A Paradigm Shift for a Transition to Sustainable Urban Transport

Abstract

The traffic-engineering methods of planning based on the predict-and-provide principle have self-enforcing effects of induced traffic and an unhealthy environment for humans as well as for the planet. The paper aims to demonstrate that such methods keep cities stuck in a sort of path dependency with transport technologies and urban environment and to find evidence that something is changing in theory, trends, and practice. A systematic and extensive literature review has been used to identify and understand the problems, to recognise the changes taking place, and to examine the solutions. The main findings are the causes of how these problems could have happened and continue to do so regardless of the huge negative effects and the recognition that a paradigm shift is emerging as the sum of methods and achievements developed by the community of academics, experts, practitioners, policymakers, and urban communities. The findings can have practical, effective implications as the determinants of a new transport policy paradigm that shows the way out of the trap of path dependency. The originality of the approach lies in having expanded and applied the concept of anomalies of the theory to the adverse effects of technologies and the mismatch between people and the modern urban environment. The new paradigm is already showing its practical effectiveness in solving real problems by adapting cities and technologies to human nature and developing a more holistic human-centric planning method.