Urban Transport Environment and Equity

The Case for Developing Countries

Eduardo Alcantara Vasconcellos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134201419
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Öffentliche Raumordnung auf lokaler & regionaler Ebene

Traditional transport planning has generated transport systems that propagate an unfair distribution of accessibility and have environmental and safety issues. This book highlights the importance of social and political aspects of transport policy and provides a methodology to support this approach. It emphasizes the importance of co-ordinating urban, transport and traffic planning, and addresses the major challenge of modifying the building and use of roads. The author makes suggestions for innovative and radical new measures towards an equitable and sustainable urban environment.

PART 1

INTRODUCTION

1	INTRODUCTION

When I was a kid in the 1960s in São Paulo, I used to meet friends on the streets, to run, cycle and play football, like almost all other Brazilian kids. The school, the news stand and the grocery store were all within walking distance. Brazil was already a controversial country, with deep social and economic differences between social groups; but there was a sense of belonging, of community, of nation. Economic modernization began, and opportunities emerged for those with already-acquired educational and economic assets; social differences increased, along with violence. Then the people with cars came – they hit my younger brother, who stayed in hospital for 45 days and they injured and killed many more, among them friends and relatives. They forced us off the streets with our balls; today my son no longer plays there and I have to pay for a private club so that he may play safely. I have to have two cars to address my family’s needs. To use public transport is an ordeal, and to use the streets as a pedestrian or cyclist is unthinkable for children. People in automobiles travel freely. Curb-sides are permanently filled with parked cars, and children and the elderly stay inside their homes. Road space has been delivered to other occupants and the city belongs to no one. While the environment is being destroyed and physical violence has become a major cause of urban fatalities, the economic elite is working to benefit from the globalization process and the middle class is struggling to join the venture. Brazil is now a rich country, but a large part of the population is still poor and deprived. It is a very complex development and it is not easy to explain. The only thing I know is that it has not made us happier or more humane.

This book analyses what has been happening in developing countries, taking as its prime subject the urban transport issue. It also discusses ways to improve current and future conditions, which affect hundreds of millions of people in their daily lives.

The interest in analysing transport problems in developing countries emerged in the 1960s and evolved at a fast pace as problems became increasingly severe. Several books and a large number of papers have been published so far. Most, especially in the early stages, were written by people from developed countries benefiting from the knowledge accumulated through experiences in their own countries, and trying to reflect their personal contact with problems in developing nations. People from the developing world have only recently been given the chance to voice their concerns, ideas and proposals; however, despite this large effort – beset by several difficulties – few comprehensive contributions have yet been proposed by them. This books intends to start filling this gap by offering a comprehensive explanation and proposals.

The approach is mainly sociological and political, in the sense of examining a complex set of interrelated factors that escape the strict technical or economic reasoning that forms the core of prevailing thinking. However, it is also technical and economic, in that transport involves important economic issues that require careful, competent technical treatment. It is not easy to combine such different perspectives due to an artificial separation that has been persistently constructed and encouraged between ‘technical’ and ‘social’ sciences. Consequently, literature combining them is scarce. One of the main challenges was therefore to combine such different ‘knowledge worlds’, by examining which contributions could yield a compound, comprehensive approach.

I firmly believe that the production of knowledge is a collective work, fuelled here and there by personal efforts, and that my individual contribution belongs to a never-ending chain. The final content of the book has greatly benefited from a large number of papers and books. The social and political approach to urban transport – and corresponding recommendations – may be understood as emerging from a knowledge-production chain that includes contributions (in chronological order) from Marx (19th century), Weber (first decades of the 20th century), Buchanan (1963), Hagestrand (1970), Illich (1974), Castells (1976), Healley (1977), Cardoso (1977), Kowarick (1979), Appleyard (1981), Harvey (1985), Henry and Figueroa (1985), Preteceille (1986), O’Donnel (1988), Newman and Kenworthy (1989), Dimitrou (1990) and Whitelegg (1997a). In addition to such comprehensive approaches, there are a large number of relevant ideas and proposals published in papers and articles, and extensively quoted in the book. The combination of all such intellectual undertakings and the final shape of the proposed social and political approach is my responsibility and my intellectual contribution.

