Gentrification means a class-upward process in which people and businesses that can afford high land costs move in a neighbourhood and may displace pre-existing low-income families and locally owned small businesses. It can result in environmental or social justice issues that lead to undesirable effects on disadvantaged groups and hence has been increasingly noticed and valued by academia, communities, and local administrations. The literature has suggested multiple driving forces behind gentrification and some of them are associated with transportation; meanwhile, gentrification has been doubted as one of the driving forces behind transportation development. Although there is growing evidence of the interactions between transportation and gentrification, some pressing questions remain.

Guest editors:

• Dr. Jen-Jia Lin, National Taiwan University (jenjia@ntu.edu.tw)
• Dr. Karen Chapple, University of Toronto (karen.chapple@utoronto.ca)
• Dr. Sylvia Ying He, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (sylviahe@cuhk.edu.hk)
• Dr. Tim Schwanen, University of Oxford (tim.schwanen@ouce.ox.ac.uk)

Special issue information:

Gentrification means a class-upward process in which people and businesses that can afford high land costs move in a neighbourhood and may displace pre-existing low-income families and locally owned small businesses. It can result in environmental or social justice issues that lead to undesirable effects on disadvantaged groups and hence has been increasingly noticed and valued by academia, communities, and local administrations. The literature has suggested multiple driving forces behind gentrification and some of them are associated with transportation; meanwhile, gentrification has been doubted as one of the driving forces behind transportation development. Although there is growing evidence of the interactions between transportation and gentrification, some pressing questions remain. How do the interactions differ in different contexts? What drives the interactions? What are their theoretical and policy implications? What intervening factors mediate the interactions on distinct community types and populations?

This special issue calls for original research and review articles on the interactions between transportation and gentrification, policy responses to these interactions, and their implications for urban and regional development planning and governance. Topics of particular interest include, but not limited to, the following:

• Transportation impacts on gentrification;
• Gentrification impacts on transportation;
• (Long-term) interactions between transportation and gentrification and spatiotemporal dynamics of the interactions;
• Theoretical and policy implications of the impacts and interactions;
• Transit-induced gentrification;
• Transit-oriented development and gentrification;
• Role of transportation in environmental, ecological, or green gentrification;
• Comparative studies in different contexts.

Deadline for full paper submission deadline: 30 September 2024

All submissions must be original and may not be under review elsewhere. All manuscripts will be submitted via the Transportation Research Part D online submission system. Authors should indicate that the paper is submitted for consideration for publication in this special issue. When choosing Manuscript “Article Type” during the submission procedure, click “VSI: Gentrification”, otherwise your submission will be handled as a regular manuscript. Author Guidelines: https://www.elsevier.com/journals/transportation-research-part-d-transport-and-environment/1361-9209/guide-for-authors.

The text below was written by Zakiyya Adam and edited by myself, and first published at the website of the Transport Studies Unit.

The15-minute cities seek to enhance quality of life for all. It’s a very simple premise: individuals should be able to access all of their daily needs within 15 minutes of walking or cycling from their home. The basic needs that should be accessible in this radius include: healthcare, education, commerce, entertainment, and employment. Where travel times on foot or by (e-)bike cannot be reduced to less than a quarter of an hour, high-quality and inclusive online services should offer a suitable alternative.

The concept is flexible and can be adapted. For instance, in Australia they speak about 30-minute cities (Sydney) and 20-minute neighbourhoods (Melbourne). This is why academics researchers increasingly refer to the X-Minute City as an urban planning approach that gives individuals and communities better access to everything they need to live full lives. 

By reducing the separation between individuals and everything they need to flourish, the X-Minute City unlocks numerous social, economic and environmental benefits, at both the City and the individual levels. Reducing the time spent travelling frees citizens up to use their time and money in ways that serve them better. Drawing resources into neighbourhoods unlocks new employment opportunities, inspires innovation and creates a sense of community. Reducing dependence on cars enables the creation of more green spaces, makes streets safer, reduces congestion, and lowers the air and noise pollution that makes local communities suffer.

