the future of city logistics in Japan, orGragnani et al.’s similar assessment forItaly); from broadly focused (e.g.,Segalou et al.’s contribution on theenvironmental assessment of the ur-ban goods movement, or Rijsenbrij’spaper on new concepts for city logis-tics) to a series of case study ap-proaches at the individual city level(i.e., London, Seville, Tokyo, Kassel,Brussels Capital Region, Zurich, Por-to, etc.). Although each of these pa-pers has added value to betterunderstanding the issue of city logisticsI fail to see why the editors did nottake the opportunity to better outlineand structure these different chapters.Why not use the clear categorizationput forward in the ‘‘Visions for citylogistics’’ chapter as a guiding princi-ple to structure the book? Instead,chapters on environmental issues forinstance, or the effect of e-commerceon city logistics, or new conceptualiza-tions, or model building, or mere casestudies, are mixed together. Arrangingthe papers by topic would certainly im-prove the book’s readability.

Let me finish with three closingcomments. First, a most interestingchapter is Chapter 31, by the Inter-modal Linkages Working Group onUrban Freight Logistics of the OECD.It summarises the measures taken in anumber of cities as put forward in theOECD report on ‘Delivering theGoods – 21st Century Challenges forUrban Goods Transport’. It is unclearto me why this chapter was not given amore prominent place – now it isplaced (lost?) somewhere at the endof the book – since it contains a num-ber of very useful policy recommenda-tions regarding implementing citylogistics schemes. Second, I find thebook’s title, Logistics Systems for Sus-

tainable Cities, somewhat confusing. Itseems as if the main emphasis is oncity logistics schemes in relationshipto urban sustainability. Clearly, thisrelationship is evident, but the book’scontent is much more widely focused.Third, please provide for upcomingeditions of ICL proceedings publica-tions a subject index.

Frank WitloxGhent University,

Department of Geography,Krijgslaan 281, S8,

B9000 Gent,

BelgiumTel.: +32 9 264 45 53;

fax: +32 9 264 49 85

E-mail address: frank.witlox@ugent.be

References

Taniguchi, E, Thompson, R G, Yamada, T,1999. Modelling city logistics. In: Tan-iguchi, E., Thompson, R.G. (Eds.), CityLogistics I. Institute of Systems ScienceResearch, Kyoto, pp. 3–37.

doi:10.1016/j.cities.2007.07.002

Traffic & Transportation Psychology:Theory and Application, ElsevierRothengatter, Talib, Huguenin,

Raphael D (Eds.), (2004)

The usual case with edited volumes isthat they tend to originate from aselection of reviewed papers initiallypresented at an international confer-ence. The conference in question hereis the second International Confer-ence of Traffic and Transport Psychol-ogy, or ICTTP, held in Bern(Switzerland) in September 2000.The first ICTTP took place in Valen-cia (Spain) in May 1996, and the thirdICTTP was held in Nottingham (UK)in September 2004. All three confer-ences resulted in separate edited vol-umes (Rothengatter and CarbobellVaya, 1997; Underwood, 2005), allhaving the same structure and con-tents, book cover and even identicaltitles: Traffic & Transport Psychology:Theory and Application.

Editors Talib Rothengatter andRaphael Huguenin have put in a lotof effort to produce this 2004 datedvolume, which aspires to provide abalanced and representative state-of-the-art overview of the major develop-ments and trends in Traffic and Trans-port Psychology, with a clear emphasison the issue of driving a road vehicle(cars, public transport, trucks, bikes,etc.). Hence, this volume fits withinthe research frames of ‘behaviourand accident research’ and ‘accidentprevention and improvement of trafficsafety’. It has less to do—althoughsome chapters briefly touch uponthese issues—with research and coun-selling in questions of mobility, trans-

port economy and engineering,vehicle construction and design, psy-chological assessment and counsellingand rehabilitation, or rail and flightpsychology. The weight is thereforemore on traffic psychology (‘studyingthe behaviour of road users and thepsychological processes underlyingthat behaviour’, Rothengatter, 1997,p. 223), than on transportation (ormobility) psychology because thenthe focus would be more on mobilityissues, individual and social factors inthe movement of people and goods,and travel demand management.

In my reading of the book, the edi-tors more or less successfully managedto group together the 47 different con-tributions (originated from key notes,paper and poster presentations), writ-ten by a total of 106 (!) differentauthors, into consistent parts. Obvi-ously, a chapter-by-chapter reviewwould lead us too far, and moreoverwould be of little value. The book con-tains four parts: a general introduction(Part I) and sections on road users(Part II), safety (Part III) and mobilityand environmental issues (Part IV).Part I (containing 4 chapters) startswith a brief general introduction bythe editors setting the overall scene,plus three chapters introducing differ-ent basic approaches and integratedmodels as well as general theoriesand their implementation into Trafficand Transport Psychology. The sec-ond part (containing 20 chapters) hasas its focus road user characteristicsand the driver. It is further subdividedinto aspects concerning cognition andperformance, social and differentialpsychology, and impairment. Eachsubsection starts with a useful over-view chapter, but the contributionsthat follow differ largely in theoreticalrigour and area of application (rang-ing from Finland to China). The thirdpart (containing 15 chapters) is cen-tred on safety issues, with specificattention to driver information andsupport systems, enforcement andtraining, and selection and rehabilita-tion. Here an identical approach asin part II is applied. The final part,part IV (containing 8 chapters), dis-cusses developments in relation tobetter mobility and the protection ofthe environment. This part has regret-tably no general overview chapter.

