Wolverhampton - A car-free city, myth or possibility Essay

Wolverhampton - A car-free city, myth or possibility - Essay Example Nowadays every effort is geared towards conserving the little resources that are available for human beings. Furthermore, efforts are made to make life easy. One of the areas that tries to conserve the environment and at the same time benefit from its own program is sustainable mobility (Ozge, & Karaaslan, 2011, p 28). This roughly means that the project aims at holding to the resources that are available in relation to the movement from one location to another. In the current world, the aspect of globalisation has led to the jeopardisation and astronomical increase in the need to use transport and has turned mobility of people, their concepts and commodities into a very important feature in our current society. At the same time, the transport segment in most of the countries has become one of the largest contributors to the carbon dioxide that the vehicles emit. This transport segment over period of time has built a great percentage on the number of pollutants contributing to the en vironmental degradation and has increased the level of energy consumption (Thomsen, 2011). It is with this in mind that I set this research on the grounds explained above. I will look at Wolverhampton concerning whether there is a possibility of turning the city into an environmental conscious city. As for this aspect of a car-free city, I will be selecting a suitable and sustainable mobility concept that can work in the city and also explain the concept itself and how it will be implemented. This will be analyzed with the relevant literal materials (Shane & Graedel, 2000, p77). The first area I will tackle in this essay will be the sustainable mobility as a concept and thereafter I will chose the most appropriate concept for sustainable mobility in the Wolverhampton area. Sustainable Mobility The word â€Å"mobile† means that one is capable of making movement in a space, virtually like in the flow of information in a particular network, be it socially (in this case, climbing the ‘social ladder’ to be in a different level or status), or even being physically making the movements (Neuman, 2011, p 41). In a statistical perspective, it means that mobility is the movement between two places, from one place to another and this does not clearly emphasize which means were used. Therefore, in my case, I will assume that mobility involves different means of transport and the mode of transport used for the movement to be made. According to Staley and Ybarra (2008), sustainable mobility is â€Å"mobility which does not endanger public health or ecosystems and meets needs for access consistent with: a) Use of renewable sources below their rates of regeneration; b) Use of non-renewable resources at below the rates of development of renewable substitutes†. The concept of mobility in some quarters has a different definition. According to Kasanen (1994) and Berge et al (1992), mobility is the potential for movement. For instance, a product might hav e a high mobility which means it might have a potential for movements by having qualities and characteristics that will make it easy to make a move and through the existence of means of transport to carry the movement out. At the same time, the mobility in people will greatly vary depending on each person’s factors like the age of the person, gender, health of the person and the occupation among many other factors. At the same time, the different periods of time at individual disposal and varied accessibility to the correct means of transport play a major part too. This is further supported by Hoyer (1999) who also describes mobility as â€Å"†¦an expression for both the potential for movement and the volume of the actual movement taking place. It