First proposed in 2016, the 15-Minute City concept gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic when working from home became the norm for many, and the importance of having resilient local communities increased. The empowerment of individuals to access amenities without the need for a car has been viewed by some as a curbing of their right to use their vehicle. This is a misplacement of grievance. Unlike other urban planning initiatives, the X-Minute City does not restrict behaviour. It does not stop residents from driving, it simply seeks to make walking and cycling a viable and attractive option to them. 

Professor Carlos Moreno, the creator of the 15-Minute City concept, will be giving the Transport Studies Unit’s inaugural Annual Lecture on 29 February in Oxford. Carlos will introduce the 15-Minute City concept, explore its origins and evolution, and discuss the impacts the concept has had on urban planning and mobility around the globe to date. He will also explore the potential of the 15-Minute City in future urban and transport planning.

The X-Minute City warrants further academic attention, and so the TSU is excited to be leading SPECIFIC – a new research project that tries to identify how the X-Minute City can be realised in suburbs and outer areas in European cities with up to approx. 0.5m residents. It is much easier to fulfil all of your daily needs within a short time in suburban and outer areas than in city centres, even if only the use (e-) bikes are considered. And yet it is on those suburban and outer areas where most people live. 

With 14 partners, the TSU will organise ‘transition experiments’ in five cities – Bellinzona (Switzerland), Bristol, Graz (Austria), Maastricht (Netherlands) and Poznan (Poland) – in which local policymakers, communities, businesses and cycling advocacy groups will be brought together to design and test different interventions to enhance the feasibility and attractiveness of short cycling trips. These can be by commuters needing to get to work, people wanting to visit friends, or (e-)bike couriers delivering parcels or means. 

All experiments will centre the experiences and voices of individuals and communities that are often marginalised in transport planning, and so hope to make cycling and mobility in suburban and outer locations more equitable and socially just. 

In a participatory process of social learning, the teams in each city will develop lessons that will be shared across the cities. The researchers will also develop a tool or online game that will help other small and medium-sized cities help to support cycling in suburban and outer locations. In this way SPECIFIC will contribute to the practical realisation of 15 minute cities and to more healthy and sustainable ways of life for everyone in suburban and low-density settings across Europe.

Earlier this week a paper by Geoff Dudley, David Banister and myself was published in The Political Quarterly, and it can be downloaded for free until 31st October from here.

The installation of ‘traffic filters’ in the form of planters and bollards on certain residential streets that reduce access by car or van but offer passage to bikes and e-scooters — colloquially known as ‘low traffic neighbourhoods’ or LTNS — is no doubt the most controversial transport policy of the last couple of years. Implemented first in London and shown to reduce car use and ownership, this policy is now travelling into other UK cities, including Oxford.

Our paper does not consider the effects on traffic of the creation of LTNs but the policy processes behind their implementation. In the article we suggest that the LTN policy is an attempt to not only reduce local car use but also increase national government’s grip on local transport policy implementation. The endeavour to centralise implementation works through the conditions imposed by national government on funding allocated for LTN implementation to local authorities. Some of those conditions are so rigid that local authorities struggle to meet them, which leaves them two options: abandon their LTN plans, or fund LTNs through other (local) means. The latter is the course adopted by Oxford and is in some ways the best possible outcome for national government: it realises the ambition of the ‘centre’ without national government having to pay for it from the financial resources earmarked for active travel promotion. 

This approach to local transport policy differs from common understandings of neoliberal styles of policymaking — i.e. rescaling responsibility from national to local level without a concomitant rescaling of resources and capacities. Now, English transport policy has always remained powerful centralised elements, and stylised narratives about neoliberalisation of policymaking have never adequately summarised how transport policy is ‘done’ in England. Still, the LTN case seems to be heralding a new style of (attempting) central control over what local authorities do, in a context where the agency of the latter has been reduced by funding cuts in the wake of austerity politics overseen by former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.

