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1 The Local Politics of Green Mobility in San Francisco and Copenhagen: How Political Ideology Shapes Mobility Transitions in Cities

In this chapter I consider how local politics in cities and municipalities shape policies that promote green mobility, including walking, cycling, and public transport organized around compact, high-density, car free and car-lite urbanism. Green mobility is critical for the decarbonization of urban transport and long-term continual emissions reduction requires that cities configure built environments in ways that expand green mobility (IPCC 2022; UNEP 2020, 2021). Cities and their local politics play a key role in climate mitigation, for example, through reallocating street space for cycling or public transport while removing spaces for private cars. Cities also control many land use decisions that can promote or discourage green mobility, such as density and zoning regulations. Climate change mitigation therefore involves understanding urban politics in order to identify and implement opportunities for green mobility.

In cities around the world green mobility transitions have been frustratingly slow. Even the most aspirational green mobility cities, such as Copenhagen, Denmark, or San Francisco, California, have backpedaled on green mobility goals (City of Copenhagen 2022; San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency 2021). To help understand why green mobility transitions have been slow to realize in even the most promising localities, I consider how San Francisco and Copenhagen’s green mobility agendas are supported or undermined in local political debates. Both cities have long been recognized as green mobility bellwethers (Giuliano and Hanson 2017; Pucher and Buehler 2012). These cities have a local political culture promoting green mobility and a political will to reallocate car spaces to green mobility, aligning with calls for rapid decarbonization of transport (Henderson 2013; Henderson and Gulsrud 2019). Each offers important lessons about the long-term viability of green mobility and it is timely to ask which lessons might be transferable across these cities and applicable worldwide.

By comparing San Francisco and Copenhagen it is also evident that, at least in the global north, each city’s politics of mobility is neither exceptional nor unique. Rather, there are remarkably similar controversies, political issues, and political ideologies regarding cars and green mobility transitions in both cities. Both cities promote green mobility transitions but this is met with political pushback objecting to the reallocation of street space now dominated by automobiles. Both cities exhibit willingness to limit the spaces of cars but encounter interference at higher jurisdictions – with the State of California pre-empting municipal control in San Francisco and Denmark exercising authority over Copenhagen.

In what follows I identify three major ideological poles – left/progressive, neoliberal, and right/conservative – all three of which can be observed in both Copenhagen and San Francisco despite their historical & structural differences. In both cities a left/progressive political faction promotes green mobility and centrally-located affordable housing as a public good that government should actively promote (with the idea that centrally located housing reduced car dependency). A neoliberal faction, sometimes labeled “moderate” in San Francisco and Copenhagen, also promotes green mobility, but with a market-oriented, deregulated hue shaping mobility and housing, with government activity limited to policies that advance private profit, especially in real estate. A right/conservative politics of mobility expresses skepticism towards green mobility transitions and seeks to preserve car access to city spaces, often taking a populist tone. In both cities a neoliberal-right/conservative political alignment includes profit-oriented, de-regulated organization of transport that may result in an abandoned public realm, intensify precariousness in labor and austere governance, all the while installing a highly automated, optimally surveilled urban transport system in erstwhile livable but exclusive urban cores. This may have far-reaching consequences in shaping urban geographies of the future – not by transforming cities, but, rather, by intensifying and solidifying contemporary inequities and uneven geographies. Although variegated and with different inflection points, I suggest this politics of mobility is exhibited in cities throughout Europe and North America, where transport emissions per capita are highest. From Atlanta and Nashville in the Southeastern United States, to Berlin and Paris in Europe, cities are key locations of momentum for green mobility transitions but this can be impeded by ideologically-driven interference within local politics and by higher-levels of governance.

2 Green Mobility in San Francisco and Copenhagen

San Francisco has long stood out as a green mobility bellwether and has a political culture willing to challenge the car, with a “freeway revolt” in the 1960s and subsequent second freeway revolt in the 1990s (with some freeways canceled or removed), a transit first policy that prioritizes trams and buses on some city streets, leadership in reducing car parking spaces, and a lively local bicycle politics (Henderson 2013). Unique for the United States, San Francisco has a high number of car free households – about 30 percent – and many are car free by choice (US Census 2021). Urban planning policies in the city include reducing car dependency and reduced car travel is a goal in the state’s climate policy, which requires cities to focus new housing and urban development around walkable transit-oriented development (CARB 2022). In 2018 the City adopted a citywide residential off-street parking minimum of zero and large swaths of the city have lower parking maximums, or caps, such that new housing is built without an adjacent parking space. Just before the Covid-19 Pandemic, in 2019 San Francisco’s premier roadway – Market Street – was converted to a transit and bicycle-only street while private cars were restricted. In November 2022, and after decades of political debate, the city’s voters made car free spaces in Golden Gate Park permanent, suggesting strong political momentum for green mobility transitions in the post-Covid-19 pandemic period.

