Missing in action: “Zone 30″ in WP in English???

Oops. I have been asked to open the plenary  on “Urban mobility: Achieving social efficiency” at next week’s Smart Cities conference in Barcelona (full details on which available here , and one of the central themes of the talk is the high importance of taking a strategic approach to slowing down and smoothing traffic in cities.   As part of my due diligence I decided to check out the Zone 30 and Twenty is Plenty entries in Wikipedia. Where I found to my disappointment: (a) that there was no entry on Zone 30 in English (and if in French, German, Italian and Dutch, not (yet) in Portuguese, Spanish, etc.) and (b) nothing at all on the important Twenty Is Plenty program out of the UK.

Carsharing competition heats up (and you better watch out)

Paris, France. 19 Mar 2001 8:00 AM

Spring was coming on fast at the New Mobility shop in Paris, we were working under pressure to get world-wide support for the first-ever  “Earth Car Free Day” due for 19 April,  together with the people from the Earth Day Network, then in Seattle Washington.  As part of this effort, we produced a series of articles introducing different new mobility concepts and strategies , which you can see here. And of these the most widely read had to do with carsharing and a gentleman from the Mafia. Read on.

Do you cycle in your city? If so would you mind . . .

. . . taking a minute to share with us in 2 or 3 pensive lines your main reasons for getting out on the street with your bike.  To accomplish this all you have to do is to click to the informal World City Bike Forum which you can find on Facebook here .  Here are a few samples to get you in the mood:

Weekend musing: The bicycle helmet rears its ugly head

Under our World City Bike program we have for several years now been looking at the yes/no sudden-death helmet issue in the context of public bike projects .  If you click here you will find several postings that try to report in a balanced manner (to the extent possible) on the issues, trade-offs and implications of creating legal requirements that force all cyclists to use helmets. An absolutely well-intentioned position which has turned out to be no less than the cold hand of death strangling nascent public bicycle projects in various projects around the world. Pity to spend all that public money on a nice bike sharing system and then find that they are not being widely used. In the event, here are a handful of short videos from YouTube that take a pretty good whack at it from several perspectives. Have a look and decide for yourself.

More on public, private and social space. Andrew Curry reports from occupied London – Part II

“A crisis if a terrible thing to waste”. And here we have with the Occupy movements that are sweeping Europe and North America, a public crisis that is also of a sudden taking place on “public land”.  And then suddenly and with no advance notice everything starts to morph and the issues involved start to encompass not only the continuing unchecked egregious abuses of the financial community but also important (for democracy) issues of public and social space — one of our main concerns here at World Streets. Let’s make sure that we do not miss the opportunity behind this crisis.  So we pass the word  back to Andrew Curry so that he can build further on his article under this title earlier this week.

More on public, private and social space. Dispatch from Andrew Curry reporting from occupied London

We think quite a lot about space  here at World Streets, from at least two perspectives. First and naturally enough given that the goal of transportation/mobility/access is specifically to find ways to bridge  space, in one way or another, and for better or for worse.  And second, because when we get to cities, and given the bulimic, gorging nature of our present dominant transportation options, space starts to get in very short supply (the so-called elephant in the bedroom syndrome).  But it is not just space per se; no less important is the quality of public and social space in cities that is (or at least should be) a continuing concern of policy makers and citizens alike.  So when we spotted a thoughtful piece such as Andrew Curry’s short article that follows, we are glad to be able to share it with our readers.

Readers’ Choice: World Streets “Top Twenty”: 2010 – 2011

When we post an article in World Streets, as we do on most weekday mornings, we are always extremely careful about our selection of topic and the manner in which we present it for our busy readers. But once the day’s feature has its hours of front page glory and takes its place in our ever-expanding database, which at this point consists of more than a thousand original pieces by more than a hundred no less original collaborators worldwide, it often comes as a surprise to us which postings turn out to get most attention from our readers.  Which article is going to have several thousands of readers, and which just a trickle? Fortunately, life in the twenty-first century being what it is, we are able to track readership and are now able to share with you this listing of the “top twenty” articles  consulted here over 2010-2011.  To me this listing is nothing if not surprising, but let me get out of the way here so you can go at it yourself.

Pages: 1 2

The Battle for the Street: Who won? Who lost? And what next?

[Have a look at this good historical piece by Christopher Gray which appeared in today's New York Times under their Streetscapes/Traffic Wars rubric.]
IN the future, perhaps our time will be known as the first decade of the Bicycle Wars, with righteous armies fighting over traffic lanes, bike paths and sidewalks, indeed over the very purpose of the streets themselves. Like many wars, it’s a question of territory, and the pedestrian has been losing for years.

CarSharing: A 1% solution (And why it is a critical 1%)

The learning process has been long and painful, but it is 2012, the results are in, and we now know this one thing for sure. There are no single, mega-dollar, build-it, big bang, fix-it solutions for transportation systems reform. No, the process is far more complex than that. Successful 21st century transport policy depends on the coordination and integration of large numbers of, for the most part, often quite small things. Small perhaps in themselves, one by one, but when you put all these small things together you start to get the new and far better transportation systems that we need and deserve. Large numbers of small things, each doing their part in concert. We call them “one percent solutions”. And carsharing is part of that complex process.

Reducing Transportation’s Carbon Consumption : (1) Strategy (2) Actions (3) Actors.

Hmm. Well for starters . . . we certainly don’t want to start in the middle of such an important challenge — a big problem I might add we often encounter in many of these proto-transportation/environment discussions. It seems as if as soon as the discussion opens everyone in the room stands up and starts to trot out their favorite concept, project or technology — and then carry on as if their favorite pony somehow fits with the real priorities. This is what we call the ” Ready! Fire! Aim” syndrome, and it is rampant, hogs the headlines and most demonstrably will not do the job.

Op-Ed: More on filtered permeability, from the USA

Steve Tracy from Davis CA, USA writes:

Your earlier piece on filtered permeability — On Filtered Permeability as a sustainability tool, World Streets, 20 Oct. 2011 — sure got my attention. I spent three hours at the Davis City Council meeting Tuesday evening last week arguing on behalf of residents and the advocacy group Davis Bicycles! for traffic calming in our neighborhood, which is plagued by cut-through traffic. (Though I like your term “rat running” better.)

World Streets Resources – An Introduction (as per for November 2011)

This article has been placed here for the purposes of testing, reflection and comment. When we have it in good order it will become an item and reference point for World Streets. In the meantime, here is the latest draft.