- Email: [email protected]
Modern Transport Geography (2nd ed.); B. Hoyle, R. Knowles (Eds.); Wiley, Chichester, 1998, 374 pages, ISBN 0 471 97777 2 (19.99 pounds)
Journal of Transport Geography 7 (1999) 225±233
www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo
Book Reviews Modern Transport Geography (2nd ed.); B. Hoyle, R. Knowles (Eds.); Wiley, Chichester, 1998, 374 pages, ISBN 0 471 97777 2 (19.99 pounds) The ®rst edition of Modern Transport Geography was published in 1992, in response to a long-felt need for a textbook to support courses in and related to transport geography. The appearance of a second edition is a good sign that the need existed and that claims made of the ®rst have been met. The ®rst edition was justly praised for its timely, stimulating, thought-provoking content, and the wealth and range of up-to-date case studies and references. How far have the editors and their contributors built on their earlier success and taken on board changes over the intervening six years in contingencies, knowledge, perspective and academic fashion? In their introductory chapter, the editors clearly demonstrate the intricacy of the interrelations which link transport, society and environment, and confess (page 1) that no single discipline or author can be expected authoritatively to cover the subject as a whole. Given the multiplicity of possible frameworks, they handle their material as in the ®rst edition. Broadly speaking, they set out to focus on conceptual matters and theoretical principles in the ®rst ®ve chapters ± one more chapter than the ®rst edition, since that on transport and development has been split into one on principles and another on practice. There then follow nine chapters exploring identical spatial and thematic issues to edition one. Criteria used to marshal the subject matter include urban versus rural distinctions, surface versus air transport, speci®c modes, and withinnation and international dimensions. The outcome is a remarkably wide and well-chosen factual content ± the topic range remains probably unequalled in a single text ± and there is no unnecessary overlap. In the ®rst edition, the book concluded with a view of Transport and the Future; here, under dierent authorship, the book concludes with the theme Transport and Sustainability, which handles energy futures in a slightly dierent way. Authorship of seven chapters is unchanged. Generally these have been updated without fundamentally altering their pitch or message. These updatings and an extra chapter add almost 100 pages. Five chapters have new authors, and in two more the authorship has been expanded. It is perhaps in these refreshed chapters where
breaking theory from practice becomes dicult. Appropriate familiar conceptual frameworks, such as complementarity, are sometimes introduced in them for the ®rst time. Whether this is of concern or not depends on the reader's purpose. All the chapters are worthwhile free-standing contributions in their own right; the standard of indexing is good even if the potential for cross-referencing in the text is not always taken up. The intended readership may well be less interested in theory, perhaps, and keener to get to the pragmatics of the matter in hand. As with the ®rst edition, the undergraduate student who has digested this edition's contents should be very well-informed on key issues concerning transport systems and how they serve society. It would be dicult to ®nd a more comprehensive sourcebook covering the sort of (dominantly economic) environment in which transport providers make investment and other decisions. Up-to-date commercial and governmental sources, touching on what might be called real-world issues, are used. Certainly, socio±economic problems that arise from the development of transport technology are well aired. In the six years following production of the ®rst edition, several texts on various relationships between transport, society and environment have appeared. They have included fairly technical-environmental ones such as (Banister and Button, 1993), ideologically explicit ones (Wolf, 1996) and what some have viewed as apocalyptic books for example (Whitelegg, 1997). Whatever detailed stance they have taken, these and other authors see the interpretation of transportÕs role in society as a contested arena. That spirit of contestation does not come through strongly in Modern Transport Geography. In Britain alone, the established positions of technocratic experts and their methodologies such as cost-bene®t analysis have come under continuing albeit not particularly eective assault. The development of environmental impact analysis displays the characteristic trait of top±down expert policy formulation bemoaned two decades ago. Debate continues over what constitutes `development' and what role transport has in that complex process. Over the same six years, a range of texts in Human Geography has also appeared. Some of these for example (Lee and Wills, 1997) seek to reinterpret all economic activity as a subset of the cultural, thereby allying Geography with other social sciences and humanities which have es-
226
Book Reviews / Journal of Transport Geography 7 (1999) 225±233
poused ``the cultural turn'' Others have looked for newer overarching frameworks like regulation theory to throw light on how political and economic power are being recast. Though Modern Transport Geography does allude to some theoretical developments (BaumolÕs work on contested markets gets several mentions) there is a studied apparent neutrality in many of the opinions voiced. Maybe the contributors were leaving it to William R Black's ®nal chapter on sustainability to pull together a collective position on courses of action for mankind. He considers future energy supplies for transport, transport's contribution to environmental degradation, fatalities and accidents, congestion and land-misuse. The sustainability attached to each of these is explored as regards transport. He concludes that mankind cannot aord not to implement more sustainable transport strategies ± and while acknowledging the political and equity problems of relying on the market place to organise a transition, oers little alternative. Black presents a transport sustainability index for fourteen countries ranging from USA (least sustainable) to Costa Rica (most). Ultimately, is this a `name and shame' list which will somehow impel governments (unin¯uenced by market signals) to mend their ways? For him, individual consumer action seems ineectual. Or is his objecti®ed index just another tool for top±down policy-makers to use and academics to re®ne and obscure? This ®nale could open debate with students over how the index has been constructed, its legitimacy, and whether it provides pointers towards necessary action. Indeed,
similar questions could be addressed to many other chapters. The dust-jacket makes it clear that the book has a `principles and practice approach' which enables students to develop their own ideas. I suspect that students will bring ideas from other contexts (such as post-Fordism, or feminism) and draw on Modern Transport Geography for solid empirical information, more than the other way round. As one dissects the book, the appositeness of its title becomes clear. It is not a post-modern geography of travel. Its greatest strengths are as an accessible, very wide-ranging, synoptic reference book for the student whose main interest is spatial aspects of transport systems. It should interest a wider, non-academic audience too. But those who expect colours to be nailed elsewhere than to the ideological fence may have to look elsewhere. References Banister, D., Button, K.J. (Eds.), 1993. Transport the Environment and Sustainable Development. Spon. Lee, R, Willis, J. (Eds.), 1997. Geographies of Economies. Arnold, Paris. Whitelegg, J., 1997. Critical Mass. Pluto Press. Wolf, W., 1996. Car Mania: A critical history of transport. Pluto Press.
