Geographies of Hope for the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Transport

Abstract

What does it mean to be hopeful? What role is there for hope as we face escalating and deeply interconnected crises? In this Viewpoint, I make a case for hope as we enter the United Nations (UN) Decade of Sustainable Transport (2026-2035). I do so by connecting transport geography with other parts of our discipline, and show where geographers have sought to show that hope need not be accompanied by optimism, but that hope does afford us a pathway beyond critique. Borrowing from Raymond Williams, I argue that to refuse unsustainable transport – which the UN Decade of Sustainable Transport sets out to do - we have to refuse more than unsustainable transport, including the systems of oppression, and structures of fossil dependence and wealth accumulation. To do this requires that we unsettle intersecting root causes of unsustainability, and locate resources of hope for the coming decade and beyond.