Copenhagen shows strong political momentum for green mobility transitions as well. The city also had a revolt against urban highways in the 1970s, built a comprehensive network of cycle tracks, and the region has bicycle-friendly commuter rail system and an emerging network of cycling “super highways” reaching into the suburbs (Carstensen et al. 2015; Colville-Andersen 2018; Henderson and Gulsrud 2019). In 2019 Copenhagen’s new Metro Circle Line opened with higher-than expected ridership, and in 2022 car free housing was approved adjacent to the new line (Berlingske 2022). That same year Copenhagen’s Mayor and the Danish Minister of Transport were observed cycling in Copenhagen regularly, and were among the many politicians committing to policies reducing car use and expanding green mobility. Many urban planning narratives in other European cities, such as Berlin, London, and Paris, have been influenced by Copenhagen’s emphasis on cycling, and before the Covid-19 pandemic, over 60 percent of trips within the municipal boundary were on bicycles and Copenhagen had one of the lowest rates of car ownership (217 cars per 1000 persons) amongst peer cities in Europe (City of Copenhagen 2022).

Yet in both San Francisco and Copenhagen recent mode share data suggest that a green mobility transition is off track. Pre-Covid-19, driving made up less than half of daily trips in San Francisco, but by 2021 driving made up almost two thirds of trips, while public transport trips plummeted and cycling rates have languished (SFMTA 2021). The pandemic has no doubt impacted transit ridership, with remote work and public fear of crowded trains and buses still lingering. There is much uncertainty about the future of San Francisco’s downtown office core, which, compared to other US cities, has been slowest to recover from the Covid-19 Pandemic (Chapple 2022). This remains the case in early 2024.

Before the pandemic San Francisco and the metropolitan Bay Area (population 8 million) were significantly off course from meeting green mobility transition targets meant to reduce driving and related greenhouse gas emissions (CARB 2022). Cycling rates are especially dismal, with only four percent mode share in the San Francisco municipality and a paltry one and one-half percent in the region and across the state of California (SFMTA 2021; Caltrans 2016). This low rate of cycling is despite the region having a favorable climate for cycling year-round, most destinations in the metropolitan area are in topographically-flat settings, and many car trips in the Bay Area are under three to five miles, meaning there is huge potential for cycling. Meanwhile in San Francisco, walking and cycling has become less physically-safe due to the proliferation of ride hail and car-oriented e-commerce delivery (third party drivers using a personal car to deliver food or groceries to a household or business). Ride hail and delivery cars are often driven recklessly and drivers routinely park in bike lanes, crosswalks, bus stops, with little to no traffic law enforcement. Pre-pandemic upwards of fifteen percent of car trips in San Francisco were ride hail while the city has no data on the impact of delivery cars (SFCTA 2017, SFPD 2022a). Even as San Francisco exhibits continued low return rates in its downtown office core, by 2022 citywide congestion from private cars and commercial vehicles had reached the peak of 2019 (Cabanatuan 2022).

Copenhagen is also off-target. Like San Francisco, the city increased population in the decade before the pandemic struck, suggesting green mobility transition in a compact city was occurring. Yet population growth was accompanied by more household car ownership and more driving (City of Copenhagen 2022). Copenhagen had a climate plan goal of reducing car trips that either start or end in the city to twenty-five percent by 2025, but car trips were still above 30 percent in 2021. Cycling goals were off course as well, as cycling rates declined from 28 percent of all trips in 2019 to 21 percent in 2021 (the target for all trips either starting or ending in Copenhagen is 50 percent by 2025).

Tellingly, Copenhagen had failed to widen most of its cycle track network despite a goal to have three bicycle lane-widths on 80 percent of the city network by 2025. In 2022 Copenhagen’s cycle track network looked very much as it did in 2018, with little expansion or improvement, but continued public dissatisfaction with crowding and safety (City of Copenhagen 2022). Moreover, the national government legalized small motorized mopeds in cycle tracks. In 2022 motorized moped-based delivery services plied the cycle tracks at uncomfortably higher speeds, recklessly passing pedal-powered cyclists. Alarmed about the deteriorating cycling situation, local officials and city planners convened a “Bicycle Summit” in June 2022 to declare commitments to reinvigorating cycling (City of Copenhagen 2022). Yet just two months later the pro-cycling mayor had reversed her commitment to remove substantial amounts of on-street car parking. Ostensibly, the parking was supposed to be removed in order to widen and expand cycle tracks.

