Transport geography, climate change and space: opportunity for new thinking

Abstract

This paper reflects on how Transport Geography has examined the relationships between climate change, transport and space. It identifies four tendencies in engagements so far – uneven attention; separation between climate change mitigation and adaptation; continuity in theory, method and research praxis; and over-reliance on ‘Western’ thinking and worldviews. It develops an agenda for further research that emphasises the importance of considering all modes and forms of transport, moving beyond the mitigation and adaptation distinction, and foregrounding the socio-political nature of the relationships between climate change, transport and space. It also argues that research praxis has to be revised if those relationships are to be understood adequately, suggesting that critical reflexivity on concepts is a useful step in this direction. The paper then introduces and illustrates an approach to the (re)invention of concepts about the relationships between transport, climate change and space. It concludes by urging transport geographers to work with concepts co-produced with a much wider range of constituencies than usually considered and to develop new methods for tracking the events created by new concepts.