Towards a Feminist Transport and Mobility Future: From One to Many Tracks

Abstract

In most countries, transport is considered as the backbone of economic development and growth. The neoliberal discourse on growth, advocating market-oriented planning and decision-making, influences transport planning and policy. Transport planning and policy-making are political arenas where power relations, different interests and redistribution of resources are played out albeit these processes are seldom acknowledged and recognized. Women’s and men’s different mobilities have revealed the gendered conditions of everyday life, and new perspectives on transport have developed based on critical and feminist epistemologies. The concluding chapter of the collection furthers the debate by discussing these matters in relation to social inequality in transportation and mobility justice. It is in the tensions and public arguments revolving around transport planning investments that questions of justice and fairness in relation to power relations between different socio-economic groups, men and women, girls and boys, and corporate interests can be discussed and transformed. The way forward is to integrate the different conditions for different people depending on gender, age, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, geographical location and so on into transport planning. The transition towards more sustainable and gender-equal transport systems is foremost a structural question. By stressing on the politicalness of transport policy and planning, we are countering individualistic paradigms where the responsibility of sustainability and equality is placed solely on the individual’s practices. This is also what the title alludes to, the ambition to move from one track to many tracks.