In recent years planners have been unanimous about the need to stimulate sustainable development of cities throughout the world. With the term “sustainable” scientists mean that the economic development of cities should be self-controlled not to undermine future ability of the urban economy to thrive.
The limits of growth
Nature has the ability to feed all species and regenerate what is consumed by them. Traditional civilizations had long ago studied this miracle and lived in a way which did not threaten natural mechanisms of production. After industrial revolution mankind replaced human natural power with machines and felt more powerful, able to overcome natural limits. This myth of our ability to achieve unlimited growth and improve constantly our way of living with the help of technology without effort and without the help of nature stimulated a rapid absorption of energy sources and destroyed in the same time natural mechanisms of energy regeneration like forests. About two centuries were needed from 18th (Industrial Revolution) to 20th century (First Worldwide Energy Crisis) for people to understand the consequences of this unrespectful behavior. At 1972 Meadows couple, Randers and Behrens published the first relative paper: “The limits of Growth” and proved scientifically that if decision-makers do not control economic development, the global economy will collapse due to the extinction of natural resources and uncontrolled environmental pollution. This raised an ethical question: Do we have the right to enjoy a high quality of living based on uncontrolled development and in the same time compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs?
Planners answered this ethical question negatively and worldwide global policies and also urban policies claim to be sustainable, meaning that they will respect nature and not threaten the ability of future generations to thrive.
According to IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 2018 three are the main mechanisms of global warming which threatens Earth’s ecosystem: Industry production, warming of buildings and transportation of people and goods. Under the term “sustainable transportation” or “sustainable mobility” policies are included which claim to achieve better use of natural resources to move people and goods and reduce the impact of those activities on global warming.
The social aspects of transportation
The ability to move from one place to another is a prerequisite for our existence and well-being. In densely populated cities free land to produce food is scarce and water is not clean. Without transportation we have no access on food and clean water, from the ancient years ships and animals were used and expensive aqueducts were constructed to bring food and clean water into the cities. Without transportation we have no social relations: we meet our neighbors and friends on the street when we exit our home or when we travel to their homeplaces. Without transportation there is no economy: people and products must meet each other. Finally without transportation there is also no health: doctors and patients must also be able to reach each other.
Controlling mobility would certainly be unacceptable. Mobility is freedom, if we want to punish people we prison them, in other words do not allow them to move freely. We learned the side-effects of mobility control during the COVID health crisis.. The most important consequence would be the drop of our social and economic activities. The control of our freedom to meet people has negative impact on our mood, thinking and behavior. The drop of economic activities would lead more people to working uncertainty and desperation.
Sustainable mobility policies
Sustainable mobility policies try to make more use of natural sources of power. The aim is not control the freedom of movement, instead to reduce the energy consumption for transportation. The most eco-friendly source of power is human energy. Nature has the ability to vanish the side-effects of producing energy through human bodies, but it cannot absorb the by-products of using machines to produce the necessary energy to move from one place to another. Walking and cycling undoubtedly lie at the hearth of sustainable mobility policies because if we use our body there is no limit of movement, because there is no impact on the environment.
Besides the positive effect of walking and cycling policies on the planet, sustainable mobility policies in the post-COVID era are also about stimulating human contact. Car occupancy and use led to the transformation of modern cities which altered significantly our way of living. 1961 Lewis Mumford, a famous geographer and sociologist, wrote about the social transformation of the cities: residents in the big cities stopped to visit their local stores and groceries, stopped to visit their neighbors to learn local news communicating face to face with people they know, instead they use their car to shop at faceless supermarkets and their radio to learn news: A lonely crowd easily manipulated by the political elite. Nowadays, the raise of internet and smartphone use and the fear of virus infection has even more stimulated human less contact. People who do not know their local social and physical environment are uneducated people with no local identity, uninterested on local affairs and easily influenced by extremists. Human contact lies at the heart of democracy.
On the other side of the spectrum, mobility based on walking and cycling – which is also called active mobility because we activate our muscular power to move – is a not a far-reaching mobility. Local neighborhood stores which cannot offer cheaper products than big supermarkets but they can offer quality and locality can flourish if mobility is based on short-distance trips. Urban planners are trying to divide huge car-oriented cities again to 15 minutes -walking units with local autonomy reinventing the traditional social sense of neighborhoods which got gradually lost due to extensive car use. This urban model is called “15 minutes cities”.
Conclusively, sustainable mobility is not only about protecting the planet, but mainly to reshape car-oriented contactless cities into social, active, human communities.