When referring to ‘developing countries’ I am aware of all the problems and shortcomings related to such terminology, including the functionalist, ‘evolutionary’ and linear-thinking prejudice that is implicit in the opposition of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’. Such philosophical and political concerns will not be treated here. For the sake of simplicity, I will use this widely-known term throughout the book. In using the term ‘developing countries’ I am referring not only to those countries with low average income levels but also to those with middle income levels and poor income and welfare distribution. Most have unstable political institutions and increasing social and economic problems, such as poverty, malnutrition, lack of adequate education and health services and facilities, inflation, unemployment and violence (although these two last conditions are also found in most developed countries). They may be said to correspond to the United Nations (UN) definition of ‘less developed regions’, whose urban population is estimated at 2 billion for the year 2000.

The reasons for raising concerns about urban transport conditions in developing countries are clear. Conditions remain highly inadequate for most of the population: low accessibility, poor public transport supply, accidents, discomfort, pollution and congestion are all negative features. Unbalanced economic growth and persistent poverty generate chaotic urban expansion, which – together with population growth – poses obstacles to effective urban and transport planning. Structural political and economic conditions maintain social exclusion, poverty and unemployment, and confine the decision-making process to selected groups. Traditional transport planning techniques, applied according to a ‘black box’ ethic, have been generating transport systems that propagate an unfair distribution of accessibility and reproduce safety and environmental inequities.¹ Private transportation has often been favoured, and local public transportation and non-motorized means have been neglected. These problems have been aggravated since the 1980s, in line with the economic restructuring and the fiscal crisis of the state, which inhibit the organization of an adequate supply of public transportation means for most of the people. They have also been aggravated by increased motorization.

On the technical side, transport infrastructure and services have been selected with the support of methodologies originated in industrialized countries in the 1950s and transferred to the developing world. These methodologies embrace mobility as a prime objective, adopt market and efficiency paradigms, and are used to propose transport solutions for hypothesized future conditions, based on the forecasting of social and economic variables. The results of these modelling procedures in the developing world have been widely disappointing. Presented as supposedly neutral techniques, they have been used as decision tools in closed arenas operating mostly within weakly democratized environments.

Although actual conditions vary significantly among developing countries, the various inequities concerning transportation and traffic conditions can be attributed to some common factors. In addition to the structural factors already mentioned, poor transportation conditions for the majority are maintained by policies supporting the dominance of the automobile at the expense of non-motorized means, and the submission of public transport to a market approach. The dominance of the automobile lies behind safety, environmental and space inequities, which derive from both transport policies (road and transport infrastructure) and traffic management (the division of space). The direct cause of the remaining inequities has to do with the economics of public transport operation, which implies low levels of accessibility and comfort for users.

Current conditions have often been treated as the ‘natural’ consequences of economic development, of people’s choices in a free market context or of social and cultural characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and level of education. Therefore, current conditions are said to be ‘fair’, and the possibilities of change are said to rely simply on further economic development. Accordingly, increases in automobile or motorcycle use and decreases in public transport use also appear to be natural consequences of consumer decisions, therefore confirming road expansion policies as the most logical political answer to people’s desires.

This book intends to provide alternative explanations of current conditions, given that most of the prevailing explanations are inadequate or inaccurate. Most do not fit developing countries’ characteristics, and if they continue to be used in the traditional way they will support unfair and inequitable policies. Therefore, the assumptions that sustain traditional planning techniques have to be replaced by others that are better able to support socially and environmentally sound transportation policies. This book offers alternative approaches that emphasize the social and political aspects of transport policy and the use of the urban space.

