Citation

Holzapfel H. World Transp. Policy Pract. 2010; 16(2): 39-42.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Eco-Logica)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

This article challenges the dominant ideology that suggests that ever increasing levels of mobility are a good thing. The apparently inexorable growth of all categories of traffic but especially car miles driven must be challenged. The growth in distances routinely travelled by car distorts concepts of space and time and damages landscape and we now inhabit a distance-intensive world. The consumption of distance and the urge to be everywhere results in people being nowhere. This is a global problem and the world cannot sustain Californian or German levels of mobility applied to China and India. The distance intensive life style is strongly associated
with stress and the urge to do more things in smaller units of time. The disadvantages of this lifestyle paradigm now outweigh the advantages and there is an urgent need to change social and other values to move in a different direction. The article concludes by looking forward to a world where localism and regionalism are celebrated and near things are appreciated as calmer and intrinsically more satisfying than distant things. Ubiquity may lose its power and proximity will gain respect and attention.
Keywords: mobility levels, traffic growth, landscape, distance intensive lifestyle, stress, localism, regionalism