“Mobility: A New Urban Design and Transport Planning Philosophy for a Sustainable Future” by Ethan Goffman

For the past couple of decades, a small group of thinkers, calling themselves variously ecological economists, degrowthers, and voluntary simplifiers, has undertaken a seemingly quixotic quest against the global obsession with growth for its own sake. They question the idea that increased gross domestic product will invariably help all people regardless of social standing, and question even more the environmental sustainability of limitless growth. A new book, Mobility by John Whitelegg, a British professor of transportation planning and former local government councilor, puts forth a kind of corollary to this thinking, attacking the pursuit of mobility for its own sake. Whitelegg refutes the assumption that simply moving more people more kilometers makes for a better society. Rather, he argues, “mobility measured crudely in terms of how many kilometres we move around every day has nothing whatsoever has to do with quality of life, rich human interaction, satisfaction, happiness and a detailed knowledge and familiarity with places and the things we chose to do in those places.” He further points to an astounding catalog of social and environmental ills caused by this obsession with mobility, from accidents and air pollution to discrimination against the poor, women, and the disabled.

Whitelegg begins with a memory of childhood as a kind of paradise in which he and his friends roamed the streets of postwar England exploring, playing games, and working together, all on foot. As they got older, local buses and trains allowed them to become ever more adventurous absent the scrutiny of adults. How different from today’s world, certainly in the United States and the UK, where children are driven everywhere to structured events. Whitelegg’s point is that the vast number of miles covered by today’s children does not add up to greater freedom, social development, or quality of life, and often does the opposite (while burdening parents). Decisions that society has made regarding the number and layout of streets, the location of jobs, schools, and other amenities, and the availability of transit have paradoxically forced many people into lifestyles that afford less freedom and a lower quality of life. He compares a large, gridlocked city, with residents dependent upon car travel, to a smaller, more walkable and transit-friendly city: “the high mobility of the Atlanta resident simply means that he or she has to travel further at a bigger cost than a Brussels person and this is unequivocally a ‘bad deal’ and a failure of public policy.”

Much of this critique is not news to those familiar with the smart-growth movement, with its emphasis on walkable, mixed-use communities based around transit. Whitelegg goes further, however, attacking the very idea of mobility as a yardstick, whereas smart-growth advocates instead emphasize the need for choices. This may be the more politically prudent approach, since attacking the very idea of mobility is likely to lead to extreme blowback, similar to that faced by the degrowth movement (see SSPP Blog post). Nevertheless, critiques such as Whitelegg’s are crucial in understanding how the drive to increase mobility is integrated into every aspect of our planning. It has become a naturalized way of thinking, integrated into our language. Even the very idea of challenging it seems ridiculous, like challenging the law of gravity, at least until Whitelegg speaks — and even so, he is likely to be largely ignored or marginalized.

That Whitelegg has collected copious amounts of data supporting his arguments would seem to offset this marginalization. Unfortunately, this is not the way the real world works. Paradigms are deeply rooted and not easily changed by facts — as Thomas Kuhn argued many years ago, one often needs to await a new generation for real change to come. Still, Whitelegg does a yeoman’s job assembling his army of facts and arguments to do battle against the mobility paradigm, substantially proving his case that depending upon a network of roads and individual automobiles, as well as airplanes, causes tremendous harm in ways often overlooked. He begins with the physical harm caused by automobiles, which globally kill some 1.2 million people annually and injure an additional 50 million. “Never before in all history has it been common custom to kill and maim people because they get in your way when you are in a hurry,” he exclaims.

Whitelegg further delves into the disruption to communities and social inequities of our current transit networks. The social impacts are measurable: “As traffic volume goes up the number of friends and acquaintances goes down.” Social isolation, in turn, leads to poor health and heightened mortality rates. The lowered ability of the poor and disabled to access needed services causes further harm. Regarding hospitals, for instance, smaller, more local facilities have tremendous benefits in accessibility, particularly for the poor and disabled. By contrast, “A system based on long distance travel by staff and long distance sourcing of drugs and surgical supplies is much more likely to break down, at a time when it is really needed.” Obesity also increases measurably as car traffic rises and walkability withers. Whitelegg further argues that the mobility paradigm discriminates on the basis of gender, since “women walk more than men, cycle less than men and use cars and motorbikes less than men.” A car-oriented mobility paradigm harms the poor, the very young, the very old, the disabled, and, often, women.