Complicating San Francisco and Copenhagen’s green mobility shortfalls, both cities have affordable housing crises. The housing crises undermine green mobility transition because low and middle-income households are displaced out of city centers where green mobility is more viable. Despite between 40,000 and 60,000 vacant housing units within the city limits, San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities to rent an apartment and is the second most expensive city in the United States to buy a home (San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst Office 2022; SFPD 2022b). The lack of adequate affordable housing stock results in dispersal of households into more car-dependent suburbs and the Bay Area has some of the longest average commute times by car with many workers displaced beyond the formal metropolitan boundary (Storper et al. 2015; Walker 2018). Although many real estate and development interests suggest a lack of adequate housing supply has led to inflated prices, high housing prices are not simply the result of a lack of supply. While making up roughly ten percent of the Bay Area workforce, the disproportionately high wages of technology workers escalate rents in the city and region, creating a bidding war for prime urban housing in San Francisco (Storper et al. 2015; Walker 2018)

Housing costs are pushing people away from Copenhagen as well and Copenhagen needs about 30,000–40,000 new affordable units by some estimates. Copenhagen was once a relatively affordable city for students, seniors, and lower wage workers. Now Copenhagen housing has become extremely expensive such that younger Danes cannot afford to live in Copenhagen. New apartments in the new Carlsberg Brewery redevelopment sell for $1.5 million and new apartments rent for $2100 to $2500 per month (in June, 2022). While the majority of the city council supports building social housing, costs are too high to purchase land. Large amounts of new housing are constructed in the new harbor redevelopment areas in the center of Copenhagen, but must be sold at market rate since sale of Harbor lands to private developers underwrites the Harbor infrastructure such as the Metro. Moreover, developers in the much-celebrated Harbor districts insist that car parking must be provided to attract more affluent residents, which makes market-rate redevelopment financially viable.

The nexus of a housing crisis coupled with green mobility suggests San Francisco and Copenhagen might be undergoing “carbon gentrification,” which occurs when housing prices rise in centrally-located urban areas like San Francisco and Copenhagen in part because middle- and upper-income residents’ preference for neighborhoods that offer the opportunity to walk, bike and ride transit in a mixed-use, dense urban environment, and as a means to lower their carbon footprint (Rice et al. 2019). Herein lies a conundrum for green mobility transitions. As affluent people seek out urban living near good cycling routes and public transit, the areas that are primed for cycling and new public transit schemes increase in market value, especially because of deregulation of housing through zoning exemptions or expedited permitting that overlooks environmental and social impacts (Stehlin 2019). Evictions and rent escalation in the housing market then push low and middle-class households out of the city (Schafran 2013; Urban Displacement Project 2022).

While lower-income residents might be displaced, many affluent new residents bring cars with them when moving into the city and demand more expensive housing with adjacent car parking. In San Francisco and other US cities this also involves increased use of private ride hail transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber or Lyft, and frequent use of app-based gig workers using their personal cars for delivering food and other retail items once purchased at shops. Many of the drivers for ride hail and delivery apps do not reside in the city, aggravating congestion further. This leads to more cars in the City, more demand for space for cars, less space for housing, and can eventually add to the overall cost of building housing since parking provision escalates housing costs. Particularly, as the outward displacement of lower income households results in more car dependency, political resentment towards the central cities and green mobility escalates (Mullen and Marsden 2018; Sheller 2018).

In the next sections I consider how San Francisco and Copenhagen’s green mobility agendas are supported or undermined in local political debates. I especially consider how political ideology is deployed to affect green mobility. Ideology, as broadly construed here, includes ideas about what the scope of government should be vis-à-vis green mobility transitions and policies shifting away from car dependency. Based on multi-year field-based, direct observation, interviewing, and other ethnographic methods in San Francisco (2005–2022) and Copenhagen (2015–2022), I propose that in both bellwether cities there is a three-way ideological struggle over green mobility transitions: Left/progressive, neoliberal, and right/conservative. Table 1 below outlines some key examples of policies operationalized from these politics ideologies. Tables 2 and 3 display how some of this politics of mobility has been operationalized in the post-pandemic (2022) recovery in the two case study cities.

Table 1 Politics of green mobility and three ideological poles
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Table 2 Examples of the politics of mobility in Copenhagen
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Table 3 Examples of the politics of mobility in San Francisco
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3 Left/Progressives and the Green Mobility Transition

In both San Francisco and Copenhagen there is a significant left/progressive faction in local politics promoting green mobility transitions (Henderson 2013; Henderson and Gulsrud 2019). This suggests there is political will to use an active government to reduce car spaces and to promote green mobility, through reallocating street space but also through various regulatory and finance policies that are redistributive in favor of green mobility, and for affordable housing.

