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Degrowth offers a particularly trans-disciplinary and robust critique of growth-driven configurations of space, society and economy. However, its proponents are yet to seriously engage with urban environments by clearly outlining how, where, for whom and under what conditions the principles of degrowth could be applied in urban contexts. In this article, I focus on transport as a vehicle for understanding and addressing this challenge, thus contributing to the broader agenda of spatialising and urbanising degrowth. I turn to the specific case of ‘fare-free public transport’ (FFPT), a policy that exists in full form in nearly 300 localities worldwide. By referring to empirical material collected in FFPT programmes in Aubagne (France), Tallinn (Estonia) and Chengdu (China), I show that fare abolition can act as a policy that contradicts many principles of growth-driven capitalism by advancing an agenda of inter- and intra-municipal solidarity, working towards socio-spatial justice. Consequently, I demonstrate that when analysing and planning urban transport, degrowth may well build on diverse ‘critical’ perspectives on transport to engage head-on with explicitly political–economic questions underpinning urban agendas, thus avoiding joining the glossary of de-politicised and technocratic notions, and disregarding the socio-economic, political and spatial complexity of the urban. In this way, the article contributes to ongoing reflections about the role of urbanisation in the degrowth debate.

While many urban policies and practices claim to offer an “alternative” to the “mainstream” of urban entrepreneurialism, they remain under-theorised and prone to alignment with entrepreneurial agendas. In this paper I examine fare-free public transport (FFPT) as a salient example of an alternative urban policy. Looking at Aubagne (France) and Tallinn (Estonia), I explore what happens when an alternative policy “comes to town”. I detect how FFPT enters local urban regimes, and study the (non-)participation of public transport passengers and workers in the decision-making process about whether and how to abolish public transport fares. My analysis reveals that albeit alternative policies such as FFPT seem to oppose entrepreneurialism, they may hinge on urban regimes that span across institutions, leave the local configurations of power unchallenged, and strenghten local elites. The adaptability of alternatives to diverse political and intellectual positions explains their resilience. Consequently, their radicalcharacter cannot be taken for granted and remains an object of political struggle.

Kafui Ablode Attoh, Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California’s East Bay (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2019), 155 pp., 7 illustrations. $28.95Ruth Holliday, Meredith Jones, and David Bell, Beautyscapes: Mapping Cosmetic Surgery Tourism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), 232 pp. £80 (hardback).Gökçe Günel, Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 272 pp., 31 illustrations. $26.95.

This editorial introduces and contextualises the Special Issue on informalities in urban transport and mobility in cities across the Global South, East and North. It identifies a mutual misrecognition between the urban studies literature on informality and research on transport and mobilities, and proposes that urban mobility be understood as a critical site of contestations over (in)formalisation processes. The editorial suggests that the articles gathered in the Special Issue diversify and extend understandings of informality in both the transport and urban studies literatures. It outlines three specific contributions that the articles make. Drawing on conceptualisations of informality from across the social sciences and by offering empirical studies of informalities in urban mobility in the Global East and North, the articles confront the habit of dualistic thinking in relation to informalities in urban mobility. They move beyond the formal/informal binary and challenging the North/South division which associates informality predominantly with the South. The papers in the Special Issue also highlight how ‘informal transport’ is a highly dynamic sector at the vanguard of innovation, digitalisation and platform urbanism. Finally, the articles demonstrate that informalities in urban mobility offer a useful analytical lens onto questions of labour struggles and subject formation within ongoing urban transformations.

