Transport Geopolitics: Decoding and Understanding Transport as a Source of Conflicts

This book provides readers with fresh new theoretical tools to better understand how sociopolitical actors (from governmental institutions to ecological NGOs; from local residents to multinational companies) clash about transport initiatives. It questions both the dominant understanding of what is geopolitics and conventional conceptions in transport geography used by transport planners. Drawing on a structuralist approach and addressing the capital notion of 'political control of mobility', it demonstrates how transport geopolitics, by being more inclusive of all modes of transport and all scales of analysis, may help prepare transport diplomacy in a time of critical global and local turbulences. It offers a valuable resource for research and teaching in the fields of transport studies, land-use planning, conflict studies, human geography and politics, presenting insightful theoretical material and concrete transport conflict examples to support teaching about territorial conflicts, political governance and transport political geography. 

Luc Ampleman is an Assistant Professor at the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce and Lecturer at the Jagiellonian University in Poland. He is a former governmental advisor for the Ministry of Transport of Québec and transport planner in the northernmost region of the Province of Québec in Canada. His research interests cover local geopolitics in remote areas, transport diplomacy and active learning in higher education. Over the last 20 years, his professional and teaching engagement have been motivated by three major questions: how to foster sustainable mobility in rural and peripheral regions; how to bring together social actors with divergent interests around transport initiatives and how to better support students in their learning of political issues.