Table Of Contentr
AFTER THE CAR
Copyright© Kingsley Dennis and John Urry 2009
The right of Kingsley Dennis and John Urry to be identified as Authors of
this ·work has been assened in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2009 by Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 I UR, UK.
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C O N TE N TS
P1'efoce VI
1 Changing Climates
2 The Century of the Car 27
3 Systems 47
4 Technologies 62
5 Organizations 93
6 Models 109
7 Scenarios 131
Notes 165
Index 203
PREFAC E
\Ne are very grateful to the following colleagues, mostly at
Lancaster, with whom we have discussed these various post
car futures: Monika Btischer, Noel Cass, Tim Dant, Sergio
Fava, Drew Hemment, Michael Hulme, Bob Jessop, John
Law, \.Vill Medd, Tom Roberts, Daniela Sangiorgi, Andrew
Sayer, Dan Shapiro, Mimi Sheller, Elizabeth Shove, Bron
Szerszynski, David Tyfield, Sylvia Walby, Laura \.Vatts,
James Wilsdon and Brian Wynne. John Urry is grateful
for his involvement in the DTi Foresight discussions on
Intelligent Information Systems in 2005-6, as well as recent
research funding from the Department for Transport, ESRC
and the EPSRC.
We also wish to acknowledge the research opportuni
ties afforded to us by the Centre for Mobilities Research
(CeMoRe) at Lancaster. This Centre has stimulated much
debate on the issues presented in this book. V/e are especially
grateful to Pennie Drinkall for all her hard work for CeMoRe.
Many similar issues to those discussed in this book are debated
on CeMoRe's blog at www.new-mobilities.co.uk.
Lancaster, September 2008
.\FTEH TilE G.-\R
and especially not by public bus and train. So what could we
be saying here if we claim that the end might be in sight for
the extraordinary car system that has so far 'driven' out all its
many competitors?
\iVhen we talk of 'after the car,' we are suggesting that
the car as a complete system may be surpassed. The current
car system involves a number of key features: cars are made
of steel, mostly powered by petrol (or 'gasoline' in the US),
each can seat four people, they are personally owned, and
each is driven independently of others, although certain rules
do need to be followed and enforced.
Our argument in this book is that some very powerful
forces around the world are undermining this car system and
will usher in a new system at some point in this century. The
car system is based upon nineteenth-century technologies,
of steel bodies and internal combustion engines, inciden
tally showing how old technologies can remarkably endure.
\Ve believe that this mass system of individualized, flexible
mobility will be 'redesigned' and 're-engineered' before the
end of this century. This book argues that a new system is
coming into being. It is a bit like the period around 1900
when the current car system was being formed: it was emer
gent, although no one at the time could imagine exactly what
it was going to be like.
So, similarly, we hold that a wide array of changes are
occurring across the world - changes of technology, policy,
economy and society, which are all elements of this new
system that is as yet nowhere actually in place. And it will be
through the dynamic interdependence of the various parts
that will bring into being this new system that is 'after the
car'. This book thus explores a new 'socio-technical' system
that we believe is in the making.
In this chapter, we consider various dynamic changes 'in
the climate' within which travel and transportation are being
CJL\=-G- J=-G- CLI�l.\ TES :)
organized and implemented in the twenty-first century. If
these changes converge and impact upon each other, they
may generate shifts beyond the car that would involve a low
carbon economy and society. \Ve begin with an analysis of
climate pe1· se. This is followed by an analysis of the appar
ent peaking of the supply of oil around the world. \Ve then
examine some of the changes in the nature of the virtual
world, of computers, software and security, before consider
ing the growth of population and especially of mega-cities in
the contemporary world.
This chapter thus examines the changing climates of
change surrounding transport and energy and how they may
be engendering a new system that will be 'after the car' and
hence could entail a lower carbon future society, albeit one
which is by no means a simply positive future. We will exam
ine various futures and see that all possess a dark side due to
the constrained choices that the high carbon twentieth cen
tury provided as a legacy going into the new century.
