The tragedy of the highway: Empowerment, disempowerment and the politics of sustainability discourses and practices

It is argued in this paper that the orthodox sustainable transport vision l eads to the further empowerment of technocratic and elitist groups in socie ty while simultaneously contributing to the further disempowerment of those marginalized social groups who were already bearing the burden of the envi ronmental problems resulting from a troubled transport system. Scaler redef initions of the transport problem play a prominent role in the twin process es of empowerment and disempowerment. Furthermore, the contributions of spa tial planning and neo-classical transport economics to the sustainable tran sport discourses will be critically investigated. The issues of transport i nequality and transport poverty should be re-inserted into the dominant tra nsport policy debates and practices.