The evolution of urban mobility: identifying a development cycle

This paper proposes that there has been an evolving pattern of urban transport policy and planning in many Western cities, which has been associated with changes in mobility patterns and attitudes to different transport modes and to city living in general. Looking over the past 50 year period, a three-stage transport policy development cycle is proposed, starting with Stage 1 – a rapid increase in car ownership and use in Western cities from the 1950s, often associated with the growth of a domestic car industry. This led to a policy response that involved catering for vehicle use by building urban motorways and large car parks, reducing investment in public transport and with more negative attitudes towards cycling and walking. After some time the negative aggregate consequences of increasing car use and provision become widely apparent, through increasing congestion, air pollution, traffic accidents, etc. Now the policy priority switches in Stage 2 - from accommodating motor vehicles to providing for people movement, particularly through improvements to public transport. Beijing has recently made this transition, with a 5 year programme to build 550 km of new metro lines, instead of further increasing road capacity. Several cities (e.g. London and Copenhagen) have moved beyond this to a Stage 3 in which the priority is to provide a liveable city with a focus on activity and interaction, in which car traffic is reduced, some elevated roads are demolished and roadspace is reallocated to sustainable modes of transport and to provide enhanced public space. Finally, the paper considers whether developing cities that are in Stage 1 and experiencing rapid motorisation could learn from this evolutionary model: 1. By ensuring that they do not promote land use polices which may lead to a ‘lock-in’ that prevents evolution beyond a car-based city, and 2. By compressing the development cycle – speeding up the implementation of more sustainable transport policies and avoiding wasted investment in roads-based infrastructure