Tony Moyes Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
0966-6923/99/$ - see front matter Ó 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 6 6 - 6 9 2 3 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 0 8 - 3
The Four World Cities Transport Study; London Research Centre (Caralampo Focas, ed.), The Stationery Oce, London, 1998, ISBN 0 11 702645 X This report represents a major exercise in collaborative international research. The London Research Centre has joined with the Institut d'Amenagemt et d'Urbanisme de la Region d'Ile-de-France, the Institute of Public Administration in New York City and the Tokyo Institute for Municipal Research to undertake a rigorous comparison of the structure of transport infrastructure and service in four of the great global metropolitan city regions. Anyone who has attempted work of this kind will know the diculties and the pitfalls. The verdict has to be that this study has overcome
almost all of them, to produce a study that is a model of its kind. Recalling earlier studies of this kind, the present report adopts a concentric ring structure for data analysis. Zone 1 represents the central area or central business district as commonly recognised in each city, with between 180 000 and 600 000 residents; Zones 1 and 2 represent the densely built up area, embracing 7±9 million people; Zones 1, 2 and 3 represent the Outer Metropolitan Area with 10±13 million people, and the addition of Zone 4 embraces the entire region with at least 17 million people. This immediately brings some problems. Because it is so dense and compact, Paris has no Zone 4 (and this re¯ects the fact that its entire transport structure is quite dierent from those of the other cities). And the tax-
www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo
Book Reviews Modern Transport Geography (2nd ed.); B. Hoyle, R. Knowles (Eds.); Wiley, Chichester, 1998, 374 pages, ISBN 0 471 97777 2 (19.99 pounds) The ®rst edition of Modern Transport Geography was published in 1992, in response to a long-felt need for a textbook to support courses in and related to transport geography. The appearance of a second edition is a good sign that the need existed and that claims made of the ®rst have been met. The ®rst edition was justly praised for its timely, stimulating, thought-provoking content, and the wealth and range of up-to-date case studies and references. How far have the editors and their contributors built on their earlier success and taken on board changes over the intervening six years in contingencies, knowledge, perspective and academic fashion? In their introductory chapter, the editors clearly demonstrate the intricacy of the interrelations which link transport, society and environment, and confess (page 1) that no single discipline or author can be expected authoritatively to cover the subject as a whole. Given the multiplicity of possible frameworks, they handle their material as in the ®rst edition. Broadly speaking, they set out to focus on conceptual matters and theoretical principles in the ®rst ®ve chapters ± one more chapter than the ®rst edition, since that on transport and development has been split into one on principles and another on practice. There then follow nine chapters exploring identical spatial and thematic issues to edition one. Criteria used to marshal the subject matter include urban versus rural distinctions, surface versus air transport, speci®c modes, and withinnation and international dimensions. The outcome is a remarkably wide and well-chosen factual content ± the topic range remains probably unequalled in a single text ± and there is no unnecessary overlap. In the ®rst edition, the book concluded with a view of Transport and the Future; here, under dierent authorship, the book concludes with the theme Transport and Sustainability, which handles energy futures in a slightly dierent way. Authorship of seven chapters is unchanged. Generally these have been updated without fundamentally altering their pitch or message. These updatings and an extra chapter add almost 100 pages. Five chapters have new authors, and in two more the authorship has been expanded. It is perhaps in these refreshed chapters where
breaking theory from practice becomes dicult. Appropriate familiar conceptual frameworks, such as complementarity, are sometimes introduced in them for the ®rst time. Whether this is of concern or not depends on the reader's purpose. All the chapters are worthwhile free-standing contributions in their own right; the standard of indexing is good even if the potential for cross-referencing in the text is not always taken up. The intended readership may well be less interested in theory, perhaps, and keener to get to the pragmatics of the matter in hand. As with the ®rst edition, the undergraduate student who has digested this edition's contents should be very well-informed on key issues concerning transport systems and how they serve society. It would be dicult to ®nd a more comprehensive sourcebook covering the sort of (dominantly economic) environment in which transport providers make investment and other decisions. Up-to-date commercial and governmental sources, touching on what might be called real-world issues, are used. Certainly, socio±economic problems that arise from the development of transport technology are well aired. In the six years following production of the ®rst edition, several texts on various relationships between transport, society and environment have appeared. They have included fairly technical-environmental ones such as (Banister and Button, 1993), ideologically