Then again, it is unclear at the current time whether this attempt to recentralise control over implementation of local transport policy is the beginning of a new trend of reassertion of central determination of what happens at local policy, or a temporary phenomenon. Only time will tell…

We are only few days away from the start of the COP26 in Glasgow. Expectations are modest about what the conference will achieve, but one thing that has been achieved is increased attention to and debate about the many types of action that are required to reduce CO2 emissions radically and rapidly. The debate is informed and to some extent shaped by communication initiatives by NGOs, universities and other institutions as well as discussion by the mass media.

Over the past three months I have been approached by media organisations from across the globe more than ever before, and my own university has also asked me to participate in some of its activities and initiatives. The comms team in my university has produced some wonderful animation for a brief video in which I speak about the potential and limitations of shifting towards electric mobility as part of collective attempts to reduce CO2 emissions from transport. It’s available on the university’s YouTube channel.    

At the upcoming annual conference of the American Association of Geographers in Washington DC (3-7 April), I will give this year’s Fleming Lecture organised by the Transport Geography Specialty Group. The title of my talk will be “Geographies of transport in the new climatic regime”, a title that is directly referring to Bruno Latour’s latest book.

In the lecture, I hope to will reflect on Transport Geography research in the current era in which the earth system — the ‘geo’ — has become an active participant in public life. I will argue for an expansion of substantive concerns, theory, and methodology for geographical research about transport configurations. As an important part of this expanded agenda, geographers should contribute to a shift in the logics that help to organize and shape (transformations in) transport configurations, from a preoccupation with acceleration and efficient, reliable and normal movement to ongoing and just adaptation of such configurations to a variety of pressures and more sudden events. This shift comes with implications for research methodology too and shuld be accompanied by methodological orientations and practices revolving around concreteness, singularities, provincialization and description. In this way it becomes easier to study the necessarily context-dependent geo-social politics of transport. I will illustrate some of those politics using empirical examples from various ongoing research projects in which I am involved.

Day: Thursday 04 April 2019
Start Time: 5:00 pm
Room: Washington 4, Marriott, Exhibition Level

Job description: The Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning of Utrecht University seeks to appoint a post-doc for the project “DEPICT: DEsigning and Policy Implementation for encouraging Cycling and walking Trips” financed by NWO-ESRC-FAPESP. The project is a close collaboration with the University of Applied Sciences NHTV, University of Oxford and the the University of São Paulo.

Qualifications: For this project, we search for a highly motivated post-doc with a PhD degree in Human Geography or related disciplines, preferably with experience in empirical research methods such stated preference techniques. You will work with the 3D immersive simulation technology Oculus Rift to analyse the impact of manipulations in streetscape and traffic environment design on walking and cycling in the Netherlands as well as in São Paulo.

Offer: The post is available from October first, 2017. You will be offered a temporary position for 15 months as post-doc. Employment conditions are based on the Collective Labour Agreement of the Dutch Universities. Your gross monthly salary is dependent on experience and qualifications and varies between € 2.855,- and €3.908,- (salary scale 10) on a fulltime basis.

Contact: Prof. dr. Martin Dijst: m.j.dijst@uu.nl

A while ago the annual special issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers has been published, and this year’s edition is on the Geographies of Mobility and edited by Mei-Po Kwan and myself.

The special issue consists of 26 articles, plus an introductory piece by Mei-Po and myself, that seeks to bring together the multiple ways in which geographers examine the everyday mobilities of people. It consists of five thematic sections – conceptualizing and analysing mobility, inequalities of mobility, politics of mobility, decentering mobility, and qualifying abstraction. Empirically the focus is on mobility in various regions of the world, and not only in North America and Europe. The papers discuss issues as diverse as the everyday mobilities of young people, migrants and refugees, and sex workers; the relationships between citizenship and mobility; and the potential and pitfalls of big data for understanding mobility.

Our guest edited special issue of Urban Studies on ‘Geographies of the Urban Night’ is now available online and in paper copy. Urban Studies have posted a nice blog post written by Ilse van Liempt and Phil Hadfield on the issue — it is available here: http://urbanstudiesjnl.blogspot.nl/ (you may have to scroll down to ‘Friday, 30 January 2015’)

The Table of Contents is available here: http://usj.sagepub.com/content/52/3.toc