Two or three times a year your editor sits down and does his best to compile a readable synopsis of some of the more important things going on in World Streets, then to be communicated in one magical shot --> More: --> More: --> More: --> More: --> More: --> More: --> More: --> More: --> More: --> More: --> More: 
to the close to four thousand friends and colleagues around the world who have been involved in some way in these dialogues and projects over the last several decades. Here you have today's best seasonal effort, to which as always, comments, criticism and suggestions are warmly welcome.
Judged from a planetary or Kyoto perspective, or from an individual or public health perspective, or an economic perspective, or ... or ... our present arrangements for transport in cities are seriously damaged. As things stand today in city after city around the world, they threaten health in the city and on the planet. They are dangerous. They are costly. They are disruptive. They are thoroughly dysfunctional. And they are howlingly unfair. It does not have to be like that. We can do something about it, and we should. But we need to join forces to get the job done.
New Mobility Partnerships in Brief 
Unconstrained by bureaucracy, economic interests or schedules, New Mobility Partnerships was launched in 1988 as a wide open international platform for critical discussion and diverse forms of cross-border collaboration on the challenging, necessarily conflicted topic of "sustainable transportation and social justice". There are no easy answers - but there are answers . . . if, that is, you are willing to take off the blinkers and get to work.
Insights and contributions from leading thinkers & practitioners around the world
World Streets is an independent, internet-based collaborative knowledge system specifically aimed at informing policy and practice in the field of sustainable transport, and, as part of that, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. Edited by Eric Britton, founder and Managing Director of the New Mobility Agenda.
Most of our busy readers do not have the time to check into World Streets on a daily basis. For that reason we offer our subscribers and sponsors, in addition to 
the daily edition, monthly summaries which bring together in one place all postings in a manner in which the reader can review each in a few lines and make a decision as to whether or not to call up the full article with a single click. Time-efficient communication in an overload world.
New project: World Streets on Facebook
We are not Facebook experts, but nonetheless, and with reservations, we have concluded that this is a legitimate communications tool that can be put to work to increase the worldwide reach of the sustainable transport agenda. So with the help 
of our colleague Anzir Boodoo, we have set up a first stage site/interface which you can now access via www.facebook.WorldStreets.org. We invite you to have a look, use as your interest and skill level permit, and, better yet, lend a hand and help us to do better.
Latest reader map
And here you can see where our last eighty visitors came from. Generally representative of overall pattern, but from day to day with considerable variations. Our goal for 2010: bring in all those great white swaths. 
Our sector has been notably profligate in terms of its use of public money, while at the same time also offering a generally poor deal in terms of quality of service per dollar spent by the citizens who use the system. This past profligacy is further compounded by the fact that for reasons of the complicated international economy, many countries are going to have to be far more careful about how they spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars in the years immediately ahead. We are not going to need another round of high cost, low impact investments to make it work. We simply take over 50% (your figure here) of the transport related budgets and use it to address projects and reforms that are going to make those big differences in the next several years. This is where the action is going to be in the years immediately ahead and where Frugal Transport kicks in. (This section just getting underway.)
As most of our regular readers are well aware, World Streets is no friend of speed in cities. To the contrary, it is our firm position that a considerable number of 
the basic objectives associated with sustainable mobility and sustainable cities can be achieved if we do no more than to reduce top speeds in and around our cities in a strategic and carefully thought-out way. The great technological virtuosity of traffic engineers and technical planners permit us to do this, while at the same time retaining a well working transportation system, a healthier city, and a viable local economy. This is a major target of World Streets and many of our associates worldwide
Share/transport - the largely uncharted middle ground between the familiar mobility poles of "private transport" (albeit on public roads) and "public transport" (scheduled, fixed-route, large vehicle services) at the two extremes. Comprising a very large gamut of services of which among the best known are shared taxis, carsharing, ride sharing, and small private bus systems, it offers a form of mobility service that works when everything else fails or is simply not there. However it is one that until now has been poorly understood by policymakers and is badly in need of informed perspectives and policies. A first international conference is being planned for Kaohsiung Taiwan from 16 to 19 September 2010, with full information available in early June.
