Matthias Gather, Andreas Kagermeier und Martin Lanzendorf: Geographische Mobilitäts- und Verkehrsforschung. Stuttgart (Studienbücher der Geographie) 2008. 303 S.
For some years, the issue of transport and mobility in geographical research has been gaining increasing importance, in terms of which lies the strength of geographical research in regard to its integrative capacity as well as the great readiness for multi-disciplinarity. The preoccupation with mobility and transport has thus developed into an established field of geographical teaching and research.
The publication offers an oversight concerning the most important indings, not only of geographical research but also of transport sciences of other disciplines. With regard to content, the issue always lies at the focus of attention, according to the concept of
sustainability, both from the social and economic and ecological points of view, as to how far the development trends and approaches analysed can be viewed as sustainable.
The current textbook begins with a presentation of transport-geographical research into the transport sciences and thus points out how tight the network of scientiic disciplines has already progressed. The analysis of the social framework conditions of transport development is followed by a fundamental overview concerning approaches which politically inluence transport development. Supported by the sustainability issue, the requirements for a future transport system are presented in a general abstract manner in Chapters 4 to 6. There then follows the content-concept on the basis of the core issue of reciprocal effects of space and transport as well as of major problem areas of passenger and freight transport development.
Based on the problem analysis, the existing options for transport coniguration are presented in Chapters 10 and 11 and are discussed by means of examples. The volume concludes with a brief assess ment of the current transport development against the background of the debate on sustainability and tries to deduce future issues of geographical mobility and transport research.
Thomas J. Mager