Decolonization, too.
Finding the choir, learning the songs...
Hey friend,
Did my last letter strike a chord? It seems to have resonated with quite a few people.
It was the most widely read issue of this fortnightly serving of Makeshift Mobility.
ICYMI, Trufi’s Ted Johnson commented:
“I first heard the term "transportation colonialism" in a 1989 pamphlet from the International Biking Fund.
“There are three aspects to transportation colonialism. First is top-down approach you describe effectively. Second is the result of developing countries literally copying and/or accepting as "developed" the infrastructure models of their (former) colonial rulers. Third is the ongoing psychology were people in the Global South continue to adopt the transportation aspirations of foreign cultures – specifically: private cars as status symbols. Here in Madagascar, a car is a conspicuous badge of honor signaling to your family and friends that you have made it into the middle class (or even a more elite class) – definitely the top 5 percent.
“To frame these as forms of "colonialism" decodes all of the phenomena in a single word.”
Madeline Zhu (formerly of Swiftly) cross-posted on Linked.In and said:
It was a great reminder to me that the things we assume are 'better' or 'right' are never unencumbered by history and power, and that there are many, many ways to move people well. That was something I saw all the time in my travels throughout many 'makeshift' mobility systems, and the kind of creativity and adaptability that we need to bring to systems, everywhere.
[NAME DELETED UPON REQUEST] challenged my thinking and asked me to define what I meant by “colonialism” in transportation. She also said that what I was describing was “irrelevant” to Turkey’s experience because Turkey had never been occupied by a colonial power.
I don’t really know much about informal transportation in Turkey, but maybe successive waves of occupation by empires and a 20th-century push to “modernize” in the mold of Western economies means Turkey shares some of the experiences of cultures and communities that suffer/ed colonialism and neo-colonialism.
(I discovered nothing triggers imposter syndrome like being interrogated by an academic.)
There is research out there that have started framing these concepts long before I started musing on it. For example, the special issue of the Journal of Transport Geography (Volume 88) from October 2020 was focused on “decolonizing transport geography.”
Volume editors, Dr. Astrid Wood, Wojciech Kębłowski, and Tauri Tuvikene, posit that:
…decolonialising transport geographies may involve three interrelated, counter-hegemonic shifts: a geographical one (beyond the global north), an epistemological one (beyond techno-centric oriented transport studies), and an empirical one (beyond ostensibly formal systems).
Wood, Kębłowski, and Tuvikene frame decolonizing transportation as part of the “long-standing debates on the need and challenges of decolonising knowledge.”
A few more of my takeaways from Decolonial approaches to urban transport geographies: Introduction to the special issue:
"The goal of this special issue is to argue for decolonial perspectives on urban transport, and to begin exploring them empirically. The point of departure for this endeavour is our observation that northern thinking continues to underpin transport geography, limiting the development of the academic field as well as opportunities for locally-derived innovation in diverse localities across the global south and north.
"At least three dynamics of knowledge production, which we perceive to be particularly prevailing in the field, support this claim. First, we argue that while informative, the existing scholarship in transport geography has drawn chiefly on expertise produced and modelled in the global north (Schwanen, 2018a). Second, we contend that transport geography continues to build upon neoclassical approaches that emphasize economic efficiency, rationality and utility, and further frame the discipline as technocentric and apolitical (Kębłowski and Bassens, 2018). Third, transport geography still predominantly envisions urban transport as a matter that is organised formally and regulated by the state.” (Emphasis mine.)
“neoclassical approaches that emphasize economic efficiency, rationality and utility, and further frame the discipline as technocentric and apolitical”
Which underpins so much of our engineering-centric approach to transportation.
Blackbox transport modeling? Check!
“Smart” transportation algorithms? Check!
“Limiting…opportunities for locally-derived innovation in diverse locaties…”
Which absolutely resonates with my goal with this newsletter to bring attention to innovations in informal transportation.
Wood, Kębłowski, and Tuvikene continue:
"Decolonising transport further signals our intention to deconstruct the binaries of formality and informality by devoting attention to regulated as well as unregulated, under-regulated and deregulated forms of transport, all of which can provide mobility solutions…This involves breaking with conceptualisations of informality that consider it as a sign of under-investment or under-development and instead engaging with the informality scholarship in geography and urban studies… This entails engaging with historical, social, economic and geographical situatedness of informal transport practices…Bringing informality into the perspective of transport planning also directs attention to the state involvement in producing the condition for informality—often via various institutional failures…—as well as the informality within state practices itself…Nevertheless, attending to the informal transport from a decolonial perspective importantly entails taking such modes of organising as central and vital for urban mobilities." (Emphasis mine.)
You can download a copy of the introduction here.
Let me put that last point in very large font:
“…attending to the informal transport from a decolonial perspective importantly entails taking such modes of organising as central and vital for urban mobilities.”
Amen.
I leave you with this antiphon:
Informal transportation is central. Informal transportation is vital.
Leave a benediction (or a complaint) if you please.
Catch you in two weeks.
I’m Benjie de la Peña and I’m the CEO of the Shared-Use Mobility Center. I co-founded Agile City Partners, and I am the Chair of the Global Partnership for Informal Transportation.
I’m convinced that informal transportation can be the single greatest lever to decarbonize the urban transport sector, but only if we stop ignoring it and instead learn to celebrate it.
Hip hip, hooray! PREACH.
I am the Dr. Caroline Fabianski that triggered this discussion: Thank you Ben de la Penas for acknowledging me and congratulation for putting together this text. In case anyone would be interested in knowing the original discussion and the point I made I am available on LinkedIn, please add me as a contact and DM me. Ben and I did chat already. A lot of love to all of you.