World Streets, and the New Mobility Agenda directly behind it, have long held the position that our sector suffers badly from the lack of female perspective and female leadership. Rectifying this should be one of the major targets of policymakers and citizens at all levels of society and in all countries. We have pursued this recommendation vigorously since the founding of this program in 1988, and firmly believe that a reasonable target for female participation in leadership groups at all levels is in the area of 40%. In our publications and conferences, we go into detail as to how this can be done and why the strong leadership role is critical.
The Hundred Faces behind World Streets
We firmly believe that the move to sustainable transport and sustainable lives is a 
very personal matter. For that reason every article that appears in World Streets is accompanied by a short bio note and photo identifying the author. We want you to know who they are and what they look like. To this end we have assembled for your viewing pleasure small photos of 160 of our authors and collaborators. Have a look.
National Partnership Programs/Language Editions
True, English is a widely spoken and read language. But true too that most of the activity carried out at the working level in countries whose language is other than 
English is in the language of the place. So if our goal is to have a worldwide impact, we must find ways to reach the people who count, in ways which efficiently and fully engage them. To that end we have initiated a series of collaborative projects which are already reaching out to key actors in several language areas, starting with a highly successful Italian edition and a different approach to reach the key actors in Swedish. Others presently under discussion. Would YOU like to talk about it?
Because this is an important set of issues and you can make a difference. So 
consider this an open invitation to lend a hand in making World Streets a more useful and successful tool and source. We need your help both (a) to improve the technical product, but above all to identify and (b) to take direct contact with eventual collaborators, subscribers, sponsors, and organizations at the national or international level whom you may know and who can help support this unique public interest enterprise and help it make an even more effective contribution. You will be surprised at how much you can do to make it happen, if you choose to. 
Eric Britton is Managing Director of the New Mobility Partnerships and founding editor of World Streets. Contrary to what you may surmise, he is not alone. You can reach him at editor@worldstreets.org , Tel. +331 7500 3788 in France or +1 (213) 984 1277 in the US. Or via Skype at newmobility.
Monday, May 17, 2010
New Mobility Partnerships - What's going on this summer?
Friday, May 14, 2010
No Accident!
Traffic and Pedestrians in the Modern City
As most of our regular readers are well aware, World Streets is no friend of speed in cities. To the contrary, it is our firm position that a considerable number of the basic objectives associated with sustainable mobility and sustainable cities can be 
achieved if we do no more than to reduce top speeds in and around our cities in a strategic and carefully thought-out way. The great technological virtuosity of traffic engineers and technical planners permit us to do this, while at the same time retaining a well working transportation system, a healthier city, and a viable local economy. Listen to what John Rennie Short and Luis Mauricio Pinet-Peralta have to tell us on the subject.
Authors: John Rennie Short and Luis Mauricio Pinet-Peralta. Department of Public Policy, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA
Abstract
This paper considers the rise of traffic accidents in the creation of the modern city. The notion of accidents is deconstructed. There is a brief review of current literature on mobilities and then evidence is presented of the shifting configuration of vehicle-pedestrian accidents. The epidemic of traffic accidents of cities in developing world is noted and explained. The incidence of pedestrian traffic accidents is shown to reflect socio-economic characteristics such as age, class and status. A review of the literature provides evidence of the ways to ameliorate pedestrian injuries. Walksheds are suggested as a focus of concern. The creation of a more pedestrian-friendly city is proposed.
The Modern City
At the heart of modernity is the connection between speed, the machine and the city. In his 1909 manifesto of Futurism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) glorified the man at the wheel and the beauty of speed. He associated speed with courage in action and slowness with stagnant prudence. His glorification of the speeding automobile in the city prefigures its subsequent centrality to urban development.
Cities were reimagined and then reengineered to promote high speed. Virilo (1986; 1995; 2005) tells a story of the destruction of the sociability of the city by the logic of acceleration. In a more nuanced interpretation, Latham and McCormack (2008) explore the ways in which the speed and the 'countervailing eddies of slowness' define the experience of the city. However, in terms of urban traffic and the marginalization and displacement of the self-propelled human body, Virilio's image of the city as a site of acceleration seems closer to the mark. In this paper, we will explore one of the little discussed consequences of this transformation, the risk of bodily accidents in what are described as 'traffic accidents'.