The “left” in left/progressive refers to a distinctive articulation challenging the structure of capitalism, whether involving private property or corporate regulation, while “progressive” suggests belief in the ability of government and the public sector to work meaningfully for people and that public solutions should come before private. I emphasize left in this analysis because of a tendency, especially in the United States, to use the term “progressive” as a catch-all that obfuscates differences between left-leaning and neoliberal politics which might support cycling and public transit. For example, in the United States the political left and the neoliberals might both articulate a green mobility agenda of walkability, cycling, and public transit, but disagree about the extent of private sector involvement, labor politics, and pricing (Henderson 2013). In San Francisco and Copenhagen especially, the concept of progressive mobility has been articulated not just by the left, but market-oriented neoliberals who recognize green mobility is necessary for climate mitigation and sustaining land values in the urban core (Stehlin 2019; Henderson 2020). Left/progressives would endorse less private sector control, more leveling of wages and work conditions between labor and management, and redistributive forms of pricing.

Left/progressives believe that urban planning should be used to achieve social equity and that it is necessary to the orderly guidance of development; development cannot be left to the whims of capitalist speculation or be exclusively controlled by elites. Rather, there must be democracy in planning, and the right to the city must be shaped by democratic access to decisions about the value of land and who gets to live there. A hallmark of left/progressive mobility is that affordable and accessible housing is a form of green mobility, but that green mobility is a policy failure if accompanied by carbon gentrification. This aligns with broader notions of the right to the city whereby non-property-owning classes have the right to remain in cities that are becoming increasingly exclusive due to gentrification and displacement (Harvey 2012; Brenner et al. 2012; Beitel 2013). Essentially this translates into supporting affordable housing policies and social welfare programs that keep a range of different categories of people – unemployed or underemployed, artists, university students, lower-class service workers, renters, pensioners, and aspirational middle-class families seeking additional space in which to bring up their children – in the city and also include these people in decisions about the city.

San Francisco and Copenhagen both have a tradition of politically left/progressive politics and a citizenry that have critiqued and confronted capitalism. These include tenants’ rights and housing justice organizations, labor unions and some environmental organizations. Left/progressives in San Francisco and Copenhagen oppose the neoliberal agenda of real estate developers, thereby making land use and transportation policy central to left/progressive politics. Historically, left/progressives battled developers over urban renewal in San Francisco’s Western Addition and South of Market neighborhoods and were assertive in political debates over growth control and high-rises office buildings in downtown San Francisco (De Leon 1992; Hartman 2002). Beyond San Francisco, the Bay Area region had an environmental movement willing to challenge and critique capitalism and especially real estate developers (Walker 2007, 2018). In Copenhagen left/progressives critique the upscaling of housing in the city’s Harbor Districts. Historically they also defended the city’s well-built apartment building stock where the highest rates of cycling occur (Hansen et al. 2001; Larsen and Lund Hansen 2008; Andersen and Winther 2010; Baeten et al. 2015).

In San Francisco left/progressives held a majority on the city’s legislative body, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, until late 2022.Footnote 1 As will be discussed below, that changed after a controversial political redistricting process and the November 2022 election, and the left/progressive faction lost two seats on the Board of Supervisors to neoliberal and right/conservatives. Nonetheless green mobility did fare well on the ballot in the same election, notably a decades-long struggle over restricting car access in the city’s Golden Gate Park prevailed, while a counter measure to require car access in the park failed. The margin of the votes in favor of car free spaces was over 60 percent, reflecting that left/progressives voters aligned with the city’s neoliberal faction, which also supported car free spaces, and reflecting neoliberal -left overlap on green mobility. Also noteworthy, a transportation finance measure received the necessary supermajority of voters at the ballot, promising a partial funding source for green mobility and also suggesting a left/progressive-neoliberal alignment on these green mobility measures (right/conservative voters opposed car free spaces and the tax increase, while many neoliberals and left/progressive endorsed car free spaces and the transportation tax).

For San Francisco’s left/progressives the most significant victory in 2022 was the voter approval of a vacancy tax on empty housing units, of which experts estimated between 40,000 and 60,000 existed in the city in 2022, the highest vacancy rate in the any major US city (San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst Office 2022; US Census ACS 2021). This was considered a pointed win for affordable housing advocates and opponents of the aforementioned carbon gentrification, but especially for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and their political leader, who is also the furthest-left elected member on the Board of Supervisors. Known as Proposition M “the Empty Homes Tax,” the measure was put on the ballot through grassroots signature gathering and targeted multi-unit housing that was presumably vacant because speculators anticipated higher income renters in the technology sector. The measure was put to the ballot because, despite a majority, the left/progressive Board still had to contend with a neoliberal mayor who presumably would veto the measure if the Board approved it. In San Francisco it is difficult to overturn a mayor’s veto, and mayors control city departments including transportation, planning, and housing. To circumvent this political roadblock, left/progressives put the Empty Homes Tax on the ballot.

