World Streets in North America and the World: Sustainable transport indicators/lessons from?

Our reader maps, which are updated several times a day, reveal patterns that we think are worth at least a bit of inspection and thought from time to time. Here to get us started on this is one which reports the locations of the last 80 readers to check in to World Streets from North America this afternoon. Hmm. Does it tell us anything important? Let's have a look.

The full picture for North America this afternoon looks like this (click to enlarge map):

Overall we can say that the broad lines are pretty much what we see on most days. And I find them a bit disturbing. It looks just too much like our World Maps with all those important parts of the world that are simply not being brought into the sustainability discussions (see below).

The utter absence of interest from Canada other than from the three hot points there, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, has to indicate something. We need to think about this.

The absence of any readers coming in today from Mexico is not quite the usual pattern, but we have to bear in mind that other than the machine translations World Streets does not as yet have a full Spanish language edition. (Though we have a great model for one with our sister publication Nuova Mobilità in Italy.)

As editor, I can say that I am not at all pleased with our lack of coverage in the heartland of America, and intend that we shall work to do something about it.

Let's look at the world reader map for today by way of reference (again click to enlarge map)::

Again, all those empty white swaths. Well we have plans for two of them in 2010, since we are working to find partners for editions of Africa Streets and China Streets. Stay tuned.

Finally, while we have the maps out, here is an interesting one. It shows how the readership of the Italian edition of World Streets, Nova Mobilità at www.nuovamobilita.org looked today. This makes quite a contrast with the way that the World Streets map for Italy looked on the last day of June, the day before Nuova Mobilità went into orbit, which showed a round total of one or two Italian readers on average. And today, readership in Italian has been multiplied by a hundred. Showing the importance not only of having the material in the first languages of the reader, but also why it is necessary that the content be expressly tailored to the Italian reader. And so it is.



By creating a properly adapted edition with qualified national/language partners we have shown that it is possible to reach very deep into these areas with these ideas coming from leading sources around the world. But if it is not in their working language, and not adapted to their needs and priorities, you will see a very blank and bleak picture indeed.

This last map for instance shows today's World Streets readership in Russia. But if you know the state of transport and environment in Russian cities, can you imagine for a minute that they could not use a bit of help? Shouldn't someone be jumping into this? If you want to give it a try you know where to find us.



Если вы хотите попробовать вы знаете, где нас найти.

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Our editor pondering all this. Have any thoughts that may ease the pain. If so, here is how to get in touch: Email to editor@worldstreets.org.

Or click here to Skype direct: newmobility

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