Who is minding the store? Activity at the leading edge of climate/transport nexus

To ensure the maintenance of a first class reference base for World Streets, it is important to ensure we are able to track the main sources of ideas and initiatives in the domains what are our concerns here – the challenging nexus of climate, environment, transport, cities, etc. Just below you have the current listing of groups and sources currently tracked here. Would you mind having a look and seeing if we are missing anything that should be included in our shared database?

I should mention that all of these sites are covered by several of our search engines, which you can see on the menu, Thus if you click our combined search engine here -- http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=004787970323652826430%3Atpdfz_gy3b8 – you will find that your keywords are directed to scan the content of all of these sites. A handy way to follow progress and concerns at the leading edge.

Thank you for letting us know if there are programs, sources and sites that need to be added to this listing. It is for us all.

1. Active Transportation Alliance
2. African Community Access Programme (AFCAP)
3. Alliance for Biking & Walking
4. Association for European Transport
5. Bakfiets Cycle News
6. Better Transport (UK)
7. Bicycle Design
8. Bicycle Fixation
9. Bicycle Partnership Program
10. Bike-sharing Blog
11. Brazilian Pedestrian Association
12. Brookings Institute - Metro
13. C40 - Large Cities Climate Leadership
14. California Center for Innovative Transportation
15. Campaign for Better Transport
16. Carsharing US
17. Center for Neighborhood Technology
18. Centre for Science and Environment
19. China Dialogue
20. Cities for Mobility
21. CitiesACT (Asia)
22. Citistates Group
23. City CarShare
24. City Fix
25. City Mayors
26. CityRyde (USA)
27. Ciudad Viva
28. CIVITAS
29. Clean Air Initiative (CAI)
30. Climate Alliance of European Cities
31. Climate ark
32. Clinton Climate Initiative
33. Community Transportation Association of America
34. Copenhagenize.com
35. CROW - Technology Platform for Transport & Public space
36. ELTIS
37. ELTIS case studies
38. Embarq - Center for Sustainable Transport
39. Embarq - WRI
40. Energie-Cités
41. Energy Foundation China.org
42. EPOMM - European Platform on Mobility Management
43. EUROCITIES mobility
44. European Federation for Transport & Environmen
45. Feet First.
46. Flexibility.co.uk
47. Forum for the future
48. Friends of the Earth (Transport)
49. Frixo traffic reporting
50. Gehl architects.
51. Global Alliance for EcoMobility
52. Global Environment & Technology Foundation
53. global Transport Knowledge Partnership
54. Go For Green
55. Google maps bike there
56. Gotham Gazette
57. Green 2009
58. Green car congress.
59. Greenstreet Sweden
60. Grist
61. GTZ
62. Guardian-Transport/Environment
63. I Bike T.O.
64. I Walk to School
65. IBSR - L'Institut Belge pour la Sécurité Routière
66. IEEE
67. IFRTD
68. INRETS (France)
69. International Downtown Association
70. International Federation of Pedestrians (IFP)
71. International Transport Forum
72. International Walk to School
73. ITDP - China (photo library)
74. ITDP - Institute for Transportation & Development Policy -
75. Japan for Sustainability (JFS)
76. Key NewMob definitions
77. Knoogle combined search of all following blogs and sources
78. KonSULT
79. Land Transport Authority - Singapore
80. Livable City
81. Livable Streets Network
82. MindsinMotion.net
83. Mobility Magazine (South Africa)
84. Network Musings
85. New Economics Foundation
86. News from Amsterdam
87. Next American City
88. One Street
89. Oxford Transport Network
90. Pan Africa Bicycle Information Network
91. Parisar (India)
92. Partners for Public Spaces (PPS) i
93. Perils for Pedestrians
94. Planetizen
95. Polis
96. Practical cyclist Blog
97. Prevention Institute
98. Reconnecting America
99. Regional Community Development News
100. Reinventing Transport
101. Safe Kids
102. Safe Routes to School
103. Shared Space.Institute
104. Shrinking Cities
105. Sightline Institute
106. SMART - Inspire Mobility
107. Smart growth america
108. Smart Growth Online
109. Social Data
110. Spokes.org.uk
111. STPP
112. Street-Films
113. Streets Alive
114. Streetsblog (NYC)
115. Sustainable Cities Net
116. Sustainable Connections
117. Sustainable Development Gateway
118. Sustainable Energy Africa
119. Sustainable Urban Transport Project
120. Sustran - Global South Forum
121. The Commons
122. The Idea Factory
123. The Nation - Transportation
124. The PEP - Transport, Health & Environmen
125. the transport politic
126. Tne Infrastructurist
127. Transaid
128. Transition Towns
129. Transport Research Knowledge Centre
130. Transportation Alternatives
131. Transumo
132. Treehugger-transportation
133. UITP
134. UN Division for Sustainable Development (DSD)
135. Urbamet
136. Urban Buzz
137. Urban Design
138. Urban Design and Planning
139. Urban Land Institute
140. Urban places and spaces
141. Urban Transport Issues Asia
142. Urban Trransportation Monitor
143. Value Capture News
144. Velo Mondial
145. Victoria Transport Policy Institute
146. Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
147. Walk & Bike for Life
148. Walk to School (UK)
149. Walking School Bus
150. Wash Cycle
151. Where
152. WHO - Transport and Health
153. Wiki on Sustainable Transportation
154. Wikipedia entry (for comment)
155. WiserEarth (WE)
156. World Business Council for Sustainable Development
157. World Changing
158. World Resources Forum
159. World Resources Institute
160. Worldwatch Institute
161. Wuppertal Institute