The campaign showed how democratic plebiscites can maneuver around entrenched wealthy interests in urban politics. It was supported by an array of tenants and affordable housing organizations but spearheaded by the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a youthful, relatively new political party centered around right to the city narratives and labor politics. The Empty Homes Tax was opposed by the neoliberal mayor, the City’s market rate apartment association, realtors, and neoliberal urban policy think tanks (San Francisco Department of Elections 2022a). While not explicitly transport, it resonated with the housing justice and carbon gentrification narratives that green mobility would be undermined if the city did not actively intervene with the housing market. The ballot measure’s author, local municipal councilor Dean Preston, frequently points out that affordable housing in the city center (which tax revenues would fund) contributes to green mobility by reducing car dependency. It should also be noted that a neoliberal housing measure that sought to deregulated the zoning and permitting process and which focused on market rate housing, failed on the same ballot despite millions of dollars in tech and real estate campaign funding (San Francisco Department of Elections 2022b; San Francisco Ethics Commission 2022).

In Copenhagen the majority on the municipal council supported green mobility transitions in the summer of 2022. The Social Democrats, the largest of nine parties represented on the council, shifted leftwards after losing seats to the left/progressive Red-Green Alliance in 2021. Frederiksberg, which is a separate municipality encircled by Copenhagen but otherwise similar in density and built environment, elected a green mobility majority on the council for the first time, as the Conservative Party lost power. As in the San Francisco example, a democratic plebiscite potentially defeated entrenched interests that stood as a barrier to green mobility, and it was expected that this would result in better cycling infrastructure.

The Red-Green Alliance is the second largest party in Copenhagen, and campaigns on removing significant amounts of on street parking and reallocating the space to green mobility – especially cycling. Because the party has a solid second-place footing in Copenhagen’s electoral process, the Red-Green Alliance has steered Copenhagen’s Technical and Environmental Committee, the municipal agency that plans for cycling, car traffic, and how street space is allocated (City of Copenhagen 2018).

In April of 2022 the Social Democratic Mayor, Sophie Haestrup-Andersen, made what was considered a radical commitment to parking removal and more car free spaces in the city. She continued this line in support of green mobility during the June 2022 Bicycle Summit in Copenhagen, which was attended by an array of elected and non-elected government officials from the city, region, and national governments, and which centered cycling as a pillar of climate policy in Copenhagen (City of Copenhagen 2022, 2022).

A June 2022 Declaration ratified by participants in the summit explicitly recognizes how the bicycle can potentially help solve key societal challenges and meet UN sustainable development goals including climate mitigation (City of Copenhagen 2022). The declaration was meant to kickstart elevated cooperation among the Danish Ministry of Transport, municipalities, regional representatives, universities and non-government organizations in order to increase cycling in Denmark to 20 percent of all trips by 2030. It was a response to census data indicating a decline of cycling across Denmark except in Copenhagen. The June 2022 summit, which was meant to ratify the declaration, the left/progressive leader of the Red-Green Alliance party stressed that Copenhagen needed address the plateau in cycling rates in Copenhagen by alleviating crowding on the city’s cycle tracks, widening much of the city network, creating more space or cyclists, and supporting more regional cycle superhighways (City of Copenhagen 2022).

The Social Democratic Mayor Haestrop-Anderson lamented how cars had overwhelmed Copenhagen in the 1950s to the 1980s, and displayed a suggestive photograph of protestors smashing a car during a pro-cycling demonstration in the late 1970s. She presented data from the city’s newly-published Annual Mobility Report when showed how car space took most of the public space in the city, that car parking took more space than cycle tracks, stressed that families with children should be independent of cars, and that the city should restructure roads to make it easier to choose cycling and make cycling a “way of life” in Copenhagen (City of Copenhagen 2022). Yet as we shall see in the next two sections, neoliberal and conservative politics remain formidable obstacles for green mobility transitions in Copenhagen, as well as in San Francisco.

4 Neoliberal Mobility

While largely concurring with the progressive/left on the severity of the climate crises and the need to reduce car dependency and promote green mobility, a neoliberal politics of mobility in San Francisco and Copenhagen departs from left/progressive policies on how housing, real estate, labor, and new corporate mobility technologies (such as Uber, app-based scooters, gig-delivery apps) should be regulated. Neoliberals promote market-based, deregulated housing and permissiveness for new technologies like app-based ride-hailing or driverless cars, while left/progressives promote highly-regulated housing production emphasizing affordability, as well as tighter regulation of privatized mobility technology and labor. Neoliberals prioritize green mobilities (whether conventional green mobility, transit-oriented housing, or ride hail apps) that maximize private profit accumulation, deregulate labor, and seek to steer government investment towards spaces of profit. To both the progressive/left and neoliberals, housing and technology are mobility, but there are deep political fissures between these factions regarding the role of government as well as the distribution of costs and benefits. Neoliberals seek to elevate private, investor-driven mobility schemes with government passively accommodating, while the left/progressives seek active government provision of green mobility and housing.

