Analyzing and improving transportation systems, urban infrastructures, and mobilization cultures are significant challenges. Their environmental and social dimensions are often overlooked, but committed engineers and citizens have always sought and supported innovative ways to incorporate them into city planning and urban imagination. Latin America has been highly creative and sometimes visionary. Through this selection of sustainable transport cases, it is possible to identify not only that they have followed and adapted global engineering models, but also how local perspectives and contextualized needs have been incorporated in certain solutions. Controversies, however, are sometimes unavoidable and a part of the learning process.
The descriptions below have been written by undergraduate student Kyle Robinson. They offer an overview of each case, a comment on some specific aspects, and links to explore more. Enjoy this selection and share it with others.
In the context of sustainability, transportation is a major contributor to negative human impacts on the environment. Although our life requires us to travel from one place to another for work, education, and recreation, it is how we “decide” to make this move – in a conceptual sense – that causes the impact. People living in regions lacking investment in public transport do not have many options for mobility besides walking (for short distances) and driving in private vehicles. Latin America is no exception to these problems and challenges. When considering the accelerated population growth in most of the region’s cities and urban clusters, the car-centered development culture reveals its serious impacts on issues such as air quality, public space ideas, and the impact on nature.
The evaluation of these ten examples of sustainable transport got me thinking about the various impacts of infrastructure investments. It is difficult to quantify the net benefit of these projects, but it is pertinent to highlight that they are often advertised under a narrative that touts only positive effects. Public transportation is necessary for human development. However, there are examples where large transportation investments ignore the impacts on local communities. We need to take a broader approach to what determines the sustainability of these projects. Through this research, I learned how infrastructure takes different forms in each city in Latin America, depending on demographic characteristics, political atmosphere, and geographical conditions. The sustainability of these projects is evaluated by considering their impact on nature and their social and historical facets. I hope that this selection will promote ideas about the importance of addressing our broken relationship with the environment and the need to recognize the people who have been affected by infrastructure investments.
Kyle Robinson ’24