If you have a minute you may want to have a quick look at this. You may find some Eric Britton has a plan. The man behind worldstreets.org, thinks a lot about the future of transport, and its connection to the overheating nature of the planet. His 'Plan B' vision is a radical twelve point blueprint that he thinks needs to be gone through to stop us cooking the planet - and is an interesting read. In the green transport field right now, alongside electric cars, high-speed rail, and all the usual stuff that gets tossed around, perhaps the most intriguing idea concerns not the development of new products, but the networking together, and sharing of existing ones. Our cars, bicylces, space - how do we 'use' them more effectively? Take cars. Right now, we're fast-forwarding to a world of hybrids and EVs - but what's the point when we've still got single vehicle occupancy, one-person-to-one-car ownership, and one hour in every 24 utilisation rates? The problem is that at the very heart of the notion of today's car is a concept built around ownership, freedom and the ability to cut yourself off in a little glass and steel box. Your car is a space that, right now, you probably only choose to 'share' with your friends and family. Sharing a car with a complete stranger (even if you're not both in it at the same time) is a relatively big leap to make, but it's something worth thinking about. That's what Eric wants to look into in more depth. So in the video chat (above) we had with him a few weeks back, he described the idea of a conference - for want of a better word - to draw people together to talk about sharing within the bounds of future transportation. On the first day, Eric suggests transportation-related talk should be banned. Instead, the attendees - linked together with experts and interested parties across the world via video and Internet, would seek to understand the human psychology behind sharing things. Then on the next days, this would be developed into the field of transportation applications. The big news? Eric doesn't think it will work without a woman at the helm... Can we make this happen? Can you help? Watch the video, let us know what you think, and check out World Streets for more.
use in it. A few weeks ago some friends from The Movement Design Bureau in London (Eyes on the Street), called over to suggest that we might spend a few minutes together to demo a Skype video link they are working with in a program they call Re*Move (forgive them, they're English).
To give our video some content they invited me to wing it on the subject of a kind of "layered conference" that I have been giving some thought to for the last months, namely to investigate in some depth and from different angles the concept of and potential for sharing (as opposed to old-time ownership) in this strange new world of ours. . . including various aspects of sharing in transportation.
I thought you might possibly want to have a quick look and cogitate a bit about how you might in time want to put this approach to work in some of your own projects? Remember. They are just getting underway with this. It's still brainfood.
From Re*Move, The Movement Design Bureau Eric Britton's shared vision for future transportation
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Interested in any developments people see in the field of 'transportation sharing'... currently we have a semi-interesting set of car sharing companies, and very little else. Yet we have this layer of digital technology which is coming into view, which acts as a layer over the top of our existing infrastructure, to mean that we know of something's (or someone's) whereabouts, status, activity levels and so on. Theoretically, this could mean we can do much more in terms of having multiple users of vehicles and infrastrucutre. Yet as Eric mentions in the videos, the real challenge here is psychological. And that's something we need to do much more research on. We'd love to hear of interesting examples or work people are doing around this. Do let either us over at the Movement Design Bureau, or Eric know, so that we can find out more, and talk about them...
ReplyDeleteJoe - editor Re*Move blog.
I work with sharing as well, in my case 'ride-sharing'. We have developed some technology to make sharing easier. We also want to make it more rewarding. Our info is on www.flexiblecarpooling.org and related sites. We hope to have a pilot project in Seattle in the coming year.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of the conference on sharing.