Hello urbanists!
Long time, no… newsletter in your inbox? It’s almost two years since I sent the last issue of Radical Urbanist, and unfortunately I’m not about to announce it’s return. But I hope you’ll entertain my email, because I have something exciting to tell you about.
On July 5, my first book Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation is being released through Verso Books in North America and Europe!
The book is very much in the same vein as this newsletter: criticizing what tech companies are doing to our cities, and seeking a vision for a better kind of urban existence, with a specific focus on transportation in this case.
From electric cars and micromobility to ride-hailing services and autonomous vehicles, I examine the promises made about these supposed futures of mobility to see how they were wrong and what’s been left out of the narratives that industry is weaving about them. Most importantly, I ask whether they’re truly delivering on a better transportation system.
But the book goes beyond analyzing the past decade of mobility discourse and experiments. I dig into the histories of automobility and of the tech industry to examine the ways they’ve been shaped by capitalist desires and how that has affected their outcomes: ensuring that transportation and technology don’t serve the common good, but the bottom lines of major corporations. And that’s a problem.
Those realizations can’t come without a vision for an alternative, and I end the book with just that: an argument not just for a different way of thinking about cities and mobility, but for a different set of values to produce the outcomes we actually want to see.
It’s wild to think that my first book comes out in just three weeks, but here we are! If you liked this newsletter, I think you’ll also like my book, and I’d ask you to consider preordering a copy. (I’m told it’s important for first-time authors.)
Road to Nowhere is available through virtually any major bookseller. You can use Bookshop in the US or UK to ensure a local bookstore gets a percentage of the sale, or get it directly from the publisher. But Amazon and other retailers have it too!
I know there are a lot of professionals subscribed to this newsletter, so I’d just note two things: 1) if you work in media and want to cover the book or interview me, get in touch! 2) I’m not doing any in-person events in July, but I am looking at putting some together in Europe around August or September and North America in October, so if you want to talk about hosting me for an event, feel free to send me an email. (You can just reply to this newsletter).
If you want to keep up with the book and everything else I’m doing, feel free to give me a follow on Twitter.
Thanks again for your support of this newsletter when it was active, and for letting me slide into your inbox to let you know my exciting news.
My best,
Paris Marx