Robin Hickman, Discourses on Sustainable Urban Mobility, UCL Press, 2025
Open access
Achieving sustainable transport systems and travel behaviours is proving problematic in many cities, including contestation over strategies and projects. Discourses on Sustainable Urban Mobility challenges the dominant discourses of motorisation and the ineffective implementation of sustainable mobility, arguing that transport planning history is not merely a record of successful projects but a reflection of how transport has been provided, including who and what has been included or excluded. Using discourse analysis, the book examines socially constructed realities in transport planning across 20 international case studies. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s concepts, it explores why transport systems and travel behaviours differ by space and time.
The discussion starts in Plymouth, a city rebuilt around motorisation. A range of cities are then examined, following different trajectories for transport planning, including Oxford; Freiburg; Singapore; Bogotá; Houten; Chongqing; London, King’s Cross; Rio de Janeiro; Utrecht; Copenhagen; Malmö; Dar es Salaam; Shenzhen; Manchester; Valenciennes; Medellín; Delhi; London, West Ealing-South; and Portland. Each city offers unique discursive formations and practices for transport and city planning, suggesting progressive pathways towards sustainable urban mobility. Comprehensive and critical, this book aids students, policy makers, consultants and the public in reconsidering their transport systems for greater sustainability.
Author
Robin Hickman is Professor in Transport & City Planning at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL and Director of the MSc in Transport & City Planning. He has previously been a Visiting Research Associate at the Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford, and has worked in practice in transport consultancy at Halcrow, on masterplanning and transport research at Llewelyn-Davies and local transport planning at Surrey County Council. He has research interests in transport and climate change, transport and social equity, urban structure and travel, discourse and contestation in transport and urban development, multi-criteria appraisal and sustainable transport strategies in the UK, Europe and Asia. His previous books include Discourse Analysis in Transport and Urban Development (2023), A Companion to Transport, Space and Equity (2019), Handbook on Transport and Development (2015) and Transport, Climate Change and the City (2014).
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