One of our respected colleagues who had a look at this listing over the weekend, suggested that it might do well to be pared down a bit. What we are looking for is not every sits on the block that is looking into these matters for their specific local or limited purposes, but rather the programs that are reaching out to find information an clues that will be valuable to researchers, activists ,and policy makers wishing to stay on top of the key developments and trends world wide.

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Sustainable transport on the road to COP15? (We are a generation of great talkers.)

As we gear up for the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, it is fair to ask: how optimistic can one reasonably be concerning our ability at this critical juncture to meet the enormous challenges facing our planet , and our sector of responsibility, in time to make the needed big adjustments needed to make the necessary differences in the years immediately ahead? We weren't even close in 1996. Will we be ready . . . this time?

Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret - 1996

Sometimes it can help to recall the past. Listen for example to this one minute extract from a presentation given by the editor of this journal, at the time a consultant to the OECD Environment Directorate's "EST – Environmentally Sustainable Transport" project, to a post conference evaluation session of the OECD senior project team on the occasion of a peer review of the accomplishments of the high level March 1996 Vancouver Conference, "Towards Sustainable Transportation".

That meeting, in the words of the OECD post-meeting announcement, "brought together over four hundred policy-makers, governments and NGO representatives to assess the state of the art knowledge in reducing transport's environmental impacts and to chart a path towards more environmentally sustainable transport systems". And what exactly did those " four hundred policy-makers, governments and NGO representatives" actually achieve, sustainable transportation-wise?

* Click here for the "Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret" comment from 1996


That, in a few words, is Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret. Worse yet, the sad truth is it does appear to be not just a transient anomaly but rather a sign of our times, of our generation, of our egregious (un)willingness to commit ourselves and get around to doing (a lot) better.

What have we done, learned since 1996?

Checking out the actual results for our sector's performance over these last thirteen years, as charted by leading edge of the research community, the many related web sites and all the conferences on global warming, carbon dioxide build-up, ozone depletion, and the rest, one comes to a pretty simple, absolutely terrifying conclusion.

From an unbiased eco-perspective we are continuing to misbehave very badly indeed. And what is worse yet is that, rhetoric aside, there is little out there on the radar screen of transport policy and practice that promises much better. Indeed the numbers all suggest that things are going from bad to worse. Emissions targets are being timidly set, after a huge amount of hemming and hawing. And then flagrantly missed. What a bad, what an inexcusable, what a tragic joke!

