Based on analysis of two case studies in the Canton of Bern, this article examines the question of knowledge transfer from history to transport policy and planning in the recent past in Switzerland. It shows that for several reasons, direct knowledge transfer did not occur. In particular, historians have seldom become actively involved in transport planning and policy discourses, probably partly because the academic system offers no incentive to do so. However, historical knowledge has certainly influenced decision-making processes indirectly, via personal reflection of the actors in the world of practice or through Switzerland's strongly developed modes of political participation. Because the potential for knowledge transfer to contribute to better policy solutions has not been fully utilized, we recommend strengthening the role of existing interfaces between science and policy.
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History and Transport Policy
The Swiss Experience
Ueli Haefeli, Fritz Kobi, and Ulrich Seewer
"My Sewer": James J. Flink on His Career Interpreting the Role of the Automobile in Twentieth-century Culture
Greg Thompson
James J. Flink “has clearly established himself as the leading authority on the history of the automobile and has written a major work that will repay careful study by all scholars interested in the 20th century,” wrote cultural historian Joseph J. Corn in 1989 in a review of The Automobile Age. Corn did not write “transportation scholars” but “all scholars,” and was alluding to Flink’s approach to periodizing history around progressive technological change rather than around political administrations or wars. Corn continued, “[Flink] views the car, or more accurately automobility, as being a major protagonist in the historical dramas of the period,” quoting passages that pinned the Great Depression on the saturation of the automobile market and attributed the allies’ triumph in the Second World War to superior mass-production capability stemming from the American automobile industry. Corn also observed, “Flink significantly demolished the myth, repeated by too many historians, that the American experience with automobiles has been exceptional .... Moreover, he concludes, the ‘appeals of the car were universal, not culturally determined’ (pp. 28–29).” Flink published at least two more important articles and was writing his fourth book on the automobile when he retired from his professorship in Comparative Culture at the University of California at Irvine in 1994. Since then, he eschewed academic and professional activity, despite numerous entreaties. However, when I, a former student of Flink’s and now a transportation planning professor, asked him to reflect on his influential career, Flink welcomed the opportunity. I traveled to Professor Flink’s southern California home in March 2012 for the interview, which took place on March 2.2
In Mobility in History
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jan 2013
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 3–17 (15 total)
Editorial
? Decades into city and transportation planning, field studies have attempted to test and evaluate responses to mobilities, by grades of numbers or adverbial attributions of excellence or failure, subtle renderings were seen following the rationality of a
Book Reviews
Koos Fransen, Sean Peacock, Peter Wood, and Jie Zhang
to the realm of transportation planning, and mostly succeeds in presenting a convincing framework. In contrast to traditional transport planning, whose discourses are generally rooted in economic development or environmental quality, the author starts
The Shifting Role of Climate Change in the 2021 Bundestag Election
Carol Hager
were introduced for the building and transport sectors, both of which had missed their emissions reduction goals under Germany's federal climate law for 2021. The transportation plan was deemed by the federal Council of Experts on Climate Change to
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2022
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–18 (18 total)
Book Reviews
Andrew Barnfield, Annika Lindberg, Aliou Ly, Liz Montegary, Michael Nattrass, Emma Park, Anna Plyushteva, Daniel Newman, Rebecca A. Adelman, Beth E. Notar, and Stephen Zigmund
becomes locked into infrastructures that are expensive, quickly over capacity, and force particular citizens to bear the uneven burdens. The effects of these choices are measured in generations, not years. Less obviously, we learn that transportation