First, we define how to distinguish a traditional technical approach to the problem from a social and political perspective, and analyse how social groups and classes interact with the environment to fulfil their social reproduction needs, seen as those activities that are needed to live and participate in society. The roles of the most relevant public and private actors in influencing transport policy are analysed – the state, the bureaucracy, the planners, social groups and classes, the private sector, the consultant sector, the real estate industry and the transportation industry. Actual road use is scrutinized through an analysis of the role played by people in traffic (the microphysics of traffic), considering how they interact and how benefits and harms are created and distributed. This analysis proposes several variables, such as accessibility, safety, fluidity, level of service, costs and environmental conditions. Physical and political conflicts that determine the use of the streets are discussed, and consequent limits to public policies are devised.

This book also explores new concepts that support the alternative approach. First, the city is understood as a built environment, to help unveil the relationships between society, space, transport and traffic. Second, the concept of the circulation environment is proposed, encompassing several physical, operational and symbolic features involved in the act of using space. Third, the relationship between social reproduction and transport is defined, with emphasis on the reproduction needs faced by people (related to age, income and gender) and the consequent transportation strategies adopted by them to fulfil their needs. Fourth, accessibility is defined as the main output of transport – and consequently as the main social and political issue to be investigated – as opposed to the simplistic idea of mobility (as expressed, in the technical view, by the number of trips made per person). Fifth, the relationship between the built environment and the means of collective consumption is defined, as a basis for analysing the use of roads as public assets. This particular definition reveals the unfair use of space and unveils the myth that has supported extensive road building based on the supposed collective nature of road use. In the final part of the methodological section, the book discuss the forms of provision, regulation, operation, control and use of transport means, aggregating all previous discussions and concepts into a broad framework for analysis.

Current conditions are analysed through ten dimensions: structural (economic and social developments), political (decision-making processes), ideological (the principles behind policies), economic (poverty and income distribution), institutional (planning agencies), technical (planning tools), technological (mode use), operational (transport supply), social (mobility and space) and environmental (accidents and pollution).

Alternative solutions to current problems are also analysed and proposed. Although long-term solutions rely on complex structural changes – such as the democratization of decision-making processes, the control of urban expansion and better income distribution – an improvement in current conditions may be achieved by several policies that are compatible with the proposed alternative approaches. An analysis of the social, economic and environmental aspects related to equity, urban development and sustainability supports most proposals. For practical purposes, proposals are discussed according to three main fields of intervention – urban planning, transportation planning and traffic management – that are meant to be worked out in a coordinated way. Public agencies should be open to community participation and public accountability, and the definition of transport and traffic programmes should be socially controlled.

The search for the most fruitful contributions has revealed that assumptions about increasing concerns on equity issues are correct, and such concerns are shared by people from all parts of the world. It is proposed in the book that equity is a situation in which people are granted satisfactory living conditions and opportunities in respect to socially-accorded services (for instance education, health and access to the city), irrespective of their individual physical, economic, social, religious or ethnic characteristics. It is different from equality, which represents the mere equalization of a formal right. An equitable condition is therefore superior to a formally equal one and the search for equity in transport is a challenge for planners in developing countries.

The main objective of this book is to offer tools for analysis and action, to help support an equity coalition among those concerned with the future of developing countries. In this respect, I would like to remark first on the countless anonymous people who have been working in their developing countries to confront inequity and injustice, and whose contribution is yet to be properly heard. Although a large number of studies has already been included in the book, numerous other important contributions remain unknown in face of the restricted access to publishing opportunities. I would also like to remind the reader of the work of several people and institutions from all parts of the developed world who have been giving their hearts and minds to the improvement of equity, justice and quality of life in the developing world. We need to develop together a universal, humane approach to guide our common future on Earth, and the work has just started.

PART 2

CURRENT CONDITIONS OF URBAN TRANSPORT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

2	CURRENT TRANSPORT AND TRAFFIC CONDITIONS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a broad view of the current transport and traffic conditions in developing countries, drawing extensively on previous research.

These data should not induce in the reader a false impression of similarity between developing countries. As explained in the introduction, developing countries vary in their social, political, economic and cultural contexts, with implications for the decision-making process, transport and traffic policies and the actual travel patterns of people. However, as will be shown, developing countries do share some common...