CLIMATE CHA 1GE
We begin by paying especial attention to global climate
change, reflected in 2006 in Al Gore's surprising PowerP oint
hit An Inconvenient T1"Uth and his subsequent No bel prize. 2
This film brought home to the world the fact that global
temperatures have risen over the past century (by at least
0.74·q and this seems to be the consequence of higher
levels of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere. Even
the Pentagon announced that climate change will result in a
global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natu
ral disasters. And they state that the threat to global stability
far eclipses that of terrorism. 3
Greenhouse gases trap the sun's rays. As a result of this
'greenhouse' effect the earth warms. Such greenhouse gas
.-\FTEH TilE G.\H
levels and world temperatures will apparently increase sig
nificantly over the next few decades. Such warming will
change patterns of temperatures worldwide and result in
a greatly increased frequency of extreme weather events.4
Such climate change resulting from increasing greenhouse
gas emissions constitutes the world's major threat to human
life and social organization.
The scientific evidence for climate change is now
less uncertain compared with the time when the first
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report
appeared in 1990. The 2007 Report makes a number of sep
arate claims. First, in the 2007 Report the IPCC declared
that the warming of the world's climate is now 'unequivocal'.
This claim is based upon extensive observations of increases
in global average air and ocean temperatures, the widespread
melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea levels.
Second, the 2007 Report shows that carbon dioxide is the
most important of the human-produced or anthropogenic
greenhouse gases. Its concentration levels exceed by far the
natural range identified over the past 650,000 years. Its high
and rising levels must thus stem, it is concluded, from 'non
natural' causes.
Third, there is very high confidence amongst the thou
sands of scientists involved in the IPCC that such global
warming is the effect of human activities that, in many dif
ferent ways, have resulted in dramatically raised levels of
carbon emissions.
And fourth, there are many different physical conse
quences of global warming: increase in arctic temperatures,
reduced size of icebergs, melting of ice-caps and glaciers,
reduced permafrost, changes in rainfall patterns, new wind
formations, droughts, heat waves, tropical cyclones and other
extreme weather events.5 The IPCC projects increased risks
of flooding for tens of millions of people due to storms and
CIJ.-\:-:GJ�G CLI.'l.\TES
sea-level rises, especially in the poor south of the globe, in
particular Bangladesh. In addition to increased fresh water
scarcity, there may also be sudden rises in new vector-borne
diseases (malaria, dengue fever) and water-borne disease
(cholera). The \-\l'orld Health Organization calculated as early
as 2000 that over 150,000 deaths are caused each year by cli
mate change, such changes being global, cross-generational
and highly unequal around the world.
Moreover, these IPCC Reports are based on reaching
scientific and political consensus. They tend to the more
cautious interpretation of the scientific evidence and do not
factor in all the feedback effects that are occurring and may
develop over the next few decades.6 Levels of greenhouse
gases and world temperatures will significantly increase over
these decades, but these increases will almost certainly trig
ger jurtbe1· temperature increases through what are known
as positive feedbacks (see chapter 3 below). Negative feed
back would restore the earth's equilibrium, while positive
feedbacks will move any system away from equilibrium. And
according to James Lovelock 'there is no large negative feed
back that would countervail temperature rise'. 7
The most dramatic of these positive feed backs would be the
melting of Greenland's ice-cap, which would change sea and
land temperatures worldwide, including the possible turning
off or modification of the Gulf Stream. A series of diverse
yet interconnected changes within the earth's environmental
systems could create a vicious circle of accumulative disrup
tion occurring, as Fred Pearce expresses it, 'with speed and
violence'. Indeed the melting of the �Test Antarctic ice sheet
may happen very rapidly (and may already have started). The
ice-cap will disintegrate from above and from below and this
non-linear change further reduces the rate at which heat gets
reflected back to the sun. The historic record shows that
these ice-caps have historically formed and disappeared with
