Introduction

There is no question that a society meeting human demands and needs requires a sustainable urban transport system. However, the detailed development and design of Future Urban Transport (FUT) systems will be affected by energy and other conditions. Today’s cities and their transport systems have developed along paths that we can analyze with regard to power and decision structures, historical, cultural and societal conditions etc. Studying the paths of the past and combining them with the identifiable future boundary conditions, such as the energy challenge, is hopefully a way of better distinguishing potential paths for the future. The question of “what is specific and what is generic” is thus highly relevant. If we can distinguish specifics from generics, it increases the chance that we can assess transferability and non-transferability. A smooth and evolutionary transition of today’s systems into the systems of tomorrow may be possible and is, of course, what we strive and hope for, but a more disruptive scenario is not unlikely. We simply do not know, but through understanding and planning we can increase the probability for the sustainable path. This is part of what we call path dependencies and “coping with complexity”.

In order to cope with the complexity of urban transport, close cooperation is required between different actors (the public, politicians, city planners, industry etc) and analysts (researchers, engineers, etc). Research in this area must, by necessity, be multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary, based upon global as well as regional perspectives, where technical as well as economic and societal changes are incorporated in the research agenda.