Transport and Mobility Planning for Sustainable Development

Abstract

This special issue aims to contribute to the research debate on how transport and mobility are intertwined with wider social systems and structures. Given the fundamental impact of transport on liveability in urban as well as rural settings, transport planning from a wider social approach is far from sufficiently acknowledged, even in transport research literature. Hence, we need more knowledge about how transport and mobility planning can be developed to support societal goals related to sustainable development. With respect to the various interpretations of, and approaches to, sustainable development, it is quite a demanding task to articulate how transport planning can contribute to sustainability. Above all, it demands an understanding of the relationship between transport and sustainable development for different policy issues, for different planning tasks and for different geographical contexts. We hope that the collection of papers in this special issue will contribute with new knowledge on such matters. In this introduction, we will briefly present the three papers included in the special issue and discuss some recent developments in the literature on transport for sustainable development. This special issue draws on the scholarly debate on integrated sustainable transport planning to frame the papers. An integrated sustainability approach to transport planning frames planning as a task that radiates out into different policies and for planning endeavours more broadly. Planning for sustainable transport relates to various planning tasks, such as the development of general planning strategies, directing investments into settlement development and physical infrastructure, implementing technical solutions (including digitalization measures), and intervening for mobility management and behavioural change strategies. Such broad array of policy and planning areas suggests that research on relations between transport, transport planning and social development also should spread across journals within social studies with different scopes and aims. Based on this point of departure, we hope that the articles in this issue can inspire readers with a key interest in planning to consider transport and mobility as important elements of planning. Transport planning involves planning bodies at different levels, from international communities such as the EU, through national and sub-national levels (e.g. regional and local authorities), as well as political influence. In addition, various actors in the private sector are engaged in transport planning. Structures of interdependencies evolve between bodies regarding their strategies for transport planning, and how such strategies encourage dialogue and collaboration across sectors and between actors. This demand for collaboration among actors becomes quite evident when transport planning is integrated within aims for sustainability. With the focus on climate impacts, the UN (2016) argues that different measures for transport planning practices should aim to ‘avoid, shift or improve’. The first aspect, “avoid”, refers to the ambition to reduce the need to travel, for PLANNING PRACTICE & RESEARCH 2022, VOL. 37, NO. 5, 527–531 https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2022.2082756