Neoliberals envision transportation shaped by pricing and markets rather than by regulation and collective action, consistent with the broader agenda of the privatization of space and market-based pricing of public access to space. In San Francisco a neoliberal politics of mobility, led by large technology companies, has imposed a privatized commuter bus system separate from the traditional public transport, ferrying technology workers from gentrified San Francisco neighborhoods to campuses many miles to the south of the city in Silicon Valley (Henderson 2018). A neoliberal politics of mobility also involves regulatory capture of public agencies responsible for regulating ride hail and other app-based forms of mobility such as electric scooters and e-bike hire schemes. Significantly, when ride hail first began to proliferate on San Francisco Streets in 2011, there was no regulatory framework for managing the impacts of these services. Soon after their appearance though, California’s Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which regulates transportation services such as railroads and pipelines, declared that the city of San Francisco could not access important locational data that would demonstrate how ride hail causes congestion and increases driving such as “deadheading” (empty vehicles returning from a passenger run) (Schaller 2021; SFPD 2022a). Meanwhile large tech companies persuaded the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that San Francisco does not have the right to deny permits for testing driverless cars on city streets, or access to driverless car data (Schneider 2022). The DMV, which licenses individual car drivers, invoked state-level jurisdictional control over these new computer-driven car schemes. To the consternation of left/progressives, the ride hail companies and e-commerce delivery firms also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a statewide campaign to define ride hail drivers as “partners” rather than as employees, preempting left/progressive efforts to organize ride hail workers into unions (McCullough 2022). In this case the statewide plebiscite, with huge sums of money infused by neoliberal tech firms, resulted in setbacks for the left/progressive seeking to regulate labor and new mobilities such as ride hail and computer driven cars.

Copenhagen also has a neoliberal politics of mobility centered on market-based and technocratic approaches. In this case, and probably to many readers’ surprise, the traditionally left-leaning Social Democratic Party, allied with Venstre (the traditional business-oriented Liberal party) promotes a politics of mobility in which transport policy should enhance market-oriented economic growth and especially private profit. Neoliberals in Copenhagen simultaneously celebrate the bicycle as an attractive green marketing instrument, but, distinctive from the left/progressives, the neoliberals also articulate policies accommodating more cars in Copenhagen. With limited street space this brings many contradictions and ambivalence into Copenhagen’s politics of mobility because bicycling is compromised for more car space.

In Copenhagen, left progressives were able to shape policy defining ride hailing as a formal taxi, but not without attempts by neoliberals to enable the gig-worker model in Denmark. Uber discontinued operating in Denmark once it became clear that operating as a regulated taxi would not provide profitability. Neoliberals in Copenhagen advocated, successfully, to deregulate Copenhagen’s regional bus system, Movia, and that system was also reorganized once the new Metro Ring line initiated service. In the Danish parliament neoliberals, allied with right/conservatives, reduced Denmark’s famous car tax, thus reduced the cost of car ownership, with predictable results that car ownership is increasing both in Denmark and in Copenhagen (City of Copenhagen 2022). Copenhagen’s neoliberals have also spearheaded plans for a new mega-project to fill more of the Harbor and develop new housing with parking aimed at attracting more affluent residents to the city. Known locally as Lynettholmen, the scheme is connected to a proposed Harbor Tunnel and Eastern Ring tunnel bypass which would realize a long sought complete motorway ring around Copenhagen (Henderson and Gulsrud 2019). Notably this express roadway would connect Copenhagen’s affluent northern suburbs, the “Gold Coast” or “Whiskey Belt,” to the airport. Ironically these land development and highway schemes have been promoted by neoliberals as a climate mitigation and adaptation scheme. Building new housing in the city brings affluent workers into the city, presumably closer to their jobs, with new Metro extensions connecting the development to the city. Meanwhile the climate adaptation narrative includes using landfill from tunneling as part of a new sea-surge barrier which would defend Copenhagen from sea level rise.

In both San Francisco and Copenhagen, neoliberals ally with right/conservative factions in pursuit of a broader revanchist politics (elite recapture of urban space from opponents and the underclasses) of taking back the cities from left/progressives, ensuring upscale housing and parking for more affluent residents, and reaping profit from the valuable real estate connected to the urban core and mega-transportation projects like the Central Subway in San Francisco and the Metro and proposed harbor tunnel and eastern ring road in Copenhagen.

Revanchist politics was especially pronounced in San Francisco during 2022. Reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, narratives about chronic homelessness, street crime, public safety and deregulation of housing dominated the city’s political landscape. Neoliberals allied with right/conservatives to shape San Francisco’s map of political representation in April 2022, packing left/progressives into districts already heavily left/progressive, resulting in left/progressive voter strength being weakened in other districts. In contentious public hearings San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors map of representation was reorganized to favor neoliberal and right/conservative outcomes. In November 2022 left/progressives lost two seats on the Board, reducing their previous super-majority to a slim majority that cannot overturn vetoes by the City’s neoliberal mayor.