Looking ahead to Copenhagen, what does this mean? If we bear in mind that that high level 1996 international meeting entitled "Towards Sustainable Transportation" might as well not have been convened at all. At least as far as what has actually been accomplished on their self-assigned mandate over all these intervening years. We have not only not moved "towards sustainable transportation", to the contrary we have moved away from it, systemically and rapidly.

So I ask you, what are the differences between the way we are looking at all this today, and back in 1996? Have we made any notable progress over these thirteen long years? It is important to understand this.

So far, so bad. But let's not satisfy ourselves with whipping the dead horse of the past. Let's look ahead.

So what exactly do we need to do now to kick-start the system? (The system, incidentally being us.) Are we doomed to continue as "a generation of great talkers" and nothing more?

COP15 and the New Mobility Agenda

Will COP15 be any different when it comes to defining the future policy framework for what happens in the transport sector?

It could be, even at this late date.

This modest daily collaborative journal on the web -- "Insights and contributions from leading thinkers and practitioners around the world" -- which looks only at these issues but with the inputs and counsel of thousands of readers and colleagues around the world who really are able to help orient those coming to Copenhagen -- all this expertise needs to be energized, brought into the preparations and understood as a critical part of the solution, if solution there is to be.

You and I, dear readers, need to come together put our heads and hearts together on this. What is not needed is more high rhetoric or running away from the real challenges faced if we are to turn our sector around in order to meet the pressing time targets which are now clearly before us.

We know that what is needed are far more thoughtful, more innovative, more layered ("packages of measures"), more open, more dynamic, more deeply committed, and more courageous approaches to the challenges of sustainability in a frankly non-sustainable world -- a world of people, habits and political arrangements that to all appearances are not yet quite ready to make the fundamental changes that are needed for the planet and in our daily lives.

We clearly need leadership -- and not only leadership by rhetoric, but leadership by example.

The New Mobility/Climate Emergency Project: Plan B for sustainable transport. Now!

* Click here for 5 minute introduction to Plan B - http://tinyurl.com/ws-nma-sum

* And here for intro to the World Streets strategy - http://tinyurl.com/ws-sum

Now is the time to really start to dig in on this. Look! We know what we have to do, we really do know how to achieve it, and there is no excuse not to start right now to do it. Let's put worldwide transportation systems reform into the top rank of the COP15 agenda. Now is the time to do this. No excuses!

What are you going to tell your grandchildren that you did when it was time for action to save their future? That you worried a lot? Come on now.

Your faithful editor

Eric Britton

PS. Here in closing is a remark and proposal I made to that meeting by way of activation and follow-up -- click here for the one minute audio file. It was a call for an aggressive transfer to leadership by more women. It was not well received. Check it out here to see why.

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World Streets One-Click Key Sources Search - Worldwide

Have a question about sustainable transport projects, techniques, applications, institutions, anywhere in the world? Say about BRT in Delhi, public bikes in Mexico, carsharing in Austria, or anything else that falls under the sustainable transport/new mobility agenda? Planning a trip to a city and want to check up on what is going on there so that you get off with a running start? So now what?

Turn to Google most likely. Not bad -- but let us see if we can offer you a more efficient way to carry out your search.

* First try our Collaborative Search Engine links.worldstreets.org/

Over the course of the past year the members of our worldwide network have helped us to piece together an inventory of and working links to an impressive number of groups, programs and sources leading the way in this area, and as of today if you look on the left menu of the section (a bit down) entitled Key Sources, Links and Blog, you will see are 156 are already listed. (For the visual effect we list them below, but to be useful of course you really have to click down to that section of the site.)

This is a wonderful collection of sources on our subject, and if you first click to http://links.worldstreets.org/ and from there start asking your questions, you will see what these specialist groups and sources have to offer on your topic. It will be a fraction of what you get with a full Google search, but much more closely honed given that these are the leading edge groups working in these area.

Have and candidates who are port of this leading edge and who should be included in our combined search engine. Please let us know and we can add them.


