International Conference: 2-4 June 2010 Sustainable Transport in the Asia-Indo-Pacific: Varied Contexts - Common Aims
For abstracts, click here
For presentations, click here
Intention
This conference is about how to raise the priority of environmental sustainability and social justice in planning for urban transportation in different national contexts in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region. Doing this, we think, is a prerequisite for the long term economic and political security of our region and the world.
In the aftermath of the Copenhagen Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP 15), and with the globe on the brink of dangerous climate change, the key dialogues are in future going to be around saving the integrity of the planetary ecosystems, fairness to the people, and understanding of difference of cultural, political and economic context.
Our intention in this conference is to initiate a new kind of discussion around urban transport and to garner the 50 best academic papers on the topic with a view to publication.
Keynote Speakers
Dr Lee Schipper (Senior Research Engineer, The Precourt Energy Efficiency Centre, Stanford University; Project Scientist,Global Met Studies, University of California, Berkeley; formerly Director of Research, EMBARQ; founder of the World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport)
Professor Geetam Tiwari (Transport Research and Injury Prevention Program Chair in Transport Planning, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi)
Professor Peter Newman (Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University, and Member of the Board of Infrastructure Australia)
Professor Yasunori Doi (Ritsumeikan University, Japan)
Professor Nicholas Low (Director of the Australasian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport)
Conference Dinner at The Melbourne Town Hall
With guest speaker Dr Michael Deegan, Infrastructure Coordinator, Infrastructure Australia.
A Public Forum on Governance to be held on the 4th June 2010
We invite participation, and papers addressing the following questions and themes:
Questions
- How does a field dominated normally by local (city) policy and politics respond to national or international climate change and other environmental regimes?
- How will fairness best be served, recognizing the mobility needs of poor people – and not so much of poor countries – especially in cities?
- How will the urban transport sector of different cities respond to international and national policies for carbon emissions reduction?
- How can transport, energy and land use policies be more effectively coordinated?
- How should responses to these issues vary in different national and urban contexts?
Themes
1.Urban transport and the environment
We need to bring the environment into clear focus in planning urban transport. How do we lower the carbon footprint of urban mobility? And how to anticipate and adapt to the impacts of climate change? New ways are needed of measuring Impacts and building such measures into decision-making processes. What scale of action must be demanded of countries at different stages of economic development? This means not only the future impact of urban transport technologies on global ecological systems, but also the local environmental impacts of transportation. How safe are our streets for people who use them?
2.Urban transport and global production
Transport systems play a crucial role in increasing productivity, and enhancing and spreading economic prosperity. How are goods and services to be delivered to the consumers efficiently; and how are the customers to travel to points of desired activity in a timely way? How is this role to be balanced against fairness and sustainability? Does everyone have the same right to mobility? Can accessibility become a substitute for mobility?
3.Governance of transport for the high density city
The population density and its distribution over urban space is an important factor in the governance of urban transport systems and their coordination with land use policies. There are extremely high density cities like Tokyo and Shanghai, medium densities in the suburbs of Jakarta and Bangkok and new growth areas on the periphery of great cities like Delhi. The efficient and equitable supply of transport requires new modes of governance across transport modes traditionally separated, and new challenges for land use planning. High efficiency public transport modes such as metro rail and bus rapid transit are being developed but different technologies may be appropriate in different contexts. Ecologically sustainable active transport – cycling and walking – along with low energy modes are still main transport modes in many cities but are poorly integrated in transport systems.
4.Governance of transport for the dispersed urban region
The American model of mobility provided high grade freeways for private transport, with minimal public transport. This model dominated transport planning for the developed world in the 20th Century. It is even now still being exported to the developing world. Meanwhile new methods of providing public transport for the dispersed city are emerging, particularly from Europe. Planning transport systems as fully integrated networks, with different technologies performing different roles, is coming to be seen as a solution for both environmental problems and traffic congestion. Such technological integration poses major challenges for governance integration.
5.Funding transport
The way funding is provided for urban transport influences demand for different modes, and supply of infrastructure. Funding systems are often dependent on outdated assumptions about transport, and divided among different modes. Pricing is often irrational and can create perverse incentives with damaging environmental consequences. Different ways of mobilizing private capital have been tried, with varying degrees of success. Private sector involvement without the sacrifice of the necessary system-wide planning capacity remains a major challenge. The potential of capturing land value increments to plough back into system-wide improvements in many cities remains a mirage.
6.Transport planning and local needs
Urban publics do not separate their needs into neat parcels of desire aligned with bureaucratic structures. They experience their urban environments as a whole, with safety, amenity, convenience, mobility, accessibility intertwined. Attaining a better transport system requires the means of connection between the public and government in such a way that whole needs can be expressed and turned into policy. How is the public conceived in different contexts, and how can effective expression be given to public needs by the public itself?
7.Path dependence, policy continuity and innovation in urban transport
New environmental and social challenges require new policy responses. Yet so often, while lip service is paid to new ways of thinking the old well established policies continue to predominate. Expertise and knowledge built up around modes of transport tend to predetermine transport choices. Old ways of providing mobility are perpetuated even when they conflict with the most urgent policy imperatives like social fairness and climate change mitigation. These path dependent ways no doubt find different expression in different national and local contexts; and they require different approaches to provoking change and innovation.
8.Cultural influences on mobility and accessibility
Different cultural contexts throw up different barriers to environmental sustainability and social justice. Often cultural impact starts at an early age, with children being taught norms and expectations of independence and risk by their parents and families. Fears, perceived risks and understood responsibilities come into play to determine values relating to mobility. Attitudes to different modes of transport are shaped by culture and its expression in commerce. The cultural aspects of transport and how it shapes barriers to innovation, as well as new opportunities, need to be better understood.
9.The Challenge of Synthesis
Effective planning and policy formulation for sustainable transport requires governments and institutions to integrate and synthesize various aspects of transport and social systems. These include the integration of research across disciplinary boundaries and the integration of insights from research and practice. We need to bring together the insights from such diverse aspects as ecological assessment, as global production, high-density cities and dispersed cities and make these outputs accessible and useful to policy and planning institutions. Also, we need to ways to identify and draw lessons from best-practices and learn how best they be applied or modified, for use elsewhere.
Papers
Papers that are thought provoking, creative, and relevant and seek to stimulate participant interests are encouraged. At this stage we anticipate that speakers will be given twenty minutes to present papers including questions.
Call for papers is now closed.
Time allotted for each paper presentation will be 15 minutes.
Deadlines:
Abstract due: 26 February 2010
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 9 March 2010
Submission of Full Paper: 6 April 2010
All papers published on the conference website: May 2010
Registration form and payment due 19th May 2010
Papers will be refereed by the Conference Review Panel
More details including registration, program and fees will be announced via our website in the coming weeks
http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/gamut/