While political redistricting might seem distant from the politics of green mobility transitions, it has significant impacts. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors (the city’s municipal council) is the gatekeeper for most of the city’s transportation and land use policy, from shaping how transit is financed to whether parking is included in new housing developments. In both San Francisco and Copenhagen neoliberals have also proven to be politically tactful in recruiting right/conservative voters by using revanchist narratives (such as making the city clean and safe from unhoused people) that have significant outcomes in the politics of green mobility, so it is worth taking a moment to discuss the right/conservative politics of mobility.

5 Right/Conservative Politics of Mobility

Right/conservative narratives about mobility fuse the automobile with politically conservative notions of individualism and personal responsibility with right-leaning populist discourses that essentialize the car as natural, inevitable, and especially necessary for families with children (Henderson 2006, 2013; Henderson and Gulsrud 2019). The role of government, as with the left/progressives, is active. Yet the policies are meant to sustain and expand the car system, through the provision of infrastructure and through reducing the cost of driving. For the right/conservatives, government should guarantee and accommodate automobility and not seek to discourage it or make it more expensive. Cycling certainly has an appeal in its frugality, individual propulsion, and independent streak, but cycling spaces should not be made available at the expense of car spaces.

Looking from outside in, San Francisco nor Copenhagen are considered bastions of right wing or politically conservative politics, but both cities’ green mobility strategies are often hamstrung by right/conservative visions of unfettered car access and a vision of car-centric housing. Right/conservative political power is largely based outside the municipalities of San Francisco and Copenhagen. For example, In San Francisco state mandated thresholds require supermajorities for new transportation taxes, stemming from a conservative political backlash against government expansion, making it difficult to raise left/progressive forms of taxes on wealthy corporations and land owners. Because the national government exerts power over the city in terms of taxes, transport finance and other important policies such as parking, right/conservative politics permeates Copenhagen’s politics of green mobility and the right/conservatives frequently ally themselves with the Neoliberals on policies that preserve and expand car access at the expense of cycling and green mobility. In Copenhagen progressive parking fees and congestion pricing (ostensibly a neoliberal pricing scheme) have been diluted by right/conservative politics in the National government (Henderson and Gulsrud 2019). In the 2021 elections for Copenhagen, right/conservatives campaigned on opposition to street parking removal and regulation. The Conservative Party prevailed in the election, gaining several more seats on the City Council.

In San Francisco right/conservatives placed objections to pandemic-related car free spaces on the November 2022 ballot. Known as “Prop I” this was an effort to re-open parts of Golden Gate Park to private cars, and to stop proposals for car free spaces along the city’s Oceanfront promenade (San Francisco Department of Elections 2022a, b; San Francisco Ethics Commission 2022). While the proposal to preserve automobility on the Oceanfront failed, it did complicate electoral politics on the Board of Supervisors, contributing to the election of a right/conservative leaning supervisor over a left/progressive who endorsed car free spaces, tilting the Board on the whole to the right. This will have implications in the near future, as the city grapples with sea level rise and the Oceanfront roadway is potentially submerged or washed away. Right/conservatives, with a new representative in that section of the city, have asserted that the city should keep the roadway open to traffic by raising and rebuilding vulnerable segments.

Left/progressives, allied with neoliberals on this particular issue along the Oceanfront, seek to abandon the roadway while enhancing pedestrian and cycling access along the Oceanfront. Similarly, left/progressives and neoliberals beat back the right/conservative attempt to reopen parts of Golden Gate Park to car traffic. In this instance, it was neoliberal technology fortunes that financed the campaign, known as “Prop J: Keep John F Kennedy Drive Car Free,” but the strongest voter support for the car free space came from left/progressive voting precincts (San Francisco Ethics Commission 2022). In a high-publicity campaign and endorsement by neoliberal media and prominent organizations, Prop J prevailed and car free spaces were reaffirmed in Golden Gate Park, a truly transformative and hopeful post-Pandemic outcome for San Francisco’s green mobility transition.

Yet revanchist politics means San Francisco’s neoliberal elite continue a politics that leverages right/conservative resentment and anger when suitable to achieving neoliberal goals. One of the outcomes of the 2022 political season in San Francisco is an emboldened neoliberal-right/conservative axis of political power that is directing campaign funds and political capital into defeating left/progressives in the next election cycle in 2024. Known as the Coalition to Grow San Francisco, and founded by disaffected technology managers upset about litter, crime, homelessness, and regulation of housing supply, Grow SF is a new revanchist organization centered on “taking back the city” from left/progressives. Although allied with the “Yes in my Backyard” (YIMBY) pro-market housing organization, and comprised of a small but wealthy group of software engineers and product managers, from technology corporations like Apple, Amazon, Google, Lyft, Twitter, Grow SF engages in explicitly right/conservative rhetoric to mobilize resentful homeowners and, increasingly, racialized Asian American voters who hold conservative social and economic political views but are a growing voting block in the city.

