Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
47
developing world to continue growing, not as replicas of the cities in the West, but as models for
sustainable development (Banister, 2011).
A carbon free vision needs to combine all the best practice that was described in the previous sections,
both in terms of planning and governance. There should be a clear future city vision or spatial strategy
that is affordable, adaptable and implementable, and this requires strong institutions and governance
structures for the city. Policy effectiveness needs to be clearly explained and accepted by the full range
of involved stakeholders, through their involvement in the process. Finally, the ownership of the land
in the city is the key factor in the success of such a vision as for real change to take place, there needs
to be direct intervention by city governments. Currently, in most cities the land is either owned and
managed by low income groups or sold to developers in order to build large, unconnected and
expensive superblocks. Transport should be seen as part of the new and existing developments where
some of the benefits can be released through value capture. Sustainable transport and poverty
alleviation should be seen as complementary issues and should be moving to the same direction
(Banister, 2011).
3.11. Social Exclusion
3.11.1. Introduction
Poor transport, both in developed and developing economies, is one of the factors contributing to
social exclusion. Not everyone who experiences social exclusion will necessarily have a transport
problem, and not everyone with transport problems is at risk of social exclusion. For some people,
transport can be a major factor limiting their opportunities, while for others, it may not be very
important compared to other problems such as poor education. In many cases, car access makes a
huge difference to quality of life and access to jobs, education, health care and shops (Social Exclusion
Unit, 2003).
Transport related social exclusion can take different forms for different groups of a society, different
societies and different modes of transport. In both developed and developing economies, the most
vulnerable groups are the urban poor, the aging population, the women and the people with
disabilities. The analysis provided on this section is non exhaustive and is focusing on the most
common transport related social exclusion problems in the megacities of the developed and the
developing world.
3.11.2. Transport related social exclusion in megacities of developed countries
Transport related social exclusion in developed world megacities is very often linked to the unequal
distribution of access opportunities to employment. Economic and time based exclusion refer to the
failure of the transport systems to enable employed or unemployed individuals to access the labour
markets that match their professional skills. For example, the concentration of highly skilled
individuals in central employment areas in London means that a very large number of the population
that does not live in the central area of the city relies heavily on the reliability of the public transport
network. The contribution of other factors, such as housing affordability is crucial to economic and
time based exclusion (Church et al, 2000).
In terms of gender and transport related social exclusion, it is generally considered that men and
women have the same access opportunities to transport in the developed world. However, a
substantial part of academic research has examined whether women’s access opportunities are
actually able to cover their mobility needs. The modernist urban land use planning principles have
been openly criticised as male oriented and unable to adequately serve an employed woman’s needs.
It is considered that the impact of automobile oriented transport planning and its lack of coordination
with land use planning, is significantly higher on women due to their complex mobility patterns. The
improvement of accessibility and mobility opportunities for women can have wider social benefits as