Conference—Transformation
Winfried Wolf, Aglaée Degros und Joshy Schwarz
Die Verkehrswende und das Ende der Autogesellschaft

(The Transformation of Transportation and the End of the Automobile Society)

We are experiencing the destruction of the environment, global warming, and declining quality of life. Constantly increasing street traffic is an engine that drives this process and regularly produces thousands of fatalities. A restructuring of our entire transport system is unavoidable. At its center is the elimination and limitation of harmful means of transportation and the shift to climate-friendly alternatives: walking, cycling, local public transportation, and railways. Winfried Wolf demonstrates how we can organize our mobility in a different way from the ground up. He calculates that a focus on automobiles will be significantly more expensive than a transformation of transportation. In addition, he demonstrates that while jobs in the automobile industry will be lost, this loss will be more than compensated by the emergence of new jobs through transformed transportation. Unimaginable? Not at all! This transportation transformation is already supported by large portions of the population, including in Graz. What would it take to accomplish the transformation of transportation here?


Bio
Winfried Wolf calls himself an independent radical socialist and utopian. He is a journalist, politician, political scientist, and former transportation expert. Since 2008, he has been editor in chief of Lunapark21—Zeitschrift zur Kritik der globalen Ökonomie (Lunapark21—The Magazine for the Critical Global Economy) and has been active in the organization Bahn für Alle—BfA (Railways for Everyone). His political activism also extends to his participation in the ZeroCovid movement. One of his most recent books is Tempowahn. Vom Fetisch der Geschwindigkeit zur Notwendigkeit der Entschleunigung (Speed Mania: From the Obsession with Speed to the Necessity for Deceleration), published in 2021.

Aglaée Degros is an architect, city planner, and professor of urban development at Graz University of Technology. Her focus is on public spaces and urban living. Among other things, she is a member of the board of Europan Austria. In 2019, she published the book Traffic Space Is Public Space together with Stefan Bendiks.

Joshy Schwarz is an activist with System Change, Not Climate Change! and MoVe iT. He studies approaches for accomplishing the transformation of transportation at the local level in Graz and throughout Austria as well as for combatting the automobile lobby and its systematic character at the structural level. His primary aim is to advocate for a climate-friendly society in direct contact with people in the city at various levels.

9.10., 19:00

Talk and discussion

In German

Forum Stadtpark
Stadtpark 1
8010 Graz
♿ Venue accessible for wheelchairs

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Free admission