The development of high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure in the United States faces a great challenge given concerns of economic viability and political complexity. However, an in-depth investigation reveals that some of these challenges and complexities regarding high-speed rail mobility can be elucidated by historical and cultural characteristics that affect daily behavior, lifestyle, and public attitudes in U.S. society. This essay discusses the debate on the U.S. high-speed rail development policy from the perspective of American exceptionalism. Through an exploration of the four traits of American exceptionalism, the essay argues that the stagnation of U.S. federal high-speed rail initiatives can be explained by U.S. cultural constraints: individualism, antistatism, populism, and egalitarianism. Unless more solid evidence is provided to convince the public about the benefits of HSR mobility, the HSR debate is likely to continue in the United States.
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Culture Constraints of High-Speed Rail in the United States
A Perspective from American Exceptionalism
Zhenhua Chen
Railway Territorialities
Topology and Infrastructural Politics in Alpine Italy
Mateusz Laszczkowski
.” 46 In this section, I outline the history of these transformations; in the next, I discuss notions of “territory” that emerged among the participants. When the news came of a possible high-speed rail project, several interconnected groups were
And Yet It Moves: The Uneasy Progress of High-Speed Trains and Railway Liberalization
Mauro Tebaldi
On 5 December 2009, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, together with
the director-general of the Ferrovie dello Stato (FS), Mauro Moretti,
officially opened the new high-speed/high-capacity railway line, linking
Turin, Milan, and Salerno at the central station in Milan. The
work, which had taken almost 40 years to complete, had involved
the laying of just less than 1,000 kilometers of track that is specially
designed to carry high-speed trains. The following day, the high-speed
train service provided by Trenitalia began operating on the line with
the latest ETR (Elettro Treno Rapido) 500 Frecciarossa and ETR 600
Frecciargento trains. The year 2010, therefore, marked the official
operational start of the project that had first been drawn up by FS in
the early 1960s with the aim of providing high-speed rail links for the
main Italian cities along a north-south axis in response to two clear
challenges—the growing competition from airlines and an increasing
preference for road use.
In Italian Politics
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2011
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 238–258 (21 total)
Book Reviews
Tristan Josephson, Marcin B. Stanek, Tallie Ben Daniel, Jeremy Ash, Liz Millward, Caroline Luce, Regine Buschauer, Amanda K. Phillips, and Javier Caletrío
), prison reform (Christophe Mincke), slow and frequent travel (Frank Neubert and Marcel Endres, respectively), automobility (Laura Bang Lindegaard, Katharina Manderscheid), high-speed rail (Ander Audikana and Zenhua Chen), “small technologies” (Thomas
On Sinofuturism
Resisting Techno-Orientalism in Understanding Kuaishou, Douyin, and Chinese A.I.
Yunying Huang
gravity. Nearly overnight, China has become the world leader in high-speed rail, highway construction, cell phone usage, and internet usage: the so-called “rising hegemon,” the next great superpower, a global economic powerhouse. Reality itself has become
Monumental Suspension
Art, Infrastructure, and Eduardo Chillida's Unbuilt Monument to Tolerance
Isaac Marrero-Guillamón
Regions, was approved in 1978. 8 These large infrastructure projects include, among others, a high-speed rail network (now the second largest in the world, after China's); new airport constructions and refurbishments (for a grand total of 48 airports
The anthropology of infrastructure
The boom and the bubble?
Natalia Buier
. Madden , and David Wachs-muth . 2011 . “ Assemblage urbanism and the challenges of critical urban theory .” City 15 : 225 – 240 . Buier , Natalia . 2020 . “ The second coming of rail: The Spanish high-speed rail-finance complex .” Antipode
Remaking Oceans Governance
Critical Perspectives on Marine Spatial Planning
Luke Fairbanks, Noëlle Boucquey, Lisa M. Campbell, and Sarah Wise
, Ian . 2014 . “ Mega Projects and Regional Revival: Comparing Proposals for Atlantic Gateway and High Speed Rail in Northern England .” Town Planning Review 85 ( 6 ): 731 – 751 . 10.3828/tpr.2014.44 Wright , Glen , Kristina M. Gjerde
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2019
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 122–140 (19 total)