Mobility & Transport

Dear FuturArc readers, Remember seeing a cartoon or drawing of how people sometimes end up ‘making’ their own footpath even though a paved one is already available, often because the former is the shorter way? This image came to mind while doing this issue on mobility and Green transport, because it conveys in a nutshell that urban transport often isn’t about moving people based on the most direct or shortest route. Mass transit methods and transportation networks are often created based on economic and political wants, rather than holistic systems that encompass humanistic, social and ecological/environmental factors. So what can we do with the modes of transport and infrastructures already in place? What do we do with disused or old ones? What can we do now to make more Earth-friendly and direct connections while not adding to carbon emissions that will ultimately lead to a climate catastrophe? The topic of climate change—tightly connected to carbon emissions—is never far from the narrative in this issue. Not because it is ‘fashionable’ to do so, but because it is the reality of the status quo; even then, we are not moving fast...