Simon Kingham
Associate Professor, Geography
Associate Professor Simon Kingham is passionate about transport. As a keen cyclist, he dreams of the day when Christchurch has more cyclists, walkers, and bussers than drivers, and believes it is the key factor towards making the city more sustainable.
“I think transport is essential and we need to create an environment where people want to walk and cycle”, he says. “One of the pluses in Christchurch is that you can pretty much cycle from one part of town to another, and if you cycled between the extremities it would only take an hour.”
Although Simon occasionally drives his wife’s car, cycling is his main mode of transport. His family goes on biking expeditions at weekends, and Simon has begun to promote cycling at the Spreydon Baptist Church where he is a member. At Canterbury, he teaches Geography courses on sustainable cities and is involved in research projects on air pollution, transport, and health geography. He is also on the regional transport committee, where he is an advocate for sustainable transport.
In May, Simon attended the Velo-city 2009: Recycling Cities conference in Brussels, where he swapped ideas with other sustainable transport researchers. The conference has left him excited about European initiatives to encourage cycling.
“Copenhagen has got to the point where there are more journeys taken by cycle than there are by car. And that’s amazing, that’s just fantastic”, he says. “And Christchurch should be a really good example of a cycling city because most people live on the flat, the climate’s good, and the street corridors are really wide.
“In Europe there are a number of cities making major initiatives to encourage walking and cycling, and they see it as ‘yes, it’s a solution to transport problems and congestion, and yes, it’s a solution to climate change problems, but it’s also a solution to obesity’. For example, I’m getting twice the exercise the government says I should be just by biking to work. Obesity is going to be a huge issue in years to come – it already is – and if you look at broader social sustainability as well, transport is a big part of it.”
With the latest figures showing that amongst OECD nations New Zealand has the third highest obesity rate (after the Unites States, and Mexico), encouraging the use of body fuel as an alternative to unsustainable vehicle use should be a government priority. Yet, the transport budget continues to prioritise the upgrading of motorways and the building of roads, leaving alternative transport systems literally sidelined. According to Simon, painted lines on the road indicating a cycle lane are not that effective – just watch the behaviour of some motorists who treat them as if they are not there. We are well behind European cities such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam where cycle lanes are for cyclists only, making it safer and more enjoyable to travel by bike.
Cars are only part of the transport problem however, and Simon is acutely aware of the irony that he had to fly to Europe in order to attend a conference on sustainable transport. As such, he understands the dilemma for researchers when it comes to conference travel – especially when living in New Zealand means that if you want to attend an international conference in person, there is little option but to fly.
“I do think that as an academic here you need to interact with people in other parts of the world,” he says. “That is a challenge because every time you fly you know that it’s not good for the environment, but at the same time you know that if you’re going to keep doing your job and doing it well, you do need to interact.”
Much of the interaction at conferences takes place during the breaks between seminars, an area of social networking that is usually beyond the scope of communication technology. “At the conference it was fantastic meeting people and talking about new projects”, says Simon. “It’s not the same if you’re attending online or video conferencing.”
In New Zealand, Simon has also become a spokesperson on boy racer culture, an interest that came about when Master’s student Ryan Falconer was given funding to research the youth culture. The project resulted in Simon and Ryan working together on an article published in New Zealand Geographer entitled “Driving people crazy: the geography of boy racers in Christchurch, New Zealand”. Although Simon finds it difficult to relate to boy racers, he does not think that they are being treated fairly by authorities. He considers the ‘problem’ to be an outcome of society’s glorification of cars.
“Boy racers are a group in society who just happen to have different views to me, but it doesn’t mean I think that we should treat them the way we’re trying to treat them”, he says. “It’s not illegal to drive a car, it’s not illegal to like cars, and it’s not illegal to hang out with your mates and talk about your car.
“So I think that as a society if we don’t want people doing what they’re doing, we should try and change society. We prioritise cars. We design transport systems so that cars get through the best. And when kids like cars and drive around in them, we start banning them from driving in certain parts of town and we threaten to lock their cars up and crush them.
“And it’s interesting because we decide if a car’s a bit noisy, we’re going to crush it, and yet driving under the influence of alcohol is probably responsible for far more accidents than boy racers, so why do we not threaten to crush their cars?”
Of course, environmentally speaking, crushing roadworthy vehicles as a punishment is problematic, but Simon does have a point. Perhaps the reason why boy racers are so vilified is because they are a loud reflection of society’s own worship of empty consumerism, as objectified by the car.
Advocates for sustainable practices often acknowledge that in order to effect any real shift in consciousness, the current religion of materialism must be replaced by a sense of spiritual purpose. For Simon, sustainable living “makes sense” when there is a spiritual dimension.
“One of the reasons I’m into sustainability is also because I’m a Christian and I think it gels with that pretty well”, he says. “You know, when you think of green activism, you think of Nandor, and I think that Christianity should embrace it too.”
On the practical level, Simon also has the application to live up to his ideals, and he says that in addition to composting, growing vegetables, and purchasing an organic food order each week, the family are currently installing insulation in a recently purchased house.
“I think it’s easy to stand up and talk about sustainability and then drive off to the supermarket and buy unsustainably produced food and then drive home – but you’re not living what you’re teaching about.”
With the School of Geography winning the annual Bikewise challenge in 2009 (over 80% of the department cycled to university at least once during the month of February), Simon tells me that members of the department are “pretty good” at practicing what they teach. For Simon however, it is the students who are “essential in terms of going on and becoming leaders”.
With such inspiration, those leaders may go on to ensure that, in the future, Simon’s dream of Christchurch as a cyclists’ paradise may well be realised.
Profile by Sharon McIver