The Geography of Urban Transportation

by Susan Hanson (Editor)

A highly successful text and professional resource, this classic work is now in a fully revised and restructured third edition. Leading geographers and urban planners present the foundational concepts and methodological tools that readers need to understand and engage with today's pressing policy issues. Covered are such key topics as passenger and freight dynamics in the American metropolis; the urban transportation planning process, including the use of GIS; and questions related to public transit, land use, energy, equity, environmental impacts, and more. Updated throughout with a heightened emphasis on policy-and featuring over one hundred maps, charts, and photographs-the third edition contains new chapters on intercity travel and transportation finance. In addition, a new concluding chapter integrates key themes and provides some practical approaches to solving urban transportation problems.

Genres: Transport, Geography, Urbanism, Nonfiction

478 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 1986

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic compilation of 14 articles covering all aspects of urban transportation, many written by some of the best thinkers in the field. Almost all the articles are filled with relevant and up-to-date information and evenhanded discussions on some of the most contentious issues in modern transport. The book deals with air and water pollution, race and poverty issues, metropolitan planning organizations, GIS technologies, and the land-use impacts of transportation investments.

Each article deals with one such broad issue, but each also fruitfully digresses into numerous related problems. Susan Hanson demonstrates the fallibility of Kain's "Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis" to explain black unemployment (it's lack of cars, not downtown location, that keeps unemployment high). Brian Taylor shows how union work rules for transit companies (such as requiring two workers per train, even on automated ones, and regular 8 hour shifts) exacerbate the "peaking" problem caused by expensive transit being used only for two main periods a day. Donald Janelle shows that telecommuting seems to have no impact on residential location or decentralization.

There are innumerable great insights here, and I know I'll keep coming back to this book to look them up again.

[Collin · Rating 4 out of 5]

(I read the 4th edition, but there was no option for this in Goodreads) Useful overview of urban transportation that helps readers appreciate how the spaces in which they live operate.

It shines when comparing different urban spaces across cultures and countries, but falls flat when it narrowly focuses on the United States and accepts certain assumptions Americans make that are not true globally. The outsized focus on the automobile causes the book, at times, to shift away from urban transportation entirely to focus on debates about whether cars are good or not. While it is important to address the unique challenges and history of the US, it is important to acknowledge how unique that history and those challenges are, and that they are not the norm. Failing to do so makes innovation difficult and skills non-transferable between countries.

Read if you want to learn mostly about American urban transportation.

[Tino]

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