explicit ones (Wolf, 1996) and what some have viewed as apocalyptic books for example (Whitelegg, 1997). Whatever detailed stance they have taken, these and other authors see the interpretation of transportÕs role in society as a contested arena. That spirit of contestation does not come through strongly in Modern Transport Geography. In Britain alone, the established positions of technocratic experts and their methodologies such as cost-bene®t analysis have come under continuing albeit not particularly eective assault. The development of environmental impact analysis displays the characteristic trait of top±down expert policy formulation bemoaned two decades ago. Debate continues over what constitutes `development' and what role transport has in that complex process. Over the same six years, a range of texts in Human Geography has also appeared. Some of these for example (Lee and Wills, 1997) seek to reinterpret all economic activity as a subset of the cultural, thereby allying Geography with other social sciences and humanities which have es-
226
Book Reviews / Journal of Transport Geography 7 (1999) 225±233
poused ``the cultural turn'' Others have looked for newer overarching frameworks like regulation theory to throw light on how political and economic power are being recast. Though Modern Transport Geography does allude to some theoretical developments (BaumolÕs work on contested markets gets several mentions) there is a studied apparent neutrality in many of the opinions voiced. Maybe the contributors were leaving it to William R Black's ®nal chapter on sustainability to pull together a collective position on courses of action for mankind. He considers future energy supplies for transport, transport's contribution to environmental degradation, fatalities and accidents, congestion and land-misuse. The sustainability attached to each of these is explored as regards transport. He concludes that mankind cannot aord not to implement more sustainable transport strategies ± and while acknowledging the political and equity problems of relying on the market place to organise a transition, oers little alternative. Black presents a transport sustainability index for fourteen countries ranging from USA (least sustainable) to Costa Rica (most). Ultimately, is this a `name and shame' list which will somehow impel governments (unin¯uenced by market signals) to mend their ways? For him, individual consumer action seems ineectual. Or is his objecti®ed index just another tool for top±down policy-makers to use and academics to re®ne and obscure? This ®nale could open debate with students over how the index has been constructed, its legitimacy, and whether it provides pointers towards necessary action. Indeed,
similar questions could be addressed to many other chapters. The dust-jacket makes it clear that the book has a `principles and practice approach' which enables students to develop their own ideas. I suspect that students will bring ideas from other contexts (such as post-Fordism, or feminism) and draw on Modern Transport Geography for solid empirical information, more than the other way round. As one dissects the book, the appositeness of its title becomes clear. It is not a post-modern geography of travel. Its greatest strengths are as an accessible, very wide-ranging, synoptic reference book for the student whose main interest is spatial aspects of transport systems. It should interest a wider, non-academic audience too. But those who expect colours to be nailed elsewhere than to the ideological fence may have to look elsewhere. References Banister, D., Button, K.J. (Eds.), 1993. Transport the Environment and Sustainable Development. Spon. Lee, R, Willis, J. (Eds.), 1997. Geographies of Economies. Arnold, Paris. Whitelegg, J., 1997. Critical Mass. Pluto Press. Wolf, W., 1996. Car Mania: A critical history of transport. Pluto Press.
Tony Moyes Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
0966-6923/99/$ - see front matter Ó 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 6 6 - 6 9 2 3 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 0 8 - 3
The Four World Cities Transport Study; London Research Centre (Caralampo Focas, ed.), The Stationery Oce, London, 1998, ISBN 0 11 702645 X This report represents a major exercise in collaborative international research. The London Research Centre has joined with the Institut d'Amenagemt et d'Urbanisme de la Region d'Ile-de-France, the Institute of Public Administration in New York City and the Tokyo Institute for Municipal Research to undertake a rigorous comparison of the structure of transport infrastructure and service in four of the great global metropolitan city regions. Anyone who has attempted work of this kind will know the diculties and the pitfalls. The verdict has to be that this study has overcome
almost all of them, to produce a study that is a model of its kind. Recalling earlier studies of this kind, the present report adopts a concentric ring structure for data analysis. Zone 1 represents the central area or central business district as commonly recognised in each city, with between 180 000 and 600 000 residents; Zones 1 and 2 represent the densely built up area, embracing 7±9 million people; Zones 1, 2 and 3 represent the Outer Metropolitan Area with 10±13 million people, and the addition of Zone 4 embraces the entire region with at least 17 million people. This immediately brings some problems. Because it is so dense and compact, Paris has no Zone 4 (and this re¯ects the fact that its entire transport structure is quite dierent from those of the other cities). And the tax-