Whitelegg also documents the impacts of automobility on air quality and climate change, topics that have been so thoroughly covered I will not replicate the discussion here. He adds to this a discussion of the impact of aviation and its enormous, unchallenged growth. In Europe, for instance, “the total aviation emissions of greenhouse gases (million tonnes of CO2 equivalent) has [sic] grown from 84.1 in 1990 to 150.7 in 2012.” Research shows that decarbonization is more difficult for air travel than for trains or even automobiles. Furthermore, aviation is a mode that benefits the affluent and leaves out the poor. Nevertheless, lobbyists for aviation maintain its often unchallenged necessity, even though it undercuts Europe’s greenhouse gas-reduction goals. The remarkable work that countries such as Germany and Denmark have done in moving toward renewable energy is thus balanced out by the too rarely questioned need for increased air travel. This is a characteristic result of our worldwide demanding for mobility for its own sake.

One area that surprised me is Whitelegg’s criticism of high-speed rail. He complains of the “£46 billion allocated to high speed rail projects and £15 billion to London’s cross-rail project.” As a resident of a country that neglects national rail service and underfunds urban rail, I am a bit stunned here. Whitelegg does point out that these projects come at the expense of more local buses, which serve the poor, the elderly, the disabled, and those too young to drive. Still, funds currently allocated to highways and airports could be redistributed to local transit instead.

Whitelegg may to be taking the argument against mobility a bit too far. To me, the real problem is prioritizing mobility without a complete assessment of social and environmental impact. Certainly, high-speed rail is far superior to airplanes in terms of emissions and to cars in multiple ways. Indeed, rail can have huge benefits with respect to drawing walkable development to our core cities, where it belongs. And, while our society prioritizes getting places over optimizing places one already occupies, at times it is useful and enjoyable to visit new countries and geographies. While the Internet can now bring the world to one’s smartphone, it is also eye-opening to visit foreign destinations and interact with people. In other words, one can take the argument against mobility too far — it is just that the full impacts of any project need to be accounted for and they rarely are.

Any fine points of argument, however, are overshadowed by the enormous global growth of car use and aviation. Whitelegg explains that, in the UK, bypasses and motorways are allocated the first cut of budgets while the country faces “huge cuts in local authority budgets which feed directly into cuts in the support given to bus services. The result is much more mobility by expensive and faster modes of transport and much reduced accessibility for those dependent on buses.” As a regular user of Montgomery County, Maryland’s Ride On Bus, I concur that these services are too often overlooked or even maligned, yet provide a vital function. The default toward cars provides instant individual benefits at great social expense. Using a bus may be less convenient for me in the short run (at least once I have made the large investment in a car), but, by taking less road space and emitting fewer pollutants, it benefits more people in the aggregate.

Despite its benefits, local transit is increasingly overlooked, as much of the “developing” world strives to build road networks comparable to the United States. Whitelegg explains, “The rapid growth in the number of cars in China and India and the decline in walking, cycling and public transport represent a new and vigorous stage in the evolution of mobility and one that is likely to [be] repeated in other parts of Asia and throughout Africa.” In China, for instance, automobile trips have increased from 5% to 33% in 25 years, while the use of the iconic bicycle has collapsed. (Ironically, much of the West is fighting to revitalize bicycles.) As this blog keeps hammering, the developing countries simply cannot repeat the mistakes of the affluent countries and hand a habitable planet to future generations. Yet they seem hell bent (and I mean hell on Earth here) on doing so.

This need not happen. As Whitelegg puts it, India, with its low level of development and quick growth, has the “opportunity to indulge in some ‘leap frogging.’ Leap frogging means that India would not have to follow the same tedious year on year growth in mobility fuelled by huge subsidies and road building but could fast forward to a situation where all its cities were equipped with world best walking, cycling and public transport infrastructure.” However, as with coal, India is proceeding apace to build its road networks. Alas, public policy seems to be set by a small elite emulating the West, whatever the harm to the poorer majority of citizens and the future of planet Earth.