Mobility: A New Urban Design and Transport Planning Philosophy for a Sustainable Future

John Whitelegg argues for a complete  transformation of how transport planning, as well as urban and rural planning, is dealt with in the UK citing best practice examples from other countries such as Zurich and Vienna’s public transport system and Sweden’s Vision Zero policy which has the aim of zero deaths and zero serious injuries in the road traffic environment.  He also emphasises the importance of dealing with air pollution from traffic sources which kills over 40,000 each year in Britain and concludes that this is a massive failure of public policy and can and must be reduced to zero.

The book presents a very different argument to the ones normally seen where local authorities and campaign groups try to increase walking and cycling. He suggests that whilst there is still scope to increase these very healthy and inexpensive means of moving around but only if we have serious polices to reduce traffic volume, create car-free streets and residential areas and have a total 20mph speed limit on all streets where people live.

The need to reduce traffic volumes and traffic speeds is described in some detail and the book illustrates how this can be done on a short time scale and by following an  inexpensive policy pathway.  Traditional transport policy that does not focus seriously on traffic reduction is very expensive and the alternatives are much better for reducing the costs of running cities.

E-Book available online.