Invited Speech at EASTS Conference

Tim Schwanen gave one of the invited plenary speeches during the 16th International Conference of Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies (EASTS) held between 1-4 September in Surakarta, Indonesia. He reflected on the session’s theme of making transport more user centred and culturally resonant by drawing on emerging insights from the SPECIFIC project that he leads.

He argued that the public backlash against 15-minute city plans, low-traffic neighbourhoods and clean air zones requires a slowing down of reasoning and practice in the manner that philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers argues. More specifically, he suggested that transport researchers need to reflect more critically on their habitual concepts and methodological practices to avoid abstracting away many of the aspects and experiences of interventions in urban transport systems that trigger ambiguous effects, friction and resistance among city residents and visitors. He offered various suggestions for how transport researchers and planners can better understand the ambiguity, friction and resistance generated by interventions in urban transport systems that most researchers and planners consider the right and obvious things to do. He illustrated his arguments with the help of interviews undertaken by Zakiyya Adam on the expansion of last-mile delivery by e-cargo bike into Bristol’s lower-density, car-oriented suburbs.