The modern city is designed largely around the use of motor vehicles despite the inherent risks in machine-body coexistence, part of the brisk pace of city life. Indeed, in the immediate prehistory of automotive ascendancy, the Futurists downplayed any risks and celebrated machine-body meshing as a means to a high-speed, dynamic superhumanity.
Such eventual transformation was made possible, according to the Futurism's founding myth, when poet Filippo Marinetti emerged from a ditch after crashing his beloved Fiat, spewing mud and apparently, the Manifesto of Futurism, which begins 'We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness' and famously continues 'We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace' (Flint, 1972, p. 41).
By the early 1930s, Le Corbusier further enshrined swift automobility, proposing his 'autostrades' as concrete ribbons threading skyscrapers' canopies, elevated above mere city streets and devoid of pedestrians for optimum vehicular velocity. Speed and the fantasy of infinite mobility were at the heart of modernism and its physical embodiment in urban modernity. Norton (2008), for example, tells the story of American cities; at the beginning of the twentieth century, city streets had a variety of users, people as well as cars, and multiple users, a place for children playing, people walking, neighbors chatting. 
From the 1900s to the early 1930s, a battle was fought between, on the one hand, the multiple users and interests decrying the onslaught of cars on streets and the growing dominance of auto traffic, the term 'death cars' was frequently used, and on the other hand, automotive interests which continually invoked freedom as a rallying cry. The automotive interests won. From our perspective today it seems a foregone conclusion but the 25-year period in the early twentieth century reminds us of the battle for alternative conceptions of the primary purpose of city streets.
This urban restructuring of the city streets as pathways for automobiles with pedestrians shunted to the sidewalks has a high human cost. High-speed machines mangle bodies and kill pedestrians and yet these costs are largely absent from urban studies and discussions of urban safety.
A recent book with the title The Safe City (Berg et al., 2006) makes for interesting reading, as much for what it does not include as for what it does include. While issues of terrorism and crime abound in the book, one issue receives scant attention despite the book's title, which is the risk of bodily injury and fatality from traffic accidents. Such neglect is not uncommon in the recent urban literature where terrorist campaigns and crime waves dominate safety issues, yet there is a huge silence on the issue of traffic safety and especially pedestrian injuries and fatalities.
There have been a number of commentators who have drawn attention to the issue of traffic and pedestrian safety (Hass-Klau, 1990), numerous empirical studies (e.g., Chapman et al., 1982; Graham & Glaister, 2003) as well as the continuing concern of such commentators as Mayer Hillman (Hillman, 1993; Karpf, 2002). However, the issue has failed to gain traction in the wider and broader urban studies literature. And yet the issue is of some importance.
Across the world almost over 10 million people are crippled or injured each year, and approximately 1.2 million people are killed every year due to road accidents, approximately 3,250 people every day, (Peden et al. 2004). That is the equivalent of a World Trade Center disaster on the world's roads each and every day. One writer even refers to a global epidemic of road deaths (Dahl, 2004). The total economic cost is estimated at 1 percent of the GNP of low-income countries and 2 percent in high-income countries (Jacobs et al., 2000).
No Accident
Even the quickest review of recent and classic urban texts reveals little consideration of this issue. Why the silence? Two reasons stand out. First, there is the notion of the accidental, of random events that are to be endured rather than explained.
The term 'accident' is revealing; it initially meant an event, anything that happens. Now the word commonly refers to an unforeseen event, a mishap. But the predictable covariance of road deaths with social phenomena belies this connotation of 'accident'. The young and the vulnerable and the poor and the marginal are more likely to be hit by a car than the rich and the powerful. While road deaths have declined among rich countries, they have increased among poor countries.
These statistics suggest an ordered causation rather than random occurrences. Road traffic accidents are not mishaps but events that are both explainable and preventable. The relative silence shrouding this serious issue is itself a political act. The incidence of pedestrian fatalities and injuries is skewed toward the more marginal and vulnerable members of society. Yet this consistent finding has failed to capture the attention of most critical theorists.
Most pedestrian fatalities occur in poor countries and have greater impact on the poor, the young and the old. Pedestrian injuries are just one strand in webs of multiple deprivations that bind people in disadvantaged positions. To see traffic fatalities and injuries through the lens of marginalization theory is to offer a very different perspective on them as accidents (see Cutler & Malone, 2005).
