Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places

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Planning experts give global examples of cities that look beyond transportation to create better places

 

Reviews of Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places

"Including color illustrations and a few graphics to illustrate critical points, this fantastic book should be required reading."
—CHOICE

“A remarkable contribution... a new urban planning and design framework to meet the needs of the new century”
— Journal of Planning Education and Research

"Updates the argument that planning should focus less on motorized movement and more on the 'needs and aspirations of people and the places they want to go.'"
—Planning

”Convincingly reinforces the links between sustainable cities and economic performance, a higher quality of life and an improved economy.”
—National Urban Design Awards 2019

“Occasionally, one reads a book that resonates with much of what is going on in our cities across the World…”
— Transport Reviews

“This veritable tour de force will be an inspiration and resource for anyone who cares about the future of cities.”
— Jan Gehl, Professor of Urban Design at the School of Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts

“May become the most influential book of this generation on land use and transportation, providing an elegant conceptual framework, excellent case studies, and cutting-edge thinking.”
— Reid Ewing, Chair and Professor of the City & Metropolitan Planning Program at the University of Utah

“A must-read for urban geographers, planners, designers, and engineers seeking ways to make future cities more sustainable.”
— Becky P.Y. Loo, Professor of Geography, Director of the Institute of Transport Studies, the University of Hong Kong

 
 
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Synopsis of Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places

Cities across the globe have been designed with a primary goal of moving people around quickly—and the costs are becoming ever more apparent. The consequences are measured in smoggy air basins, sprawling suburbs, unsafe pedestrian environments, and despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investments, a failure to stem traffic congestion. Every year our current transportation paradigm generates more than 1.25 million fatalities directly through traffic collisions. Worldwide, 3.2 million people died prematurely in 2010 because of air pollution, four times as many as a decade earlier. Instead of planning primarily for mobility, our cities should focus on the safety, health, and access of the people in them.

Beyond Mobility is about prioritizing the needs and aspirations of people and the creation of great places. This is as important, if not more important, than expediting movement. A stronger focus on accessibility and place creates better communities, environments, and economies. Rethinking how projects are planned and designed in cities and suburbs needs to occur at multiple geographic scales, from micro-designs (such as parklets), corridors (such as road-diets), and city-regions (such as an urban growth boundary). It can involve both software (a shift in policy) and hardware (a physical transformation). Moving beyond mobility must also be socially inclusive, a significant challenge in light of the price increases that typically result from creating higher quality urban spaces.

There are many examples of communities across the globe working to create a seamless fit between transit and surrounding land uses, retrofit car-oriented suburbs, reclaim surplus or dangerous roadways for other activities, and revitalize neglected urban spaces like abandoned railways in urban centers.

The authors draw on experiences and data from a range of cities and countries around the globe in making the case for moving beyond mobility. Throughout the book, they provide an optimistic outlook about the potential to transform places for the better. Beyond Mobility celebrates the growing demand for a shift in global thinking around place and mobility in creating better communities, environments, and economies.

 
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Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: Urban Recalibration

Part One: Making the Case
Chapter 2: Better Communities
Chapter 3: Better Environments
Chapter 4: Better Economies

Part Two: Contexts and Cases
Chapter 5: Urban Transformations
Chapter 6: Suburban Transformations
Chapter 7: Transit-Oriented Development
Chapter 8: Road Contraction

Part Three: Looking Forward
Chapter 9: The Global South
Chapter 10: Emerging Technologies
Chapter 11: Toward Sustainable Urban Futures

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

 
 
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Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places

Robert Cervero, Erick Guerra, Stefan al

 

See here for a list of Stefan Al’s other books