ABSTRACT
Civil society has been protesting motorways that go through their own communities since attempts to build automobile infrastructure began in the 1930s. Despite their frequency and ubiquity on the global scene, battles against motorways have been ignored as a direct subject of research1. They have received attention, indirectly, as part of complex decision making processes in studies of urban planning and urban politics (Altshuler, 1965; Altshuler and Luberoff, 2003; Falkemark, 1999; Townsend, 2003), as contributors to the creation of social movements (Jamison et al., 1990) and as part of the demands people present in public discussion of the risks set by mega-projects (Flyvbjerg et al., 2003). More conventionally, battles against motorways have been understood as part of individual or neighbourhood/communities’ demands based on both self-interest and on genuine concern for the public good, expressing dissent on different grounds to public infrastructure projects in their surrounding area. The main goal of this chapter is to present some propositions to help us to begin understand battles against motorways as arenas for political contestation and deliberation of the civil society that can influence both transport policy and the political culture of automobility.
