Why Transportation Fails

""A captivating and insightful book that looks beyond standard tropes about state failure in Africa and instead asks why and how transportation in South Africa (and elsewhere) could be effective and just. Essential reading for anyone interested not just in how to navigate cities, but how to re-frame urban ‘problems’ from new perspectives."" Charlotte Lemanski, Professor of Urban Geography, University of Cambridge ""Why Transportation Fails is a cutting-edge exploration of urban disappointment. Launched with optimism, many transportation initiatives in post-apartheid South Africa have been let-downs. However, this analysis moves beyond negativity to show how using new frames of analysis provide the resources for rethinking urban transformation."" Philip Harrison, South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning, University of the Witwatersrand ""Transport geography is always in need of texts that not only critique existing praxis but also offer fresh conceptual and practical insights. Why Transportation Fails seeks to reimagine what successful transport systems can be by blending bold intellectual ambition with radical approaches, including animal geographies, decoloniality, and art geographies. Building on these approaches, Astrid Wood offers an empirically rich exploration of South Africa’s transport system that critically addresses the entanglements of human-environment relations and urban mobilities. This enables Why Transportation Fails to challenge conventional narratives of failure while offering alternative approaches to transport and urban transformation, making it valuable reading for transport and urban planners, policymakers, and scholars across multiple disciplines."" James Esson, Professor of Geography, Queen Mary University of London