[sustran] Re: A very short list of very bad practices

Madhav Badami, Prof. madhav.g.badami at mcgill.ca
Thu Jul 21 23:57:13 JST 2011


Karthik,

Your comparison of the relationship between motor vehicles and pedestrians to that of colonizers and the colonized is interesting. In an article on pedestrian accessibility in India in EPW a couple of years ago, I had -- borrowing from the Ecologist -- termed the urban transport situation as a "tragedy of enclosure"; this is especially true of the Indian context, where personal motor vehicles are provided for, at the expense of the non-motorized modes, and the vast majority who rely on them:

"Garrett Hardin, in his influential article “The Tragedy of the
Commons”, argued that common property resources are inevitably
degraded and depleted to the detriment of all (Hardin 1968).
While Hardin was describing a real and important problem, what
he was characterising was not so much a tragedy of the commons,
for there are many community-governed common property resources
that are effectively conserved, but a tragedy of open, unrestricted
(and unregulated) access, under which conditions users
are motivated only by short-term private benefits and costs,
without regard to even their own, let alone society’s, long-term
interests. Urban transport infrastructure is in many respects characterised
by these conditions, and thus prone to over-exploitation,
and excessive negative externalities. But the extent to which
common property resources are degraded and depleted, even
under these conditions, depends on the mode of use and the technology
employed. If urban travel was exclusively by non-motorised
modes, for example, the environment would not suffer, and
neither would users, relative to one another, since the power to
use the resource would be equally shared. The urban transport
situation is not merely a tragedy of open access, but a tragedy of
enclosure, as The Ecologist (1993) points out, with the public
domain, both in physical and institutional terms, being expropriated
for the benefit of personal motor vehicles and the dominant
minority that uses them. As more of it is fenced in for their benefit,
not only is the public domain degraded, but the vast majority,
who do not have access to these vehicles, are fenced out, and
made vulnerable, at public expense."

Madhav

************************************************************************

"As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Madhav G. Badami, PhD
School of Urban Planning and McGill School of Environment
McGill University

Macdonald-Harrington Building
815 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC, H3A 2K6, Canada

Phone: 514-398-3183 (Work)
Fax: 514-398-8376; 514-398-1643
URLs: www.mcgill.ca/urbanplanning
www.mcgill.ca/mse
e-mail: madhav.badami at mcgill.ca
________________________________________
From: sustran-discuss-bounces+madhav.g.badami=mcgill.ca at list.jca.apc.org [sustran-discuss-bounces+madhav.g.badami=mcgill.ca at list.jca.apc.org] On Behalf Of Karthik Rao-Cavale [krc12353 at gmail.com]
Sent: 21 July 2011 09:04
To: sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org
Subject: [sustran] Re: A very short list of very bad practices

Speaking of victim-blaming, I'm surprised no one has brought up this ghastly
case where the mother of a child killed in a road accident is being charged
with manslaughter. It's just shocking. Deeply, profoundly, shocking.

http://t4america.org/blog/2011/07/18/prosecuting-the-victim-absolving-the-perpetrators/

Also, without meaning to pimp my own work, I recently wrote an article in
which I argue that the relationship between motor vehicles and pedestrians
is analogous to that of colonizers and the colonized.

http://vishwakarman.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/taming-street-peopl-civilizational-project/

2011/7/21 eric britton <eric.britton at ecoplan.org>

> Subject: Victim Blaming
>
>
>
> Thank you very much Morton.  I find your analysis excellent, as always
> from, you considered and sober (I guess that is because you are a Icelandic)
> and all in all a good guide to the topic and possible next steps.
>
>
>
> I wonder if I might ask you to write this up an article for World Streets,
> and of course for this forum, on what you call so rightly Victim Blaming.
>  An excellent topic, quite at the level of good sense at which we need to
> operate. Moreover it's great stuff because it is so thoroughly
> counter-intuitive and against the grain of unexamined but passively accepted
> standard  practice.  It certainly has to be right up there in the top rank
> of the pantheon of Worst Practices, and I know that you can do a great
>  piece for us all on this so as to make sure that becomes part of the
> battery of tools and awareness is which are so essential to getting
> transportation related policy decisions right.
>
>
>
> I very much hope you will be able take the time out of your busy schedule
> to do this for us all.
>
>
>
> In closing I would like to make a brief remark about the importance of
> treating this little Worst Practices exercise in a properly mature manner.
>  There is in the very title, Worst Practices, a somewhat jocular stab at the
> concept of Best Practices with all of the pretentiousness and potential
> dangers that such a mindset inevitably  carries with it.  I have no great
> problem with Bet's little cousin Good Practices, but when we begin to get
> into the hallowed halls of "Best Practices" and I find myself getting a bit
> obstreperous.
>
>
>
> "Worst Practices" is like Richard Strauss's opera the Rosenkavalier.  As
> one critic put it long ago: to be viewed with a wink in one eye, and a tear
> in the other.
>
>
>
> Eric Britton
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> To search the archives of sustran-discuss visit
> http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=014715651517519735401:ijjtzwbu_ss
>
> ================================================================
> SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred,
> equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries
> (the 'Global South').
>
--------------------------------------------------------
To search the archives of sustran-discuss visit
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=014715651517519735401:ijjtzwbu_ss

================================================================
SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred, equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries (the 'Global South').


More information about the Sustran-discuss mailing list