Second, there is the silence accorded to all events that have a constant background quality. The fact that road traffic accidents happen all the time makes them blend into the fabric of the taken for granted.
Too regular to generate much notice, they become mere white noise rather than events to be analyzed. Their very consistency and regularity allows them to fade into an unexamined, rarely discussed space. The urban spectaculars such as the collapse of the World Trade Center, overwhelms and ultimately silences the murderous regularity of road traffic fatalities and injuries.
Road traffic 'accidents' are taken for granted cost of contemporary urban living, a seeming inevitability that allows attention to be drawn to the more unusual, rare events; they are just too mundane, too anonymous, too ordinary to generate much interest. However, the rising concern with the everyday ordinary nature of the lived urban experience should prompt a reconsideration of road safety and risk.
The 'ordinary' quality assigned to road traffic accidents is, if you excuse the unintended pun, no accident: there is also a vast array of interests concerned with making them ordinary. These interests include the motor vehicle manufacturers, road builders, construction companies as well as a society that does not want to question the fatal costs of a culture and cities dominated by fast moving vehicles. The current usage of the term 'accidents' to refer to fatal and damaging machine-body interactions in the city is incorrect, misleading and deceptive in shifting the phenomenon from social outcome to random event.
Perrow (1999) introduced the notion of 'normal accidents' that may be unforeseeable yet are inevitable. Perrow based his initial work on the near meltdown of Three Mile Island. Drawing a wider perspective on high-risk technologies, he argues that accidents occur when systems become more complex and interconnected. These conditions are increasingly met in cities where traffic patterns are more complex and a variety of users share busier roads. The ubiquitous nature of motorized transport in many cities, in comparison to the obvious singularity of nuclear power station renders it, in the minds of many, as safe or relatively innocuous.
Yet a heavy piece of metal - the average weight of a US car in 2006 was 4142 lbs. (1878 kg) - traveling at even 30 miles per hour, operated by someone, perhaps listening to the radio, drinking coffee or using his cell phone, times the thousands of other drivers on a road in the average city constitutes a complex technological system with lots of room for human error. The result is a relatively high risk of being involved in a car crash. Our need for urban vehicular traffic has in part blinded us to its inherent and inevitable risks to health and safety. Popular perceptions of risks, in general and in relation to traffic accident risk in particular, are based more on intuition and judgment, rather than objective assessments (Slovic, 2002).
In this paper, after reviewing some mobilities literature and presenting some general background data, we will concentrate on pedestrian injuries, because they are marginalized by recent urban safety scholarship: there is no rush to publish or comment on everyday traffic accidents involving pedestrians as there is to pontificate in the wake of 9/11. Then we will review a range of recent papers that explore the causal connections between urban design and traffic 'accidents'. We will introduce the notion of 'walkshed' as a unit of analysis and conclude with intimations of more progressive changes.
The paper is part review and part an attempt to right the balance in discussions of urban traffic. As the more affluent move around by car and limousine, the pedestrian becomes the minor player in transport discussions, and as cities are restructured to fit the needs of the car, the needs of the pedestrian are even less considered. But even the car driver has to step out of the car at times.
While not everyone drives a car, most of us are pedestrians at some time. However, as soon you step out of your car in many if not most cities, you become a second-class citizen: it is as if your full rights only exist when you drive a car.
Walk in the city, and you are pushed to the sides of the road, a telling phrase and metaphor. When a car hits a child it is often treated as an accident, when a child hits a car it is considered vandalism. When Short (1989) writes in The Humane City of cities designed as if only some people matter, he references specifically car drivers in contrast with pedestrians. Cities are biased toward the needs of the drivers rather than the rights of the pedestrians, despite the obvious inequality. A heavy metal object traveling at even relatively low speeds does more damage to a human body than the body does to the car. People get killed and maimed; cars merely get scratched and dented.. . . (Body of paper follows here. We jump for now to the authors' conclusions. See below for links to full article.) . . .
Conclusion
Across the globe there is an epidemic of traffic injuries and fatalities that is particularly marked in low- and middle-income countries. Almost 90 percent of traffic fatalities occur in low- and middle-income countries. The most vulnerable are pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users. The poor, the young and the old are at especially high risk.
