests that we need to clearly
understand what it is we are trying to achieve thru mobility, understand
the trade-offs in providing various levels of mobility and have
mechanisms in place for making appropriate choices and allocating costs.
Low implies that the concept of ‘sustainability’ is a framework for
clarifying the real benefits and to develop the mechanism needed to
protect these benefits and to appropriately contain and allocate costs.
The Paradox of Sustainability
Low introduces what he refers to as the familiar model of sustainability
made up of a triad of economical, social, and environment sustainability.
This model suggests that for sustainability three simultaneous goals must
be achieved: economic profitability, social responsibility and
environmental conservation. He refers to this as the ‘triple bottom line’
perspective and states that this model might be a good accounting tool but
not an effective or realistic way of characterizing sustainability. He
argues that true sustainability requires a paradigm shift in the believe
systems of engineers, urban planners and economists – three groups who
are the main shapers of cities. The triad bottom line perspective of
sustainability does not support this needed paradigm shift.
Fundamentally the triad model is based on a triangle of forces in balance.
However, to achieve environmental sustainability we need to change both
the society and the economy. We cannot have a stable triangle where
we are trying to sustain all three systems in their existing state.
He points out, for example, that we need to find ways to “curb
consumption while spreading the capacity to consume”.
This is the huge paradox at the heart of our attempt to achieve
‘environmental sustainability’. And many questions arise from it including
the following: How do we improve people’s quality of life without
necessarily increasing consumption to levels that might cause
environmental degradation? Can we have a sustainable economy without
the need for constantly increasing levels of consumption? Can we satisfy
people’s desire for access without environmentally damaging levels of
mobility?
Low quotes the 2002 Johannesburg Earth Summit in saying that ‘access
and mobility gains are often reaped at the expense of severe damage to
human health and global biodiversity’.
For example, by 2010 in the UK, CO2 emission from road transportation is
expected to be 27% of all CO2 emission.
He claims that much urban transportation policy often defies sustainability.
The paradox in the conventional approach to sustainability emerges
strongest in urban transportation. Governments often espouses
environmental sustainability while at the same time espouses
transportation policies that deplete and ruin the environment.
Often where environmental sustainability is discussed, the necessary
social and economic change is glossed over in language designed to
reassure the reader that the right ‘trade-off’ or (balance of the forces in
the triangle) can be found between economic, social and environmental
policy.
As we saw in the first class, this is a good description of the situation in
Jamaica and many other third world countries. The politicians are very
aware of the need to ‘talk’ sustainability but the policies often don’t add up
to changes that support environmental sustainability. Environmental and
health sustainability is often traded off in the interest of economic growth.
This is a huge barrier to overcome. The calculus in the USA is not that
much different – often technological fixes are offered up as the solution
that will cause us to achieve environmental sustainability without changing
any of the economic or social issues that impact on environmental
sustainability.
As Low pointed out, we cannot trade-off environmentally unsustainable
growth against environmental sustainability. “Growth is either sustainable
or it is not”.
Affecting Changes in the Biosphere
The growing recognition that the action of man is causing catastrophic
changes to the environment supports the need for change in both society
and the environment. The environment in question is the global biosphere
with one energy input and no output for waste. This biosphere consists of
natural ecosystems at different scales. Low points out that one of the
dilemmas we face in trying to move towards an environmentally
sustainable existence is the scale of these ecosystems, which dwarf a
single human actor. He points out that a single human cannot directly act
to influence the biosphere but it is the collective action of society –
through its institutions and market economy – that is important here.
The example he gives is of a single drive making a single trip – that driver
perceives correctly that his individual action has minimal impact.
However, when that trip is multiplied by millions we begin to see a
noticeable effect on the biosphere. However, this drivers one trip and the
millions by his peer are only possible because they are facilitated by
society.
He points out that transportation patterns feeds into socially created
patterns including land use, distribution of goods, distribution of social
opportunities, health and diseases. And some of these patterns including
the production of goods and services and the distribution of land use
feedback into transportation pattern. Based on these relationship billions
of trips are made in fossil burning vehicles each day leading to changes in
the biosphere and affecting the fate of all species on the planet.
One thing that is not explicitly stated here is that the actually nature of the
relationship between transportation patterns and the socially created
pattern is a huge factor affecting how many trips are made. This is one
of the themes that we will focus on in this class.
As Low points out, the key to understanding sustainability is two fold:
1. Individuals can only have a significant effect on the biosphere
through social institutions and mechanisms.
2. Individuals are capable of changing society and it institutions.
The Dimensions of Sustainability
Low argues that the triad model of sustainability is flawed since it does
not explicitly recognize that environmental sustainability requires changes
to social and economic institutions. However, he also points out that the
idea of considering sustainability in terms of three dimensions environment, social and economic – is a useful and valid way of
conceptualizing the concept. The order in which they are considered is
important.
The important shift is to recognize that the economy is the creation of
society, and not the other way around. The economy is thus framed by
the social context in which it occurs. Further, both society and the
environment operate within the context of a natural environment of limited
capacity.
The problem is that conventional economic analysis does not account for
this constraint on the economy of the limited capacity of the natural
environment. For example, there is no economic mechanism in place to
put a value on the fact that oil is a finite resource. Market price react to
the scarcity of oil at a given point in time but not to it’s over scarcity in an
absolute sense.
From the point of view of the economy, Low is arguing that economy
growth must be constrained by social and environmental considerations in
turn.
Low defines ‘social sustainability’ as ‘progress of a society towards
prosperity, freedom and justice for all and not just the entrenchment of
class privilege”. He adds that environmental sustainability should not
necessarily be conditional on such progress. However, he also notes that
environmental sustainable solution is often consistent with social
improvement and long term economic security.
So based on Low’s analysis the most fundamental issue for sustainability
is environmental sustainability. Next class we will look more in depth at
the issue of environmental sustainability.