The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry [Paperback]

Robert Cervero (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1559635916 | ISBN-13: 978-1559635912 | Publication Date: October 1, 1998 | Edition: 1

Noted transportation expert Robert Cervero i ntroduces the concept of the ''transit metropolis'' - a region where there exists a workable relationship between transpor t systems and the urban environment. '

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Cervero is professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Transit Villages for the 21st Century (McGraw-Hill, 1997)

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559635916
• ISBN-13: 978-1559635912
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #365,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Professional & Technical > Transportation > Mass Transit

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ten years later still worth the reading. An excellent complement to the sustainable urban transport discussion, March 1, 2009

By 

Emc2 (Tropical Ecotopia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry (Paperback)

The book was written by a highly reputed scholar, one of the few in the academic world who has managed to master the inner workings and the complex interrelationships of both urban transport and land use. Unfortunately in the real world these two dimensions of our modern mobility problem are dealt with separately. Even though the book's main audiences are academics, graduate students and practitioners, the good writing style and the limited use of technical jargon make the book accessible to the general public. I read this book ten years ago and decided to revisit it in light of the renewed interest in sustainable transport and clear energy fueled by the recent peak in oil prices and climate change concerns, as some of the old ideas and lessons are reemerging. Undoubtedly still worth the reading.

Part One presents the conceptual framework for the transit metropolis as a paradigm for sustainable regional development. The first chapters present a concise discussion of all the negative impacts deriving from the automobile-center society and its sister, urban sprawl, and how they have resulted in the ever weakening of public transportation, particularly in the US. He briefly discusses the myriad of negative impacts resulting from this auto-dependent model, including traffic congestion, traffic accidents, air pollution, energy consumption and oil dependency, social equity, and other environmental impacts, including climate change, already a concern circa 1997.

The book makes quite a convincing case for the lack of sustainability of the auto-centric culture. Despite the greatly appreciated benefits of personal mobility freedom, he shows that the main problem with automobile travel is that it is often grossly underpriced, producing ever growing auto use and becoming an additional incentive for more urban sprawl, spiraling in a vicious circle than deepens the world in its oil dependency and the other negative impacts. He recognizes that underpriced car use is a concept grasped only by academics, transportation economists, engineers and planners, and a cadre of environmentalists, but the strategies to set the price right, such as congestion pricing and variable parking pricing, are highly resisted by the public, and feared by most politicians, as they think that embracing road pricing is political suicide and staying in office is their chief priority. As a lively example, just check out the latest decisions by London's new mayor, Ben Johnson, who is slowly dismantling the now renowned 2003 London congestion charge. First he scraped the pollution charges that were going into effect in October 2008 for high polluting vehicles, and now he will pull back the 2007 western extension by 2010.

Cervero's central thesis is that mass transit when harmonically integrated to the urban form is a sustainable solution for our car-dependent world. And to illustrate his thesis, he presents a dozen cases of islands of excellence located throughout the world, where the marriage between transport and land use has worked in the long term. The Second part presents these successful cases: Stockholm, Copenhagen, Singapore, Tokyo, Munich, Ottawa, Curitiba, Zürich, Melbourne, Karlsruhe, Adelaide, and Mexico City. These chapters illustrate practical solutions to the chicken-and-egg dilemma between transport and land use. I particularly found very instructive the remarkable cases of Stockholm, Curitiba (Brazil), and Singapore. A common element in all of them is political vision and will, and integrated transportation and land use planning for the long term. Because this is quite a voluminous book (460+ pages), I recommend you read Part One and they go hopping from case to case, beginning with the three cases above mentioned.

Though published some 10 years ago, the book is not outdated yet, and it is only missing the new congestion pricing schemes that recently were implemented in London, Stockholm, and Milan. Also missing is the global embrace of Curitiba's transit model, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), now implemented throughout Brazil and in several countries, including the US and China, and recently upgraded to the next level by TransMilenio, in Bogota, Colombia. Anyway, there are few textbooks available today discussing these recent developments, particularly congestion pricing, and only mentioned briefly in recent publications. For the time being, you might find reasonable summaries on the existing and proposed congestion pricing schemes at Wikipedia.

I highly recommend Cervero's book for those interested in urban transport sustainability. For a book covering the complementary part of the sustainability equation, clean fuels and alternative and advanced fuel vehicles, I recommend the recently published Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability, a book dealing very comprehensively with the analysis and mid to long term policies, technologies and expectations regarding conventional oil, low-carbon fuels and alternative fuel vehicles, particularly hybrids, electric and fuel cell vehicles using hydrogen. This book is also very helpful to understand why the US was left behind by Europe and other countries in terms of transport sustainability and more efficient and clean vehicle technology.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book with broad scope., June 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry (Paperback)

Cervero does an excellent job presenting each case study and its lessons with regard to urban transportation. He studies cities from the United State, Europe, Asia, and Latin America which makes the book especially valuable. He introduces and explains different types and categories of urban transportation alternatives and their respective benefits and drawbacks. Excellent book, worth reading.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars paradigm shifter, February 7, 2005

By 

J. Stout (Portsmouth, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry (Paperback)

I read this book a few years ago and it opened my eyes forever. Instead of moaning, "What will we do about all of these cars?" I have framed the question, "What the h. is wrong with the United States?" Prior to reading this book, I had only the faintest ideas about what democratic transit planning would look like on a large scale. The answer, Switzerland!

I was fascinated by the descriptions of actual, real life functioning public transportation in Singapore and Scandinavia. This Is REAL, People!

Unfortunately, after reading this book, I have developed the understanding that until we get things right with democracy, we will not get right with transit in the US. As long as our local governments are puppets of real estate developers, we will build our transportation infrastructure to suit their need to maximize profits, rather than the needs of the people who have to live in the cities for centuries to come.