Registration on this page is to watch the event online. To attend in-person at the Oxford Martin School, please register at https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/roadkill

Join Arthur Kay and Professor Dame Henrietta L. Moore for a provocative discussion on how our dependence on cars has shaped not only our cities and infrastructure, but our economies, health, and freedoms. Based on the ideas explored in their new work, this talk will interrogate the hidden costs of car-centric development and propose bold, systems-level alternatives to rethink how we move, live, and thrive in a climate-constrained world.

For more than a century, the car has been a symbol of freedom and progress. But what if that promise has come at a cost we can no longer afford? In this Oxford Martin School event, clean tech entrepreneur Arthur Kay and global prosperity theorist Professor Dame Henrietta L. Moore explore how our relationship with the car has distorted everything from land use and energy systems to public health and economic equity. Drawing on their collaborative research, they argue that confronting car dependency isn’t just about transport, it’s about rethinking the very structure of modern life.

Professor Dame Henrietta L. Moore is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity and the Chair in Culture Philosophy and Design at University College London. A leading global thinker on prosperity, Professor Moore challenges traditional economic models of growth arguing that to flourish communities, businesses and governments need to engage with diversity and work within environmental limits. Her recent work focuses on new economic models, Universal Basic Services and secure livelihoods, Artificial Intelligence, environmental degradation and decarbonisation, displaced people and the gender pay gap.

Professor Moore is co-chairing the British Academy Sustainability and Social Value Working Group, which, in collaboration with His Majesty's Treasury and the Department for Business and Trade, is part of a larger strategy that has recently produced a new policy programme that explores the foundations of a sustainable and holistic strategy, addressing fundamental questions about economic growth and development in the UK. In 2023, she collaborated in an advisory role on the ‘Land for Good: 2023 Southwark Land Commission’, a report aimed at putting forward wide-ranging and ambitious proposals for land use in the Southwark Council, which could be better utilised to empower local communities. In 2019 she was appointed as Advisory Panel Member for Dasgupta Review of the Economics of Biodiversity. She also served as President of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and on the Scientific Advisory Council at DEFRA, UK Government.

In 2016 Professor Moore was made Dame Commander for the British Empire for contribution to social sciences, services to business, policy and the arts. She was formerly William Wyse Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, the LSE Deputy Director for research and external relations, and Director of the Gender Institute at the LSE. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Academician of the Learned Societies for the Social Sciences, and a Member of the Institute of Directors.

Arthur Kay is a Director at Innovo, and the founder of several urban design and technology companies, including the clean technology company – Bio-bean; the design, technology, and development company – Skyroom; and the £100 million ESG private equity fund – The Key Worker Homes Fund.


Arthur is an advisor to various organisations focused on building sustainable cities, including serving as a Board Member of Transport for London (TfL), the Museum of the Home, and Fast Forward 2030. He holds academic appointments, as Hon. Associate Professor and Entrepreneur in Residence at UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, and has lectured at MIT, LSE, NYU, and Imperial.

Book talk: 'Roadkill : Unveiling The True Cost Of Our Toxic Relationship With Cars'