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Why the Car Is Not Always King in Global South Cities: Evidence From Ulaanbaatar

Hamiduddin, Iqbal; (2023) Why the Car Is Not Always King in Global South Cities: Evidence From Ulaanbaatar. Urban Planning , 8 (3) pp. 14-26. 10.17645/up.v8i3.6355. Green open access

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Abstract

Access to a private car has established itself as a critical control on mobility and access to opportunities for residents living in a diverse range of settings, globally. Across cities of the Global South, the benefits of private car access are often intensified by the absence of viable alternative modes of travel. This article explores the influence of private car access and mobility in relation to residents living in “ger district” areas of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city. These peri‐urban areas are informally created when rural migrants set up home on the edge of the city, initially using mobile felt dwellings called “ger” that become augmented or replaced by permanent structures over time. An absence of forward planning as well as unmade roads and hilly topography mean that the ger districts are often poorly served by public transport, while the low density of the built environment also means that informal transport services can be limited in coverage and relatively expensive. This article utilises a database of household questionnaires collected in 2020 to compare mobility patterns and accessibility between car‐owning and non‐car‐owning households in three case study ger districts, capturing seasonal differences between the extreme cold of the wintertime and warmer summer conditions. The findings not only reveal stark mobility and access differences in relation to car ownership but also discrepancies between car ownership and actual car use for important and routine journeys. This indicates that despite a lack of public transport available, many households opt to use what public transport they can. This pattern provides a potentially important basis for future policies that aim to limit car use in order to reduce traffic congestion and broaden access to the city for non‐car‐owning households by providing more accessible public transport.

Type: Article
Title: Why the Car Is Not Always King in Global South Cities: Evidence From Ulaanbaatar
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i3.6355
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v8i3.6355
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © Iqbal Hamiduddin. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Keywords: Car ownership; car use; Global South; informal settlements; mobility; Mongolia; private car; public transport
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Planning
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10171755
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