Cities: Crisis-Driven Pattern Breaks

There I was in Paris last week,  pretty much minding my business which for the most part consisted of leading a last-semester international  MBA class into the wilds of Sustainable Development, Economy and Society, and my eye fell on a little blue book in the reception area. The title, “Crises: La Solution des Villes” was close enough to the topics that occupy our attention here, that I opened it and started to read. And what I found in the very first chapter was a highly engaging account of how a certain number of European cities, who back in the sixties and seventies were in deep pain mainly as a result of the entirely unanticipated process of deindustrialization, decided to react and turn their desperate situations around. And in the process, separately and together, began to reinvent the paradigm of the 21st century city.

SDES Master Class: June 6-8, Paris

This is the third Master Class in the Sustainable Development, Economy and Society series  being given for last-year MBA students at the Institut Supérieur de Gestion in Paris from 6-8 June. This year’s Master Class is led by Eric Britton as Distinguished Visiting Professor and is supported by an extensive e-seminar website which you can freely access at 
http://sustainabiltyseminar.wordpress.com/
.

Inside World: what could be more

what could be more dangerous
than outraged poor person
with long knife

A Short History of Ridesharing in North America

This excellent review of ridesharing history, practices, trends and issues in North America was recently presented by its author, Susan Shaheen of the University of California, Berkeley, to a Webinar organised by the Ridesharing Institute. You may want to give particular attention to her last two pages which are more forward looking: Key Questions from Workshop and Factors to Consider.

Learning curves

This is a wonderful little video  that looks without any pretense and with limited means at a local roundabout project on Main Street USA. It is worth your attention on at least three grounds. First, because roundabouts make great good sense in cities and we need a lot more of them.  Second, they offer real technical challenges that need to be met. And finally, they are organic, i.e., learning projects.  The wisdom of the young team behind this project is to be commended, and emulated.

Get in (It’s that simple)

We have of late not been giving the necessary attention due to the thousand blossoms of ridesharing, an absolute essential ingredient in the New Mobility Mix of services for our cities, and countryside.  To start to make up for this embarrassing lapse, here is the text of an editorial from last week’s New Zealand Herald in Auckland New Zealand.

The Sharing Economy Comes Home to World Streets

*  Click here for our 226 articles on sharing.

One more reason

Archives: The dangers of shared taxis (2005)

Discussion from archives of the New Mobility Agenda as recorded on  Sustran Global South on 16 Nov. 2005. Simon Norton writes from Cambridge, UK:

When one introduces shared taxis one has to guard against the danger that they take people off buses and trains (or off their feet or bikes) rather than off cars. If so they will actually increase the number of motor vehicles, and furthermore unless the system is transparent and available to casual users (i.e. one doesn’t have to live in the area, belong to a club, or book ages in advance) they may prevent the development of genuinely comprehensive mobility systems.”

Archives: Putting the Wikipedia to work for the New Mobility Agenda. (And for you.)

From the beginning in the late eighties the New Mobility Agenda was conceived as a sharing, communications and didactic tool zeroing in on our chosen topic from a number of angles,  and over the last five years World Streets has continued in this tradition. The following working paper comes from the Sustran archives, and dates back to the opening days of 2007. Even today years later it still is useful if for nothing else as a checklist and reminder of what one concerned citizen felt was worth knowing about as we make important policy decisions in our sector.

Inside world: whatever we do surely the planet

whatever we do
surely the planet will survive
doubts about mankind

Inside world: on bus dog at my knee

on bus dog at my knee
waiting for sweet voice
to tell when we arrive

Why support World Streets?

Inside world: getting on bus old legs hurting

getting on the bus
old legs hurting with each step
then the driver smiled

Weekend musing: Cycling your mind

One of the main strategic underpinnings of New Mobility Agenda, and certainly of everything that appears here in World Streets, is that if we are ever to reinvent transportation in our cities, as we so badly need to do, we must in the process free ourselves from our old ways of seeing, thinking and doing things. For example, when you think “bicycle” . . .

New Mobility Consult: Your Partners for Sustainable Mobility

One way of looking at World Streets and its worldwide network of diverse international partners, publications, programs, multiple networks, focus groups. continuing research and professional activity in our chosen field is to see it as the visible tip of a very large iceberg of experience and competence available to be put to work on your projects and programs.  The greater part of this considerable mass is the New Mobility Agenda, an open collaborative program that has been dedicated to sustainable transport policy and practice since 1988.   Here are some of the ways in which this international competence can be put to work for your city, agency or firm in 2013 and beyond.

Globalization has hit the dinosaurs of the UN

Time for a reboot?

I recently read with some sadness — but little surprise — an announcement that France has decided to withdraw from The United Nations  Industrial Development Organization.  Joining earlier decisions by Australia, Canada and the US to do the same, and reportedly soon to be joined by Britain. The diplomatic reasons cited by the French government were financial constraints, but there had to be more about it than that.

Speeding to a standstill

This is an interesting and useful article. The topic is timely and important. The approach and methodology are interesting.  And in it  you will find a certain number of points  which I regard as timely, important and very much worth saying again and again. In a couple of instances I find their conclusions and interpretations a bit puzzling, but let me keep them to myself for now and avoid getting between you and the authors. It’s time to step aside and let them speak for themselves.

Invisibility: Just because you can’t see it (or prefer not to) doesn’t mean . . .

  

You are warmly invited to comment on all or any of these.

Weekend Musing: One more reason why Africa does not matter

“In a fair world it should be unthinkable to ignore the needs of close to one billion of the poorest people on the earth living in its second-largest and second most-populous continent. A part of the world with already one-third of the population living in cities, most of whom in slums, and with a flow of people from the country side continuing at record rates.”

- From Cities, Transport and Equity in Africa: Unasked Questions