Car sharing and socio-spatial justice: evidences from three Italian cities

Car sharing is often celebrated as a new opportunity for a more sustainable mobility. One of its potential social benefits is the possibility for low-income, carless households to gain or maintain vehicle access without bearing the full costs of car ownership. However, poor attention has so far been paid to the effective potential of car sharing to improve the mobility options for disadvantaged people. In this paper a socio-spatial-justice approach is adopted to verify this potential in three Italian cities (Rome, Milan and Turin), where private transport plays a key role in mobility choices of citizens. The results reveal that car sharing increases accessibility levels for everybody in absolute terms, but in relative terms the spatial availability of this service is greater for car-owning households than for carless ones. A few speculations are proposed to explain these results, with reference to spatial strategies adopted by car-sharing operators.

Greening the city between public needs and private preferences in Carré de Soie, Lyon

Governments are increasingly facing conflicting land uses in cities. Many governments strongly aspire to provide green spaces for the public, yet simultaneously stimulate private preferences for real-estate development. This paper argues that examining the interrelationship between land ownership and control over land clarifies the provision of green spaces in the context of private preferences for development. It presents a case study of the Carré de Soie urban development in which the government aspires to an abundance of green but concurrently encourages the market to take the initiative. The findings show that the lack of public land ownership combined with private actors having a say in control over land fell short in satisfying public aspirations for green spaces. This paper concludes that if cities need to become greener, recognising the role of the government to act in the public interest is of utmost importance.

The Sixteenth Abercrombie Lecture 2019: an introductory note

The Sixteenth Abercrombie Lecture took place at the University of Liverpool on 2 September 2019. Here, Peter Batey, Emeritus Professor of Planning at Liverpool and a former editor of Town Planning Review, briefly introduces the Abercrombie Lecture series and the speaker, Professor Bruce Stiftel.