Slow Cities

Paul is an Honorary Associate Professor of Geography in the School of Science at UNSW Canberra, Australia, where his research focuses on two critical and related issues for modern cities: children’s well-being and the dominance of speed and mobility in urban planning and society. His research demonstrates that child-friendly modes (walking, cycling and public transport) are also the modes that (paradoxically) reduce time pressure for urban residents. He co-authored Children and Their Urban Environment: Changing Worlds (Routledge, 2011), and co-edited Risk, Protection, Provision and Policy, Volume 12 in Geographies of Children and Young People (Springer, 2017). Rodney Tolley has researched and written in the field of active, sustainable transport for over 40 years. He was Reader in Geography at Staffordshire University in the UK until 2004, and is now the Conference Director of Walk21, a global partnership of walking researchers and practitioners. He is the Founding Director of Rodney Tolley Walks and is an experienced international speaker and consultant. He makes time to walk every day.

"This book challenges paradigms suggesting personal independence depends on high-speed automobile travel. The book is densely referenced and introduces key terms such as "complete streets." The authors also discuss the difficulty of adopting their recommendations, but this book will become an important contribution." --© Doody’s Review Service, 2020, John T. Pierce, MBBS(MD) PhD(Navy Environmental Health Center) reviewer, expert opinion"Slow cities give you more time. How that works goes to how we conceive and colonise planet Earth. Two new works bookend this question in a way that seems tailored to this particular historical instant. One is David Attenborough’s extraordinary new film, A Life on Our Planet, which recounts humanity’s "greatest mistake" – and how we can fix it. The other is a book – Slow Cities by Paul Tranter and Rodney Tolley – examining the same issue from the other end of the telescope.The 20th century was focused largely on burning the past to expand the present. For a century, speed and efficiency have been our gods. But they’re dangerous and duplicitous deities, making us destroy our cities and our planet and still not delivering the promised time savings.Our speed addiction is every bit as destructive as dependence on speed of the other sort. As with most destructive behaviours, the excuse is economic, but Tranter and Tolley point out that this too is illusory. Slow cities foster cafe economies: resilient, small-scale, healthy, with far lower health, land, infrastructure and transport costs. Plus there’s the economic benefit of actually surviving.Planners, listen up. There’s not much point in building our way out of pandemic if it drives us over the cliff of climate change. The future, if we’re to have one, will be slower, closer and inestimably more interesting." --Farrelly, E. 2020, Build slower cities or keep careering towards disaster, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October, 2020. A Sydney Morning Herald article by Elizabeth Farrelly provides a commentary on Slow Cities: Conquering our speed addiction for health and sustainability relating the ideas in the book to David Attenborough’s new film A Life On Our Planet.

• Part 1: Speed1. Introduction: changing cultures of speed 2. The benefits of speed for individuals: real or illusory?3. The benefits of speed for economy and society: Challenging the dominant narrative4. The ‘slow paradox’: how speed steals our timePart 2: Health5. Keeping the doctor away: Promoting human health through slower travel6. Advancing environmental health in future ‘slow cities7. Slower, richer, fairer: better economic health in ‘slow cities’Part 3: Strategies8. Hit the brakes: slowing existing motorised traffic9. Slow modes, slow design, slow spaces: new goals for traffic management and planning10. A new vision for the city: transforming behaviours, values and cultures11. Conclusion: re-imagining the city for a healthier future