This article introduces a virtual special issue that carries the same title. We open our editorial by observing that the contemporary transport debate continues to find strong inspiration in the notion of “sustainable” development, which strongly resonates among academics and practitioners alike. While placing important environmental issues on the agenda, sustainable approaches to urban transport exhibit a number of serious limitations, as, as it has insufficiently engaged with diverse social, political and economic dynamics that shape how transport is planned, regulated, organised, practiced and contested in urban contexts. To respond to this gap, we propose to develop an emerging “critical” perspective on urban transport, which considers it it to be socially constructed and contested, underpinned by structural power dynamics, class relations, gender and patriarchy, ethnicity and race. Building on critical urban theory, we argue that being critical about urban transport involves approaching it as a phenomenon that reproduces complex social and spatial processes, and acts as a crucial component of capitalism. On the one hand, this means analysing transport policy, practice and infrastructure through the lens of capitalist dynamics observed in particular urban contexts. On the other, it entails exploring the complexity of processes, institutions and interests that make up a city through its transport. While critical research on transport and mobility may be on the rise, it still constitutes a rather marginal research area. Therefore, the objective of the virtual special issue is to advance the critical agenda of transport research. The diverse contributions to this virtual special issue offer a number of avenues for thinking critically with and through urban transport as part and parcel of capitalism. Our authors discuss theoretical and methodological frameworks for studying transport, and offer empirical analyses of specific policies and practices, inquiring into their socio-spatial impact, political-economic embeddedness and the power relations and regulatory frameworks by which they are shaped. What emerges from this anthology is that there is no singular or universal way of being critical about urban transport. Unravelling and analysing power and ideology underpinned and reproduced by transport in urban settings is by no means an exercise that hinges on a particular theoretical lens or focuses on a specific social group or factor. As this endavour is far from complete, we outline several directions for further critical research. Notably, we suggest to diversify spaces and scales of analysis by exploring long-distance travel, to diversify research objects by analysing freight and logistics. We also note that future research could consider diversifying social theories and epistemologies through which transport is perceived, to contribute to a decolonial turn in transport studies.

This paper summarizes progress in metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) technology achieved in recent years at the Institute of Applied Physics, Military University of Technology and VIGO System S.A. MOCVD with a wide range of composition and donor/acceptor doping and without post-growth annealing is a very convenient tool for the deposition of HgCdTe epilayers used for uncooled infrared detectors. Particular attention is focused on: surface morphology improvement, doping issues, diffusion processes during growth study, substrate issues, crystallographic orientation selection. In this respect, MOCVD technology improvement influencing IR detector parameters is shown. CdTe buffer layer deposition allows HgCdTe heterostructure growth on GaAs substrates. Theoretical modelling using APSYS platform supports designing and better understanding of the carrier transport mechanism in detector’s structures. Secondary ion mass spectrometry profiles allows to compare projected and obtained structures and revealed diffusion processes of the elements. A wide range of different types of infrared detectors operating at high operating temperature conditions has been constructed: photoresistors, non-equilibrium photodiodes, dual-band photodiodes, barrier and multiple detectors. The methodical research efforts contributed to the time constant reduction are important in many detector applications. Future challenges and prospects are also discussed.

The real exchange rates of the currencies of non-Eurozone countries are determined to a large extent by the behavior of the euro, because intra-EU trade accounts for a large proportion of the count...

As we are submitting this report in December 2020, COVID-19 has had a complex and multifaceted effect on public transport (PT) and its use. The emergence of the virus altered both who used PT and how these users experienced their journeys. This study complicates the fear-focused narrative that often framed PT during the COVID-19 crisis. It highlights diverse experiences of PT, which yet are often socially unequal. This report details the design and outcome of a multi-sited study investigating PT during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study began in March 2020 as part of PUTSPACE, an international research project supported by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA). It consisted of an online survey (n=1095) and series of semi-structured follow-up interviews (n=49). The survey and interviews solicited information about PT users’ mobility behaviour after the outbreak of COVID-19 as well as their experiences on and perceptions of PT during the initial months of the pandemic. Responses came from four geographical regions; Estonia (Tallinn), Sweden (Stockholm), Belgium (Brussels) and Germany (Berlin, Dresden, Munich). It is significant that most of our insights produced in the survey and interviews echoed similar observations across the studied regions.