IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rmobxx/v10y2015i3p402-422.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stopping the 'War on the Car': Neoliberalism, Fordism, and the Politics of Automobility in Toronto

Author

Listed:
  • Alan Walks

Abstract

This article interrogates the politics of automobility in Toronto under the regime of mayor Rob Ford, who came to power in 2010 promising to 'stop the war on the car.' The election of Ford, and the thrust of his subsequent agenda, came as a surprise to many in the city, due to Toronto's reputation as a cosmopolitan diverse transit-friendly global city. The Toronto case study allows for the analysis of the relationships between Fordism, automobility, and the politics and rationalities of neoliberalism. Instead of seeing neoliberalism as something external or imposed, its contested politics are rooted in diverging social and economic interests directly derived from Fordism and the system of automobility, with opposing political-economic factions both drawing on different elements of neoliberalism. Authoritarian populist neoliberal regimes like the Ford administration in Toronto, and the roll-back austerity they promote, are not antithetical to automobile Fordism, but on the contrary represent an attempt to protect and reinvigorate it in the face of the forces of de-industrialization and financialization. As such they receive their support from social groups irrevocably invested in the continuation, and irrationalities, of the Fordist system of automobility. This has implications for how the politics of neoliberalism might unfold in the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan Walks, 2015. "Stopping the 'War on the Car': Neoliberalism, Fordism, and the Politics of Automobility in Toronto," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 402-422, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rmobxx:v:10:y:2015:i:3:p:402-422
    DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2014.880563
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17450101.2014.880563
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17450101.2014.880563?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Legacy, Crystal & Stone, John, 2019. "Consensus planning in transport: The case of Vancouver’s transportation plebiscite," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 295-305.
    2. Emma McDougall & Brian Doucet, 2022. "Polarized Paths: ‘Selling’ Cycling in City and Suburb," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 113(2), pages 179-193, April.
    3. Edward Randal & Caroline Shaw & Alistair Woodward & Philippa Howden-Chapman & Alex Macmillan & Jamie Hosking & Ralph Chapman & Andrew M. Waa & Michael Keall, 2020. "Fairness in Transport Policy: A New Approach to Applying Distributive Justice Theories," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-20, December.
    4. Pierre Filion, 2018. "Enduring Features of the North American Suburb: Built Form, Automobile Orientation, Suburban Culture and Political Mobilization," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(4), pages 4-14.
    5. Culver, Gregg, 2017. "Mobility and the making of the neoliberal “creative city”: The streetcar as a creative city project?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 22-30.
    6. Markus Moos & Jonathan Woodside & Tara Vinodrai & Cyrus Yan, 2018. "Automobile Commuting in Suburban High-Rise Condominium Apartments: Examining Transitions toward Suburban Sustainability in Toronto," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(4), pages 15-28.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rmobxx:v:10:y:2015:i:3:p:402-422. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rmob20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.