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Now showing 1 - 5 of 7
  • Publication
    European Transport / Trasporti Europei
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2011)
      817  2966
  • Publication
    The role of policy-making and planning culture for sustainable transport?
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2011)
    Hansen, Carsten Jahn
    This article explores the potential role of culture in relation to policy-making and planning activities, exemplified through a discussion on how it may influence sustainable transport policy and planning. It is recognised that discourses and institutions play an essential part in framing problems and solutions, however an improved understanding of barriers and potentials in policy and planning deliberation is likely to be reached if underlying layers of values and perceptions are considered and illuminated more explicitly. Culture is also changeable, which means that it becomes relevant for policy-making and planning to search for opportunities to strategically identify and bring into play cultural resources. The article debates political-administrative cultures and broader social or local cultures, as well as the circumstances that might influence them, in order to search for transformative potentials and barriers. In conclusion, a culture focus recognises diversity inside and outside normal policy and planning settings and procedures and attempts to bring different cultures to interact and to learn from each other. A transport policy-making and planning process based in a culture approach may illuminate a so-called ‘value-action gap’ concerning the possibility of more sustainable transportation. A closer cultural interaction may point out some of the divides between professionals on how to deal with transportenvironment issues. Moreover, a more culturally oriented deliberation would provide room for underlying sets of values and norms to enter the policy process more freely and explicitly. However, do we then have the cultures and moral force to build effective sustainable transport policies and plans? The article therefore also looks into a range of overlapping approaches that may potentially aid in rethinking and rebuilding transport policy-making and planning processes in terms of cultural learning processes. Finally, the role of the planner as a ‘cultural entrepreneur’ and ‘cultural story-teller’ is presented as potential tool to push through new agendas or ideas, such as more sustainable transport solutions.
      3702  284
  • Publication
    Structure, agency and change in the car regime. A review of the literature
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2011)
    Marletto, Gerardo
    This paper is aimed at filling the gap between the already well structured literature on the 'car regime' and the debate on policies for sustainable transport. Two main results emerge from the literature on the past and current evolution of the car regime: - the car regime was established thanks to the ability of purposeful private actors to use the technology of internal combustion to influence markets and institutions, and finally society as a whole; - previous attempts to make urban and regional mobility more sustainable fail because multiple - and mutually reinforcing - path-dependence phenomena lock the society into the car regime. For the future, the dominant scenario appears to be the internal transformation of the existing car regime, which is currently driven by the automotive industry and based on hybrid technology; the emergence of an alternative electric car regime - driven by producers of batteries and managers of electric utilities - remains a secondary option. Further research is needed to understand how - starting from the existing alternatives to the car and the innovations in the car itself - a coalition of public and private actors may be promoted and sustained to create a new regime of sustainable mobility.
      1264  1967
  • Publication
    Personal Carbon Trading and fuel price increases in the transport sector: an exploratory study of public response in the UK
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2011)
    Harwatt, Helen
    ;
    Tight, Miles
    ;
    Bristow, Abigail L.
    ;
    Gühnemann, Astrid
    Large reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are required in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Road transport is a significant contributor to UK CO2 emissions, with the majority arising from personal road transport. This paper analyses Personal Carbon Trading (PCT) as a potentially powerful climate change policy tool and presents findings from an exploratory survey of public opinion. A working model of a PCT scheme with a fixed carbon cap was designed to achieve a 60% reduction of CO2 emissions from personal road transport by 2050. A proportion of the annual carbon budget would be given to individuals as a free carbon permit allocation. There is an opportunity to sell unused permits. Fuel price increases (FPI) were recognised as having the potential to achieve an identical emissions target at a much lower cost. A series of individual interviews were conducted to explore opinions related to the impacts, effectiveness, fairness and acceptability of both measures. Bespoke software was used to record behavioural response. The findings indicate that certain design aspects of the PCT scheme led to it being preferred to the FPI and suggest that the potential behavioural response to PCT may be greater than for a FPI. However, given that the sample was small and biased towards the highly educated and those with above average incomes, the findings should be considered as preliminary indications. Further detailed research is required.
      1358  1509
  • Publication
    Transition management as a model for sustainable mobility
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2011)
    Kemp, René
    ;
    Avelino, Flor
    ;
    Bressers, Nanny
    In this article we present a model for transforming a car-based mobility system into a more sustainable one. It is based on visions of sustainable mobility, the use of strategic experiments and special programmes for system innovation, to complement transport policies such as road pricing, emission standards and so on. The article does three things: it describes the model of transition management as a model for transformation and where it comes from, it offers recommendations for mobility policy derived from transition thinking, and it discusses the uptake of transition thinking in policy and practice. The conclusion is that transition management helps various actors to be more engaged with long-term change, but that a process of re-institutionalisation is needed to make serious progress to systems of mobility which combine user benefits with societal benefits.
      1394  574