Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Quick guide to World Streets contents: 1 2 3

The long toolbar just to your left, which many may well leap over as they check out the day's and week's offerings, offers a rich resource of tools, information and references which you may wish to know more about. It is organized in four main sections as follows:

Part 1: Introduction and fast start
Part 2: Organization and content
Part 3: Surfing the Internet for clues (tool kit)
Part 4: Work in progress

Part 0: IF NOTHING ELSE PLEASE READ THIS SUMMARY – Four page strategic background note introducing program and highlights at http://tinyurl.com/ws-sum

PART I: INTRODUCTION AND FAST START

Welcome: First time visitors start here - Serves as main table of contents and basic orientation of the site and its objectives. Worth a scan if you wish to get full value out of its considerable resources. There are already hundreds of articles and comments posted here covering our topic from many different angles, but if we do not have ways to locate and access them, they are just more lost luggage. Part 1 is organized in three short sections:

(1) Fast lane in. Introduces our topic, the New Mobility Agenda, and the unique strategic approach behind it. Unless these basic strategic points are fully appreciated, the journal is merely a collection of interesting stuff on our topic. But there is more to it than that. So please read on here as you come in the first time.

(2) Accessing World Streets. Shows how to access and dig into the full resource base.

(3) Supporting World Streets. How we fund all this work - and how you can help if it is to continue.

We suggest you take the time to click down this top section so as to become familiar with the available tools and information. This knowledge will transform the site from being just an interesting read into a working tool for sustainability.

PART II: ORGANIZATION AND CONTENT

Shows both how to work with and how to dig deep into the site and its vast extensions for your information and working purposes. Probably the best introduction is simply to scroll and click your way down the toolbar, but here briefly are some of the highpoints.

Search World Streets – This excellent combined search engine by Google can be put to work not only to pull up all key word references on the site, but also to reach out into the databases behind all those hundred-plus programs and sources listed under Key Links and Sources.

Free daily delivery via RSS will be straight forward to most of us. I personally tend to use Google Reader for our daily reminders, but the other choices are probably every bit as good. The idea of course is to retrieve all information about the day's offering in Streets in a single concise line or two, and from there have a look if you are so tempted.

New Mobility Building Blocks is not particularly easy to read in this form, but it is meant as a reminder, almost subliminal, of the fact that there are a very large number of modes, approaches and choices that are available to be integrated into your full New Mobility Agenda. (More on this all over World Streets. See the Index.)

Editorial – identifies the team behind the project and offers guidelines for contributors and on our plans for extending and improving this toolset.

Supporting World Streets – How you can get involved and lend a hand for what is, after all, your problem and challenge too.

In Memorium – If you are familiar with the work of these pioneering figures, you will understand why we are here and working to build on the foundation they have so generously given us.

Sentinels - This world map identifies the first one hundred-plus people in more than thirty countries on all continents who have stepped forward with offers to share with all interested latest information and clues from their cities, good news and bad news that has perhaps lessons for others. (For more, click here - http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/03/world-streets-correspondents.html )

Archives – Organized by month, and then lists all postings from back to front. Clickable of course.

Correspondents – List of some of the people reporting on projects, problems, etc. in their cities in different parts of the world.

PART III: SURFING THE INTERNET FOR CLUES

This is wild and often rough. But the student of sustainable transport and sustainable cities may well find it worthwhile digging in here from time to time.

Latest Daily News from . . . World Streets is not the only source of daily information on our topic, albeit our policy focus is more tightly circumscribed than the rest (namely our dogged insistence on concentrating on all that can shape the two to four years directly ahead). You will also find here the latest from our sister publication Nuova Mobilità which covers sustainable transport developments in Italy, the first of our non-English language partner editions. The latest from CityFix (http://www.thecityfix.com/), Treehugger/Transportation (http://www.treehugger.com/cars_transportation/) and Streetsblog (http://www.streetsblog.org/ ) are also posted here as they come on line. And if you know of other dailies with international coverage, please let us know.

Key Links, Blogs and Sources:


And here for your convenient inspection is the latest list of sites and sources that our long term studies and work in the sector have shown themselves to be among the most important sources and reference points. We invite you to have a look and, if you would, to let us know about any programs and URLs you think should be on this list. This will help us all. Thank you.

World Streets New Briefs: Results of latest Google search of key categories: sustainable transport\, new mobility et al.

Video Bars: Call up four sets of YouTube videos based on related key words. Chaotic but can be worth a look.

PART IV: WORK IN PROGRESS (Can easily be ignored for now. Basically a sand box for the team to play with ideas and eventual new components.)

# # #

That's it. A bit of labyrinthine admitted, but for the genuinely curious a useful set of leads, tools, and hints.

Print this article

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comment. You may wish to check back to the original entry from time to time to see if there are reactions to this. If you have questions, send an email to: editor@worldstreets.org