Using online organization, online petitions, online (email) newsletters and videos and producing voter guides to influence local elections Grow SF promotes a neoliberal and right/conservative mobility and housing vision (Mitchell 2022; Grow SF 2022a, b). Grow SF had an outsized role in recalling three left/progressive school board members early in 2022, a campaign that stoked Asian prejudices towards African Americans and left/progressive education reform in the city’s public schools. The organization next helped spearhead a racialized recall of the city’s left/progressive district attorney, who advocated police reforms in the wake of a spate of high-profile police killings of unarmed African Americans in the US. The recall was successful and especially mobilized right/conservative voters. Described as a new conservative movement in San Francisco, the momentum for the recalls undercut a transportation finance measure on the same ballot in June 2022.

Briefly, the transport finance measure needed a super-majority of sixty-six and two-thirds votes to pass, it got sixty-five percent, and so failed by a slim margin in a low-turnout June election. In San Francisco low voter turnout usually favors right/conservative politics, and in that election, the recall of the district attorney drew right/conservative voters including many Asian voters on the City’s west side (Eskenazi 2022). The recall campaign contained vitriolic racialized anti-urban rhetoric describing San Francisco as filthy, dysfunctional, broken, and crime-ridden, largely due to left/progressive politics. Voters who supported the recall were likely also to vote against the transportation bond, which would have primarily funded public transit. The city’s public transit, Muni, represented to some on the right/conservative spectrum, the dysfunction of the city. This suggests a “secessionist automobility” (retreating to car-based mobility, shielding drivers from annoyances in the city) is potentially gaining traction in post-pandemic San Francisco (Henderson 2006). More San Franciscans with the means might be “seceding” to their cars and abandoning Muni and transit, voting down finance measures, leading to a spiral of public disinvestment and privatization of mobility.

It remains to be seen how an outfit like Grow SF, well-endowed as it is with technological prowess and money, will maneuver between a neoliberal green mobility vision and a right/conservative hostility to green mobility. Grow SF claims to champion cycling, especially private bike hire schemes, supported the car free ballot measure in November 2022, advocates for new railway lines that would crisscross the city and Bay, while also centering the deregulation of housing to streamline and fast-track more multi-family, higher density housing throughout San Francisco and emphasizing the west side of the city – exactly where right/conservatives resist new housing (Grow SF 2022a, b).

In Copenhagen, while not as vitriolic, a neoliberal – right/conservative axis is also evident in the politics of green mobility. While neoliberals celebrate and market Copenhagen’s cycling culture as a form of branding, they align with Conservatives on protecting street parking from left/progressive proposals to reallocate to cycle tracks. At the national level, the neoliberal-right/conservative axis used jurisdictional precedent to dilute left/progressive proposals to increase parking charges meant to discourage car use. The national government defined the parking charges as a new tax and claimed municipalities can only levy new taxes with approval from the national government. The Danish government also claims jurisdiction over setting speed limits on roadways, and the national police have blocked several traffic calming and cycling proposals in Copenhagen, arguing that the city must accommodate more cars instead (Henderson and Gulsrud 2019).

6 Conclusion

Promoting and implementing green mobility compels us to analyze the structure of power in transportation decision-making, not to discourage but to find openings and opportunities to implement a socially-just green mobility (with adequate housing) through local politics. By comparing the politics of mobility in San Francisco and Copenhagen the project of a green mobility transition is shown to be deeply political. Anyone seeking green mobility transitions in cities should take this politics into account and understand the ideologies informing the power struggles and controversies over green mobility transitions. In many ways, green mobility challenges incumbent power structures centered on automobilities, but can also be co-opted to reinforce power, for example by neoliberal interests seeking to protect investments from climate disasters. As the climate justice movement expands and demands meaningful change there is opportunity to strengthen the alignment with green mobility by focusing on removing State and National barriers to city green mobility plans, as well as scaling-up green mobility to metropolitan and regional geographies (such as regional rail, bicycle superhighways, and regional bike sharing, housing and transit-oriented development, and fair share housing and tax revenue).

It is especially notable that in many cities around the world similar debates about green mobility transitions are permeated by strong currents of left/progressive politics which aligns with broader climate justice movements that center intergenerational equity and those most vulnerable to climate change impacts. For example, Paris, France, has captured the imagination of green mobility advocates throughout Europe and North America as the 2024 Summer Olympics approached. Led by left/progressive socialist mayor and allies on the city council an aggressive outlay of a cohesive cycling system is being deployed but there is also political backlash, particularly from the city’ more conservative arrondissements (Henderson and Loubière 2024). Perhaps it is cliché to say that all politics is local, but implementing a just green mobility transition means advocates for mobility and climate justice (and including scientists) must engage urban politics as well.