cycling Archives

Achieving sustainable transport systems and travel behaviours is proving problematic in many cities, including contestation over strategies and projects. Discourses on Sustainable Urban Mobility challenges the dominant discourses of motorisation and the ineffective implementation of sustainable mobility, arguing that transport planning history is not merely a record of successful projects but a reflection of how transport has been provided, including who and what has been included or excluded. Using discourse analysis, the book examines socially constructed realities in transport planning across 20 international case studies. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s concepts, it explores why transport systems and travel behaviours differ by space and time.

The discussion starts in Plymouth, a city rebuilt around motorisation. A range of cities are then examined, following different trajectories for transport planning, including Oxford; Freiburg; Singapore; Bogotá; Houten; Chongqing; London, King’s Cross; Rio de Janeiro; Utrecht; Copenhagen; Malmö; Dar es Salaam; Shenzhen; Manchester; Valenciennes; Medellín; Delhi; London, West Ealing-South; and Portland. Each city offers unique discursive formations and practices for transport and city planning, suggesting progressive pathways towards sustainable urban mobility. Comprehensive and critical, this book aids students, policy makers, consultants and the public in reconsidering their transport systems for greater sustainability.

An Anthropology of Landscape tells the fascinating story of a heathland landscape in south-west England and the way different individuals and groups engage with it. Based on a long-term anthropological study, the book emphasises four individual themes: embodied identities, the landscape as a sensuous material form that is acted upon and in turn acts on people, the landscape as contested, and its relation to emotion. The landscape is discussed in relation to these themes as both ‘taskscape’ and ‘leisurescape’, and from the perspective of different user groups. First, those who manage the landscape and use it for work: conservationists, environmentalists, archaeologists, the Royal Marines, and quarrying interests. Second, those who use it in their leisure time: cyclists and horse riders, model aircraft flyers, walkers, people who fish there, and artists who are inspired by it. The book makes an innovative contribution to landscape studies and will appeal to all those interested in nature conservation, historic preservation, the politics of nature, the politics of identity, and an anthropology of Britain.