Decolonial Transport

Schwanen 2018

Expert knowledge about transport in former and current colonies is shaped by Western colonialisms. Transport experise (traffic modelling, demand forecasts) was developed and calibrated in Western contexts, and then exported to colonies as the correct way to think about transport. After independence, that expertise did not disappear; it was reproduced through the training of local engineers and planners in Western institutions, through development bank conditionalities that required internationally recognised standards, and through the prestige attached to Northern knowledge production. Decolonising transport knowledge is not just a matter of adding Southern case studies to Northern frameworks. It requires changing the frameworks themselves,

Wood et al 2020

Statement of the decolonial turn in transport geography. 3 dynamics that sustain Northen hegemony in the field: (1) scholarship draws almost entirely from expertise modelled and produced in the Global North, postcolonial cities have literally copied or accepted as "developed" the infrastructure models of their former colonial rulers; and people in the Global South continue to adopt the transportation aspirations of foreign cultures, with private cars as status symbols functioning as an internalised Northern aspiration. Third dynamic is particularly interesting theoretically because it shows how coloniality operates not only through structural inheritance but through desire and aspiration, a psychosocial register

Verlinghieri + Middleton 2020

Treating decolonial and global south theory and methodology as a research agenda rather than a curriculum exercise. Well-intentioned efforts to "provincialise" transport knowledge are constrained by the neoliberal university's structural incentives, publication norms, and the gatekeeping functions of Northern-based journals.

Simone 2004

People as Infrastructure. Informal Transport as Theory, Not Case Study. Theoretically generative frameworks for thinking about informal mobility. The network of bodily movement, informal exchange, and social coordination among marginalised urban residents in Johannesburg constitutes infrastructure in a meaningful sense, one that formal planning models cannot perceive because they look for fixed assets and regulated services. Informal infrastructure needs ot be ‘epistemologically prior’ meaning the planner's job is to understand it on its own terms first, because any intervention that ignores it will fail. E.g. Nairobi expressway didn’t do this- ignored Matatu network it displaced.

Klopp et al 2025

‘Missing mobilities’ turn. Informal transport systems represent up to 95 percent of motorised trips in sub-Saharan African cities and up to 50 percent in Latin American cities, yet these widely used modes receive little attention in climate adaptation research, planning, and investment at both global and local levels. One of the few scholars who bridges the epistemological and the applied dimensions directly- building and using open source data in Nairobi where no official data existed.

Keblowski et al 2019

Informal transport has been researched primarily in quantitative transport geography, planning, and engineering where binary conceptions of formality and informality prevail, and that informal transport should be understood as a highly dynamic sector at the vanguard of innovation, digitalisation, and platform urbanism, rather than as a transitional or deficient form. Informal transport generates theoretical innovation on questions of platform urbanism, labour organisation, and digital governance, innovations that are then absorbed by Northern scholarship without adequate acknowledgement. Also post-soviet example that challenges the association of informality with the global south

Enns + Bersaglio 2020

‘Colonial Moorings’. Looking at LAPSSET (Kenya) and Central Corridor (Tanzania) . The coloniality of ‘new and improved’ transport infrastructure. The spatial visions and territorial plans of colonial administrators are reappearing in visions and plans for these new mega-infrastructure corridors today. While it is materially ‘new’ it echoes the promises of enhanced eonnectivity from colonial era- constrains emancipatory potential of infra. led development. They repurpose ‘moorings’ from Sheller & Urry’s mobilities paradigm. Corridors not built for people, rather for designed to meet the needs of global capital and extraction.

Robinson 2006

Southern Urbanism Intervention. Urban theory development has been hampered by the assumed dichotomy between innovative "global cities" in rich countries and imitative "third world" cities. Dissolves catogorisation of cities and instead attends to "ordinary cities," with theory-building grounded in a cosmopolitan comparativism that places all cities within the same analytical field. Gives you the theoretical scaffolding for criticising the diffusionism Schwanen (2018) identifies; pair them explicitly.

Uteng + Lucas 2018

Standard travel demand modelling assumes car ownership, fixed work/home patterns, and income elasticities calibrated to Northern data. In cities with high paratransit dependence, informal settlements, and complex multi-modal trip-chaining, these models misrepresent mobility entirely. It shifts the decolonisation argument from epistemology to technique, showing the paradigm bias has material consequences for planning.