GSI Seminar Series - Dame Henrietta Moore 'Reimagining Mobility in the 21st Century City: Building shared freedoms beyond the car'

Cars have been sold as symbols of independence, yet car-dependent cities restrict choice, fragment communities, and lock in inequality. Cities worldwide are beginning to challenge the car’s rapid dominance, using design, planning, and infrastructure to open up new paths to mobility and freedom. In this talk Professor Dame Henrietta L. Moore will build on ideas from her new book Roadkill: Unveiling the True Cost of our Toxic Relationship with Cars (published by Wiley, co-authored with Arthur Kay, 2025) to break down three potent myths that divide societies around the world: namely, that the change we need is individual behavioural change; secondly, the feeling that an attack on the car is an attack on our personal freedoms; and thirdly, the belief that all we need to do is to switch out our gas guzzler for an electric or autonomous car. The lecture will encourage attendees to envisage new opportunities that a transition away from automobiles can open up to us, this time taking communities with us along the way.