[sustran] Eduardo Vasconcellos book - Urban transport, environment and equi ty - the case for developing countries

Paul Barter geobpa at nus.edu.sg
Mon Nov 12 10:44:55 JST 2001


New Book Announcement

Book: Urban transport, environment and equity - the case for developing
countries. 
Author: Eduardo Alcântara Vasconcellos, ANTP, Brazil. 
Earthscan, UK, 2001. (www.earthscan.co.uk)
(333 pages; includes bibliographical references and index) 

Urban transport conditions remain highly inadequate for most of the
population in developing countries. Poor transit supply, low accessibility,
badly maintained vehicles, discomfort, congestion, pollution and accidents
are daily problems faced by most people. Structural political and economic
conditions maintain social exclusion, poverty and unemployment and confine
the decision making process to selected groups. Unbalanced economic growth,
persistent poverty and population growth generate chaotic urban expansion
and poses obstacles to effective urban and transportation planning.
Traditional transportation planning techniques, applied according to a
"black-box" ethics,  have been generating transport systems that propagate
an unfair distribution of accessibility and reproduce safety and
environmental inequities. Private transportation has often been favoured,
and local public transportation and non-motorised means have been neglected.
These problems have been aggravated since the 1980's, in line with the
economic restructuring and the fiscal crisis of the state, which inhibit the
organisation of an adequate supply of public transportation means for most
of the people. 

The book intends to provide alternative explanations to current conditions,
and take alternative approaches, that emphasise the social and political
aspects of transport policy and the use of the urban space. The main
objective is to offer tools for analysis and action, to  help support an
equity coalition among those concerned with the future of developing
countries.  

The book analyses how social groups and classes interact with the
environment to fulfil their social reproduction needs, seen as those
activities that are needed to live and participate in society. The roles of
the most relevant public and private actors in influencing transport policy
are analysed - the state, the bureaucracy, the planners, social groups and
classes, the private sector; the consultant sector, the real state industry
and the transportation industry. Actual roadway use is scrutinised through
an analysis of the role played by people in traffic (the microphysics of
traffic), considering how they interact and how benefits and harms are
created and distributed; physical and political conflicts that determine the
use of the streets are discussed and consequent limits to public policies
are devised. 

The book also explores new or revised concepts that support the alternative
approach: the city as a built environment and the relationship between
space, transport and traffic; the circulation system and the circulation
environment; the relationship between production and transport, and social
reproduction and transport, and the related transportation strategies
adopted by them to fulfil needs; accessibility and mobility; the
relationship between the built environment and the means of collective
consumption, as a basis to analyse the use of roads as public assets. The
book also discuss the forms of provision, regulation, operation, control and
use of transportation means, congregating all previous analyses and concepts
into a broad framework, to provide a clear and logical basis for analysing
past and current transport policies.  Chapters are devoted to special
issues: non-motorised, public and private transport; mobility; space,
environment and equity; and traffic accidents
Proposals are discussed according to three main fields of intervention -
urban planning, transportation planning and traffic planning - and are
analysed according to their relevance and fitness to developing countries. 



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