Transport and Mobility Planning for Sustainable Development

This special issue aims to contribute to the research debate on how transport and mobility are intertwined with wider social systems and structures. Given the fundamental impact of transport on liveability in urban as well as rural settings, transport planning from a wider social approach is far from sufficiently acknowledged, even in transport research literature. Hence, we need more knowledge about how transport and mobility planning can be developed to support societal goals related to sustainable development. With respect to the various interpretations of, and approaches to, sustainable development, it is quite a demanding task to articulate how transport planning can contribute to sustainability. Above all, it demands an understanding of the relationship between transport and sustainable development for different policy issues, for different planning tasks and for different geographical contexts. We hope that the collection of papers in this special issue will contribute with new knowledge on such matters. In this introduction, we will briefly present the three papers included in the special issue and discuss some recent developments in the literature on transport for sustainable development.

This special issue draws on the scholarly debate on integrated sustainable transport planning to frame the papers. An integrated sustainability approach to transport planning frames planning as a task that radiates out into different policies and for planning endeavours more broadly. Planning for sustainable transport relates to various planning tasks, such as the development of general planning strategies, directing investments into settlement development and physical infrastructure, implementing technical solutions (including digitalization measures), and intervening for mobility management and behavioural change strategies. Such broad array of policy and planning areas suggests that research on relations between transport, transport planning and social development also should spread across journals within social studies with different scopes and aims. Based on this point of departure, we hope that the articles in this issue can inspire readers with a key interest in planning to consider transport and mobility as important elements of planning.

Transport planning involves planning bodies at different levels, from international communities such as the EU, through national and sub-national levels (e.g. regional and local authorities), as well as political influence. In addition, various actors in the private sector are engaged in transport planning. Structures of interdependencies evolve between bodies regarding their strategies for transport planning, and how such strategies encourage dialogue and collaboration across sectors and between actors. This demand for collaboration among actors becomes quite evident when transport planning is integrated within aims for sustainability. With the focus on climate impacts, the UN (2016) argues that different measures for transport planning practices should aim to ‘avoid, shift or improve’. The first aspect, “avoid”, refers to the ambition to reduce the need to travel, for example by making activities more accessible. ‘Shift’ refers to shifting from car use to active travel (biking and walking) and public transport. Finally, ‘improve’ refers to the improvement of the efficiency of all forms of transport through, for example, electrification or renewable fuels. Transport issues are also integrated in the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) which are important components of the global agreement to implement Agenda 2030. Transport is one of the sub-themes for goal 11 for sustainable cities and societies. Within the integrated logic of the SDGs, sustainable transport is included as a means to achieve resilient urban-rural linkages. Transport is also integrated across several other goals, such as food security, health, energy, and economic growth (https://sdgs.un.org/topics/sustainable-transport). Thus, the way transport is interwoven throughout Agenda 2030 can be understood to represent a general conviction that planning for sustainable transport needs an integrated social approach as well as cross-sector collaboration.

The scholarly debate on transport and sustainability is considerable. In this introduction, there is only room to give some glimpses from this literature. Banister’s early work is a central reference point for this debate, as he proposed ‘The sustainable mobility paradigm’ in 2008. This paradigm has a clear resemblance to the avoid/shift/improve nexus and presents an argument that is still very relevant today. Banister’s paper, with its focus on mobility, has a social point of departure. It proposes that the development of sustainable mobility needs to be framed within an integrated approach involving strategies for technology use, land use planning, the development of regulations, and interventions for mobility management (Banister, 2008). These four elements also remain key tools for contemporary strategies for the development of sustainable transport. An integrated approach points to the need for cross-disciplinary research and collaborative work across organisations and sectors to develop knowledge, learning and mobilise necessary resources. Building on Banister, critical transport researchers continue to call for a more comprehensive approach to transport planning, where planners are encouraged to take action to enhance sustainability in theory and in practice. Lyons and Davidson (2016) argue, for example, that planners must ‘decide and provide’, in contrast to the ‘predict and provide’ paradigm, which has led to planning practices that are not well equipped to meet challenges such as the climate crisis. Another example is a paper by Docherty et al. (2018) which discusses how new so called ‘smart mobility solutions’ demand active and effective governance from public actors to ensure public value. Similar calls can also be noted in the literature about social sustainability, with associated discussions about social exclusion and transport and mobility/transport justice (Martens et al., 2012; Lucas, 2012; Sheller, 2018). However, Lucas et.al. (2016) note that knowledge about these issues is still, inadequate and fragmented, with references to the scholarly debate and well as to planning practice.

