Corrado Poli “Traffic Revolution” April 18

Corrado Poli
TRAFFIC REVOLUTION: LESS MOBILITY, MORE COMMUNICATION
Presentation on April 18 @9:30 am by Corrado Poli on “TRAFFIC REVOLUTION. Less mobility more communication. The political problem of traffic plans from transportation engineering to communication strategies. Techniques, problems and environmental solutions”.

SYNTHESIS

Corrado Poli’s “Traffic Revolution” aims at undermining some entrenched biases regarding professional and economic monopolies in urban mobility planning.

The first part of the essay critically analyzes decision-making and planning related to urban traffic policies. In the second part, some methods and tools are presented. They intend to remove biases and then lead to problem-creating “solutions”.

“Traffic Revolution” challenges the old-established idea that links transport with communication. Traffic planning in urban areas should begin with the analysis of citizens’ behavior and preferences instead of just focusing on road or rail construction. A series of new projects are presented which include mobility demand reduction and focus on social planning.

REVIEW

“If one’s only tool is a hammer, then all problems look like nails”. This aphorism by Mark Twain synthesizes the content of Corrado Poli’s new essay. All over the world, urban traffic policies and the building of traffic-related infrastructures, have failed either to satisfy the mobility demand or to cope with high environmental impacts. Nonetheless, decision-makers have never really questioned the traditional approach. Moreover, in order to find a solution, they keep asking the same professionals who have been failing for at least forty years and are thus responsible for the current unsustainable situation.

“TRAFFIC REVOLUTION. Less Mobility, More Communication” also includes a long subtitle that better explains its content. It goes: “The political problem of traffic plans from transport engineering to communication development. Techniques, problems and environmentalist solutions”. Poli’s approach is far-reaching. The author proposes a drastic change in the usual method of how urban mobility problems are coped with. He applies humanities approach and social sciences tools to understand and solve it. The first assumption is that the usual transport engineering techniques are the very cause of the problems we want to disentangle.

The essay is skillfully written and is easy to read. Poli is actually a journalist and a writer besides being Professor of Economics and Environmental Ethics at the University of Bergamo, Italy, and a consultant to many local and central governments on urban and traffic planning. The arguments are always consistent, giving detailed information and are based on sound research combined with a long lasting direct experience. Nonetheless, the tone often swings to irony and complicity with the reader. Corrado Poli makes it easy reading by including examples, anecdotes and quotations at the beginning of each chapter. Among these quotations, the first one – by Marguerite Yourcenar –presents the real sense of the essay: “As usual there were plenty of practical reasons to justify the absurd and drive to the impossible”. It can translate into the question: “How many useless infrastructures – highways, tunnels, bridges, underground rails, etc. – have been built claiming inexistent ‘practical’ reasons?”

“Traffic Revolution” implies infringing some professional and economic monopolies. In public administration, civil engineers, who associate with construction companies, have dominated the traffic policy debate and management. The essay challenges the old-established idea that equals communication and transport. On the contrary, the starting point of mobility plans should be the analysis of citizens’ behaviors and preferences. One of the priorities should be the containment of the constructions’ role in coping with mobility demand problems. Corrado Poli claims that also the mass/public transportation infrastructures should be included in the containment process. On this ground a series of projects for reducing mobility demand are proposed which are based on democratic social planning methods. Although the book is not a handbook, in the second part of it the author proposes explicit planning methods and applicable tools. Both the first and the second part of Corrado Poli’s “Traffic Revolution” are convincing. However, the first more theoretical part is definitely more original and insightful than the second, at least for the American public.

The book is to be read together with the companion essay (forthcoming) on European middle-size cities. These cities – which prove to have the highest quality of living standard in the world – are the model to imitate for a new urban organization. However, they undergo the organizational and cultural power of the big cities. Metropolises colonize middle size cities by imposing a technology unsuitable to a smaller scale as it was devised for (not) solving large urban areas problems.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Corrado Poli is Professor of Economics and Environmental Ethics at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He also heads the Environmental Communication Laboratory at the same University. Beginning January 2007 he will be Senior International Urban Fellow at The Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies, Baltimore. Dr. Poli has chaired and managed public Bodies and serves on journals boards. He has taught at several Italian and foreign universities such as The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimora (USA) and Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (Australia). Dr. Poli consults on urban policy and environmental issues and is an editorialist for newspapers and TV networks.

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