CfP Special Issue Transfers Journal (CONTESTED) MOTORWAYS
CALL FOR PAPERS
For a SPECIAL ISSUE to be published in Transfers Journal – Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies
(CONTESTED) MOTORWAYS
Motorways are neither inherently popular nor a “natural” outcome of motorization (Avila 2014; Kunze 2022; Magalhães 2024). Instead, road building projects have always faced criticism, even if much of the contestation remains marginalized (North 1998, McNeish 1999). The construction of motorways worldwide is the result of sharp transnational political wills and the work of strong lobbies promoting motorization. Motorways shape collective and individual imaginaries of both landscapes and mobilities, while functioning as political and economic instruments of power (Anand, Gupta & Appel 2018; Coutard 2024). They lie at the center of socioecological controversies, reflecting divergent visions of society (Seiler 2009) – some defending progress embodied by the infrastructure, others highlighting its negative externalities. Many scholars depict motorways as scars on urban and rural landscapes, emblematic of disruption and inequality (Avila 2014; Lewis 1997), and even as “an everyday form of devastation” (Williams 2025, ix). Recent scholarly work further challenges their status as inevitable infrastructures of modernity and progress, framing them instead as terrains of political struggle and contestation – criticized for their high financial and socioecological costs, their reinforcement of motorization, and their incompatibility with sustainability and climate goals (Magalhães 2024; Williams 2025).
The first motorway projects are almost as old as the automobile itself. However, the idea of a road network exclusively for motorized traffic struggled to gain acceptance before World War II, when only a very small minority of people owned cars. The 1950’s marked a key moment in the development of motorways and the global spread of motorization (Lewis 1997; Merriman 2007). While a common drive to construct motorways spanned Europe, America, and Oceania, the rationales and methods varied significantly across contexts. Some countries prioritized extensive intercity networks, others focused on ring roads to divert traffic from urban cores. These projects were shaped by diverse forces—ranging from lobbying by tourism, automotive, and oil industries to militarized agendas intertwined with economic arguments—revealing that the grounds for motorway building were far from uniform. The motorway embodies the social and economic aim of unimpeded circulation, speed and connectivity, openness, political liberalism and economic prosperity (Harvey & Knox, 2016; Kuligowsky 2019). Nowadays, motorway networks remain considered as material and symbolic markers of development, including in the Global South. Therefore, motorway projects endure, whether new constructions, expansions, or widenings. States continue to build and complete networks revealing socio-technical barriers that seem impossible to overcome (Mattioli et al., 2020; Jones and McCreary 2022). Despite the 2015 Paris Agreement and the urgent need to reduce worldwide CO2 emissions, large road infrastructures emerge as sites of complex struggles involving competing visions between political authorities, engineers, developers, commuters, tourists, local residents and ecologists. Motorway development has occurred at the cost of dispossession, an aggravation of car dependency and environmental disasters. Debates on motorway projects expose tensions between planning objectives and residents lived realities (Seiler 2009; Kuligowsky 2019; Senior et al. 2024). Criticism of the motorway concept emerged as early as the first experiments in the interwar period and the 1950’s (Merriman 2017; Kunze 2022). Contestations of urban motorways in Western countries, spurred by the rise of political ecology in the 1960’s and 1970’s, drove sociotechnical changes that introduced pollution-mitigation technologies such as noise barriers, tunnels, and trenches. Yet, while these measures encouraged more participatory policies and planning, they largely served to increase public acceptability and deflect criticism rather than to limit further motorway expansion. Nowadays, the contestation of large road infrastructure remains important, at least in contexts where the voices of the opponents can be heard. Contestation over motorways reflects broader debates about modernity, progress, mobility, sustainability, and urbanity. Recent examples include the A69 motorway in Southwestern France, which sparked strong environmental, political, and legal disputes, and Switzerland’s 2024 referendum that unexpectedly resulted in the rejection of six motorway expansion projects after intense national discussions on the future of mobility. These cases illustrate how opposition extends beyond halting new construction to include initiatives for motorway removal or repurposing, aligning with wider goals of sustainable urban development and liveable cities.
The special issue will gather empirical articles broadly engaging with the promotion, support and refusal of motorway projects either in the past and in the present days. Contributions may also thematize the motorway as a physical place of contestation or activism. Conceptually, the articles can engage with different disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds including work on the system of automobility, mobility justice and social movement theory.
Research perspectives could include (but are not limited to):
- PROMOTING AND DEFENDING MOTORWAYS: Advocates of motorways have advanced
a powerful, optimistic narrative emphasizing their promises—framed around the ideas of safety, reduced congestion, socioeconomic progress, speed, efficiency and enhanced regional accessibility—while simultaneously deploying diverse strategies to deflect and manage criticism. How can we explain the emergence of the concept of motorways as exclusive spaces for motorized transport, sidelining other modes? How is this idea promoted, and through which arguments and political strategies?
- OPPOSING MOTORWAY PROJECTS: In what contexts are motorways contested, and through which arguments? Resistance emerges across civil society and politics—from left-wing groups to the far right, from public transport advocates to intellectual circles. These movements are highly diverse, encompassing property owners, municipalities, neighborhood associations, environmental organizations, and mobility or planning experts. Their motivations range from environmental and health concerns (soil degradation, pollution, biodiversity, climate change) to socioeconomic issues (territorial fragmentation, economic impacts on alternative routes) and heritage preservation (loss of landscapes, homes, and cultural sites).
Potential topics may include the following:
- The expansion of national and international road networks and their contestation
- Discourses on capacity, induced traffic, safety, and efficiency
- Transnational knowledge circuits in motorway development
- Assumptions behind transportation governance and urban planning
- Motorways as space of escape and the ways markers of social difference (race, ethnicity,
gender…) affects motorway users.
- Road ecology or more specifically motorway ecology
- Alternative projects to motorways or removal and transformations
- Sociospatial inequalities and silences in motorway refusal histories
This special issue will be edited by Suzy Blondin, Manon Espinasse, Andrea Pimentel Rivera and Tiphaine Robert. The editors (with Transfers editorship) will select the contributions based on originality, relevance and scientific quality.
Abstract deadline: 15 April 2026
Please send your abstract to tiphaine.robert@unibe.ch
The abstract should include:
- Name, affiliation and e-mail address
- Short biography (100 words)
- Extended abstract of 1000 words including the title of the article, a mention of the relevant
topic/research questions addressed.
For more information, please do not hesitate to contact us.
More information on the Journal website:
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/transfers/transfers-overview.xml