A U-Turn to the Future: Sustainable Urban Mobility since 1850 ed. by Martin Emanuel et al. (review).

Abstract

Reviewed by: A U-Turn to the Future: Sustainable Urban Mobility since 1850 ed. by Martin Emanuel et al. Hans-Liudger Dienel (bio) A U-Turn to the Future: Sustainable Urban Mobility since 1850 by Martin Emanuel, Frank Schipper, and Ruth Oldenziel. New York: Berghahn, 2020. Pp. 340. This anthology aims at nothing less than summing up many years of research on the history of sustainable urban mobility since 1850, within the T2M (International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility) and ToE (Tensions of Europe Network). It makes use of historical studies on the actual transformation toward more sustainable urban mobilities, thus breathing the spirit of the "Eindhoven School" into retrospective technology assessment (Johan Schot). The collected volume is divided into four sections, each with three chapters. A total of eighteen authors contribute, and the editors are involved in half of the chapters. Section 1 analyzes why and how urban and transport planning became a profession and academic discipline in Western Europe and the United States, driven by associations, which pushed imaginaries of individual motorized transport systems. They became dominant against narratives of [End Page 872] public transport systems and individual nonmotorized transport like walking and cycling in the twentieth century. This section does not acknowledge the strong visions for public transport systems in the late nineteenth century. It does show that throughout the twentieth century, a lively minority in Western cities continued to favor public transport and an urban atmosphere based on walking and cycling. City governments were often more positive about walking and cycling than transport experts. Swiss cities with a direct democracy culture kept their streetcars to ensure a majority at the ballot box. Thus, the section implicitly advocates more power for elected city governments. Section 2 looks at the history of twentieth-century sustainable urban mobility and presents fascinating case studies of how pedestrians and cyclists managed to scramble through urban transport infrastructures that gave them increasingly less room to maneuver. All three chapters underline that official transport statistics throughout the twentieth century more or less ignored nonmotorized urban transport. The authors recommend using other sources, like diaries and street photos, to verify the quantity and quality of cycling and walking in cities. Section 3 goes one step further and analyzes where and how urban public transport, walking, and cycling prevailed. Socialist cities maintained robust public transport because they could not afford the imaginaries of the West, while their transport planners had already switched to Western models of urban mobility. Frank Schipper interprets the strong movement toward urban parks as what Elizabeth Shove calls "pockets of persistence," though the park movement fits nicely into the separation of urban functions in a Charter-of-Athens city. Martin Emanuel demonstrates through a case study in Stockholm how the urban scenario combining pedestrians, cyclists, and public transport survived on many European cities' main roads, unlike in North America's urban sprawl. Section 4 harvests recommendations for future history projects and urban policies. It calls for new data collection of sustainable urban mobilities, including sources other than official statistics. Mimi Sheller highlights that a sustainable mobility policy can enlarge the inequality between rich and poor in the city. She suggests even more radical concepts to overcome this struggle for mobility justice. So far, mainly middle-class actors support her vision. The book breathes the social movement spirit of sustainable urban mobilities and sees history as an ally to support these movements. A UTurn to the Future examines individual mobility and competing imaginaries of driving, cycling, and walking, not focusing on public transport. It was published just before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two years on, the book's strong push toward further individualization of transport makes even more sense. Our cities need new infrastructures for individual [End Page 873] sustainable urban mobilities. I agree that this exploration of the past 170 years of cultural policies for sustainable urban mobilities serves as a good resource for the U-turn. Hans-Liudger Dienel Hans-Liudger Dienel is professor in Work, Technology, and Participation at Berlin University of Technology, where he chairs the Sustainable Mobility Management MBA program. Dienel was president of T2M (2008–14) and is editor...