PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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sustainable transport. Quoting Bullard (1990), 39 he criticizes the fact that “ the simple
fact that environmental inequalities reinforce and are reinforced by social inequalities is
hardly taken up by current debates on sustainable transport” (p.71). Quoting Sachs
(1993), Baeten subsequently attacks “globalized environmentalism” as an undemocratic,
technocratic endeavour “run by an international elite” that has little interest in addressing
environmental problems at the local level. He also reinserts the issue of “class” into this
debate, ultimately classifying (and rejecting) middle class environmentalism as “a
conservative movement, in the sense that it does not challenge capitalism: […] it allows
capitalism to adjust to its ecological contradictions.” Most importantly, he concludes that
“such a stance, clearly, is highly compatible with [mainstream] sustainability rhetoric”
(p.72). In the end, only the left is left to reveal the “’bourgeois character’ of
contemporary environmentalism” (p.73). 40
To Baeten, exclusion is a central problem in
transport planning, and it is one that is ignored by mainstream sustainability discourses.
To him, sustainable transport in its current rhetorical form is an unjust concept, since it
privileges policy measures designed to further advance the mobility needs of the rich and
powerful:
39 Note that while Bullard’s 1990 book Dumping in Dixie is in fact not explicitly focusing on transport
issues, Bullard subsequently edited (with Glenn S. Johnson) Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and
Class Barriers to Mobility, which at least to my knowledge is the only full length book exclusively
dedicated to the topic of environmental justice in the context of transportation, albeit written in a North
American context.
40 Baeten uses Gare (1995) to further differentiate his class argument. Drawing upon Bourdieu, Gare
describes a breakdown of modernist class relations into a post-modern constellation in which previously
powerful classes (i.e. the domestic bourgeoisie) are increasingly being subordinated to the influence of a
‘new international bourgeoisie’ and its pertaining new ‘service sub-class’ adhering to “a modern version of
social Darwinism.” The supposed “ideological spearhead” of the new international bourgeoisie is post-
Keynesian neo-classical economics “characterized by supply side economics, dismantling social welfare
provisions, the deregulation of markets, the reduction of trade barriers and the rapid expansion of
econometrics and computer modeling” (Baeten p.77). The new service sub-class – thought by Baeten to
include service providers in the widest sense, including academics and consultants – shares the
international consumer tastes and interests of the new bourgeoisie, despite the fact that this class has failed
to gain any significant political power in the new system.