Generally, research and policy advocates that the reduction of motorized transport is essential for reaching sustainability goals. Further, the development of public transport to be a more dominant system for personal transport, is viewed as an important tool to facilitate sustainable transformation. The integration of land use planning and transport planning is viewed as essential (Hull, 2008) for achieving the combined decrease of private car use and increase of share of public transport. Such arguments are closely associated with climate change challenges and goals to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. In practice, balancing different interventions in the transport sector to realise an integrated approach to sustainable development has proven to be demanding. For instance, to meet the sustainability goals relating to climate and also economic aspects, it is vital to increase ridership and to attract large numbers of travellers through large scale and high-speed solutions for public transport. At the same time, this risks excluding the mobility needs of rural populations while favouring urban areas (Berg & Ihlström 2019) and also excluding less privileged passengers from attractive and expensive transport facilities (Jensen & Richardson, 2007; Nixon & Schwanen, 2019). Other risks also include possible tensions between different policy actors and private operators which in turn could challenge the collaborative approach needed to organise the provision of public transport services (Hrelja et al., 2017) to achieve sustainable mobility. Continued research is therefore also needed to understand the balance of effects of different interventions for transport.

While the discussion above presents some general conditions for a framework for transport planning from a sustainable development approach, in specific research studies it is also important to recognize the influence of different national planning systems. Since all articles for this special issue present empirical cases from Sweden, we will highlight some specifics of the Swedish planning system. An important feature of this context is that the sub-national levels of regional and local governments have rather extensive planning mandates. Regional and local governments have the competence to leverage tax, which means that the local and regional planning authorities have relatively substantial resources to manage planning. The extensive responsibilities of local governments for physical planning and the regional governments’ responsibility for operating public transport makes these two planning bodies quite interdependent. The Swedish goals for a sustainable transport system, set up through the national government, state that the transport sector shall be fossil free by 2030. These national goals state that the design and function of the transport system shall support environmental goals and strive towards sustainability, while contributing to economic growth and support basic transport needs for all. Regarding the implementation of these goals, responsibility is laid on local as well as regional bodies.

Altogether, the articles published in this special issue illustrate how varying mandates of sub-national planning authorities, in combination with wider policy discourses of sustainability, impact on the way transport planning is managed in practice. An overall concern identified in the papers is the demanding task of interpreting and balancing sustainable development goals.

Wallsten et al. (2021) aim to understand how the governance strategies of local authorities in an urban region apply when digitalization is introduced to meet demands for sustainable development. They have interviewed local officials with different responsibilities related to traffic planning in two municipalities in the Stockholm region, representing one of three metropolitan regions in Sweden. Important take-aways from the interview study include the general uncertainty regarding the advantages and disadvantages of smart mobility, and how this fosters difficulties to integrate this perspective in ongoing planning activities, as well as in strategic work.

Hermelin and Gustafsson (2021) investigate how sustainability demands are interpreted at the local and regional level when national high-speed rail is on the agenda. They have analysed written documentation from four municipalities which describes strategic decisions and procedures to prepare for a planned high-speed rail (HSR) investment which has been announced at the national level. The analysis shows evidence of locally grounded visions regarding systems for transport and mobility that aligns with an integrated approach for sustainable regional development. However, the overarching aim with HSR, to connect major urban centres and overcome geographical distances, leads to a focus on economic development, while goals for ecological and, in particular, social sustainability are not prioritised. This article points to how different geographical scales of planning involve different interpretations of what planning for sustainable development entails.

Vitrano and Lindkvist (2021) analyse how justice is understood and dealt with in regional transport plans where strategies for sustainable development are set out. The paper makes an argument for an understanding of transport justice that includes a recognition of differences as well as procedural issues. This moves beyond the dominant understanding of justice as distribution. Vitrano and Lindkvist examine whether Iris Marion Young’s theory of justice is suitable for understanding social (in)justice and its conceptualization in transport planning documents. In line with the article by Hermelin and Gustafsson, they find that regional growth is a dominant aspect for the understanding of sustainable mobility in regional plans. As a consequence, transport users are understood as customers rather than citizens, which for example, undermines processes for citizen involvement.

In all, a number of tensions are identified through the articles. Hermelin and Gustafsson (2021) highlight tensions balancing of large-scale infrastructure development with local accessibility. Wallsten et al’s article (Wallsten et al., 2021) illustrates an ambivalence among public actors in their perceived capacity and mandate to steer new developments in digitalization, which leads to market actors with commercial interests to be given a central role in the shaping of future smart mobility solutions. Vitrano and Lindkvist (2021) identify a growth imperative in regional transport plans, which makes it difficult to include disadvantaged groups with specific accessibility needs in sustainable development work. Taken together, these articles argue that transport planning is much more than technical expertise and the application of smarter technical solutions. On the contrary, transport planning is about policy, political goals and governing strategies for which technology is important tool. This leaves planners with the challenge of finding strategies to balance different policy aims for the environment, the economy and social development. Thus, it is evident that more research that can contribute with knowledge about the role of transport planning in wider policy for sustainable development is important. Further studies on different local contexts can contribute with knowledge on promising practices and institutional capacities for transport planning and how this contributes to sustainable transformation of societies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).