Book reviews

463

My overall judgement of the book isfairly positive. It is indeed difficult tobundle very different papers into oneconsistent book. Less attractive, how-ever, is the 4-year lag between the orga-nization of the conference and thepublication of the book, and this is re-flected in the references. Not a singlechapter of the 47 included contains areference dating later than the year2001, which suggests that the contribut-ing authors are probably not to blamefor the delay, but that other factorsare responsible. This is a bit surprising,given that the two other volumes thatresulted from the ICTTP conferenceswere all published one year after theconference was organised. Also, animportant weakness is the lack of sub-ject and author indexes, which is partic-ularly a problem here given thediversity of the chapters. Finally, I can-not understand why there is no list ofauthor addresses and affiliations.

Frank WitloxGhent University

Department of GeographyKrijgslaan 281,

S8 B9000 Gent,Belgium

Tel.: +32 9 264 45 53;

fax: +32 9 264 49 85E-mail address: frank.witlox@ugent.be

References

Rothengatter, T, 1997. Psychologicalaspects of road user behaviour. AppliedPsychology: An International Review46 (3), 223–234.

Rothengatter, T., Carbobell Vaya, E.(Eds.), 1997. Traffic and TransportPsychology. Theory and Application.Elsevier, Oxford.

Underwood, G. (Ed.), 2005. Traffic andTransport Psychology. Theory andApplication. Elsevier, Oxford.

doi:10.1016/j.cities.2007.07.004

Altering Practices: Feminist Politics

and Poetics of Space

Petrescu, Doina (Ed.) Routledge, NewYork and London (2007)

The essays collected in this importantvolume bring a feminist challenge toarchitecture—admittedly a male-dom-inated field—with new and dialecti-cally engaging conversations about

space, difference, and praxis. The 18chapters that make up this publicationevolved from the 1999 Alterities con-ference that took place in Paris. DoinaPetrescu sets the tone in chapter one,‘‘Altering Practices,’’ framing the col-lection within the tropes of ‘‘becom-ing’’ and ‘‘yearning’’: ‘‘[T]he Alteringpractices,’’ Petrescu argues in para-phrasing bell hooks, ‘‘are about what

we want the world to become. . .’’ (4,italics in original). Following this, Pet-rescu brings her insight as editor tothis volume to identify recurringthemes, such as collective reconstruc-tions, otherhow, ways of (be)longing,‘poetics of relation’ and the power toproduce difference, ‘twarting,’ micro-strategies and minor architectures,and ‘politics’ and poetics of (dis)loca-tion. Petrescu skillfully avoided limita-tion via categorization by discussinghow all of these essays flow across cat-egorical borders, thereby emphasizinga sense of connectedness between theideas and positions of each of theauthors.

The collection begins with a seriesof reflective essays about feministpractice. ‘‘Taking Place and AlteringIt’’ by Teresa Hoskyns and Doina Pet-rescu discusses the state of feministarchitecture surrounding the ParisAlterities conference. By theorizingarchitectural practice in terms of fluidspace, they propose a feminist praxisthat physically and socially intervenesin power relationships, thereby, quiteliterally, taking a place and changingit. Both Matrix and muf, two feministcollectives from the 1980s and 1990s,outline how this praxis can be instanti-ated. Julia Dwyer and Anne Thorne’s‘‘Evaluating Matrix: Notes from Insi-der the Collective’’ and muf’s ‘‘AnInvisible Privilege’’ articulate a practi-cal feminist theory based on the beliefthat architecture can respond to andaffect social relations, providingexamples of their architectural workin localized communities. Both ofthese groups emphasized the impor-tance of collaboration in their ap-proach—with client-groups, students,builders, children, and among one an-other—thereby challenging the idea ofa single authoritative architect whilesimultaneously promoting the sharingof ideas, knowledge, skills, and thelike. To this everyday practice, muf

added an additional goal of challeng-ing the invisible privilege of men inthe architectural field by bringing inti-mate and tactile details to them. Inthis way, muf works to fulfill one ofthe promises of feminism: Reinvestingspace with desire and pleasure.

Anne Querrien brings the compli-cation of the post-industrial town todesire and public space in ‘‘AlteringEvents in Architecture.’’ Querrien ar-gues that industrial public space ismade up of ‘‘ways’’ (walkway, freeway,school-way, store-way, etc.) that en-able people to traverse space quicklyfor maximum efficiency. The post-industrial town, conversely, is madeup of leisurely scapes where peoplecan hang out. A problem arises whenurban developers insist on the tried-and-true methods of industrial urbandesigns, which leads to isolation andoverwork and forces the creation ofthe private. As such, like Matrix andmuf, Querrien argues for the need tomake public space one’s own, collaps-ing the public and the private into a hy-brid creation that welcomes difference.This power to reproduce and evenembrace difference via fluid bound-aries is taken up by Helen Stratfordin ‘‘Micro-Strategies of Resistance.’’In theorizing resistance to dominantmasculinist hegemonic structures,Stratford writes, ‘‘[. . .] resistance isnot restrained to immutable bound-aries, it aims to search for pertinentand progressive ways of consideringthe fluidity of boundaries among peo-ple which make it possible for differ-ence to be embraced’’ (133). Stratfordsees resistance achievable via micro-strategies because they enable micro-points from which people can createspace to resist fragmented and diffusepower structures and via nomadismbecause it resists fixity and closure.Like Stratford, Jane Rendell exploresthe feminist possibilities of nomadismin ‘‘How to Take Place (but Only forso Long).’’ Distances are physical andpsychic, emotional and mental; thus,willing movement through space canbe a positive experience because it al-lows for new connections and transfor-mations. She reimagines Irigaray’sconcept of spinning for its potentialto de-stabilize and liberate a personfrom a fixed place, and that when thespinning stops, she needs to ‘‘take

Book reviews

464