156 Key Sources, Links and Blogs you may wish to check out for your project

Active Transportation Alliance * African Community Access Programme (AFCAP) * Alliance for Biking & Walking * Association for European Transport * Bakfiets Cycle News * Better Transport (UK) * Bicycle Design * Bicycle Fixation * Bicycle Partnership Program * Bike-sharing Blog * Brazilian Pedestrian Association * Brookings Institute * C40 - Large Cities Climate Leadership * California Center for Innovative Transportation * Campaign for Better Transport * Carsharing US * Center for Neighborhood Technology * Centre for Science and Environment * China Dialogue * Cities for Mobility * CitiesACT (Asia) * Citistates Group * City CarShare * City Fix * City Mayors * CityRyde * CityRyde (USA) * Ciudad Viva * CIVITAS * Clean Air Initiative (CAI) * Climate Alliance of European Cities * Climate ark * Clinton Climate Initiative * Community Transportation Association of America * CROW - Technology Platform for Transport & Public spac * ELTIS * ELTIS case studies * Embarq - Center for Sustainable Transport * Embarq - WRI * Energy Foundation China.org * EPOMM - European Platform on Mobility Management * EUROCITIES mobility * European Federation for Transport & Environmen * Feet First. * Flexibility.co.uk * Forum for the future * Friends of the Earth (Transport) * Frixo traffic reporting * Gehl architects. * Global Alliance for EcoMobility * Global Environment & Technology Foundation * global Transport Knowledge Partnership * Go For Green * Google maps bike there * Gotham Gazette * Green 2009 * Green car congress. * Greenstreet Sweden * Grist * GTZ * Guardian Transport * I Bike T.O. * I Walk to School * IBSR - L'Institut Belge pour la Sécurité Routière * IEEE * IFRTD * INRETS (France) * International Downtown Association * International Federation of Pedestrians (IFP) * International Transport Forum * International Walk to School * ITDP - China (photo library) * ITDP - Institute for Transportation & Development Policy - * Japan for Sustainability (JFS) * Key NewMob definitions * Knoogle combined search of all following blogs and sources * KonSULT * Land Transport Authority - Singapore * Livable City * Livable Streets Network * MindsinMotion.net * Mobility Magazine (South Africa) * Network Musings * Next American City * One Street * Oxford Transport Network * Pan Africa Bicycle Information Network * Parisar (India) * Partners for Public Spaces (PPS) i * Perils for Pedestrians * Planetizen * Polis * Practical cyclist Blog * Prevention Institute * Reconnecting America * Regional Community Development News * Reinventing Transport * Safe Kids * Safe Routes to School * Shared Space.Institute * Shrinking Cities * Sightline Institute * Smart growth america * Smart Growth Online * Social Data * Spokes.org.uk * STPP * Street-Films * Streets Alive * Streetsblog (NYC) * Sustainable Cities Net * Sustainable Connections * Sustainable Development Gateway * Sustainable Energy Africa * Sustainable Urban Transport Project * Sustran - Global South Forum * The Commons * The Idea Factory * The Nation - Transportation * The PEP - Transport * Health & Environmen * the transport politic * Tne Infrastructurist * Transaid * Transition Towns * Transport Research Knowledge Centre * Transportation Alternatives * Transumo * Treehugger-transportation * UITP * Urbamet * Urban Buzz * Urban Design * Urban Design and Planning * Urban Land Institute * Urban places and spaces * Urban Transport Issues Asia * Urban Trransportation Monitor * Value Capture News * Velo Mondial * Victoria Transport Policy Institute * Virginia Tech Transportation Institute * Walk & Bike for Life * Walk to School (UK) * Walking School Bus * Wash Cycle * Where * WHO - Transport and Health * Wiki on Sustainable Transportation * Wikipedia entry (for comment) * WiserEarth (WE) * World Business Council for Sustainable Development * World Changing * World Resources Forum * World Resources Institute * Worldwatch Institute * Wuppertal Institute

* Again that's links.worldstreets.org/. You may wish to bookmark it.

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