Injury control and prevention strategies as part of a broader and deeper reorientation of cities away from a car-dominated culture toward a vehicle-pedestrian sharing culture can have significant impacts on morbidity, mortality, risk of injury and population health. These strategies include:
* Limiting and controlling speed through active and passive measures that target drivers' decisions on how fast to drive and road conditions that indirectly force drivers to reduce their average speeds;
* Organizing traffic away from residential areas, limiting inner city and business area traffic flow, and encouraging alternative modes of transportation that focus more on health benefits and non-motorized road users;
* Continuing public information programs targeting high-risk groups and vulnerable urban populations;
* Integrating urban planning and development and public health to design built environments that promote healthier lifestyles rather than safer behaviors.
Pedestrian injuries are not accidents. They are preventable. If the vulnerability of the human body was the determining factor, then it is unlikely we would design our transport system the way we have.
'Accidents' reflect and reinforce social differences: they are less accidents and more manifestations of wider and deeper inequalities in society that reflect the relative power of a vehicle-dominated as opposed to a pedestrian-dominated culture.
We need an anti-Marinetti to write a program for the future in which the city reflects the needs of the pedestrians and the frailties of the human body rather than the needs of the drivers and the power of their vehicles. It is perhaps fitting then that the same country that produced Mainetti is also home to the CittaSlow movement.
# # #
For the full text, referencess and graphics of this thought-provoking twenty page paper, please click here to : http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a917906422&fulltext=713240928Contents:
# # #
- The Modern City
- No Accident
- A Wider Context
- Urban Design and Road Safety
- The City as Urban Walkshed
- Conclusion
- References
- List of Tables
Source: The full text of this article was published in: the journal Mobilities, Volume 5, Issue 1 February 2010 , pages 41 - 59. It is reprinted here with the kind permision of the authors.
The authors: 
John Rennie Short is an expert on urban issues, environmental concerns, globalization, political geography and the history of cartography. He has studied cities around the world, and lectured around the world to a variety of audiences. He is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland (UMBC). He can be contacted via jrs@umbc.edu.
Luis Mauricio Pinet Peralta holds a Ph.D in Public Policy, Health Specialty, with a background in Emergency Health Services, Epidemiology & Preventive Medicine. He is a Research Associate of the Department of Public Policy, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD. He can be contacted via lpinet1@umbc.edu.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Hundred Faces behind World Streets
We firmly believe that the move to sustainable lives is a very personal matter. For that reason every article that appears in World Streets is accompanied by a short 
bio note and photo identifying the author. We want you to know who they are and what they look like. These are not autonomous or institutional pieces; everything that appears here has a name and face behind it. Today we have assembled for your viewing pleasure small photos of 160 of our authors and collaborators. There are more and of course we really do need to have each identified by name and country. In time.
The people whose faces you see here come from France, Italy, South Africa, Britain, China, Sweden, Finland, England, Singapore, and Uganda -- just to identify the top two rows.
Do you notice a fair proportion of women among our authors? That is no accident. Indeed it is one of the primary challenges of our entire program under both World Streets and just behind it the New Mobility Agenda: to, in a purposely contentious word, feminize the sector. From the top down. Up to now we are managing about 30% female participation here; that is good but not good enough. So give us some time to work on it. (And in the meantime have a look at Http://tinyurl.com/ws-women for more on this.)
Age profile of our collaborators? Broad! On the one hand we have contributions from some of the most important original senior thinkers, innovators and doers in the field. That's very good. But we don't stop there. We work very hard to ensure that we are also continually bringing in a large number of talented young people, and in the process helping to prepare the future leaders.
What do all these people do in life (when they are not writing for Streets?)? As you can imagine their activities cover a very wide span indeed. They are university professors, policymakers, international civil servants, transport system operators, scientists, inventors, doctors and public health workers, a couple of mayors, graduate students, journalists, filmmakers, community workers, activists, and the long list goes on.
Here is one thing they all have in common: in everything they do for and with World Streets, and indeed in many other parts of their work and lives, they act as volunteers and responsible citizens. That it turns out is necessary in this case since from the beginning our decision was to run World Streets "off the economy". It was our guess that this was going to be the best way to set this off from the rest and to get the job done. A different paradigm encouraging different thinking. So we decided not charge for anything, not to take advertising, and, symmetry obliges, we do not pay for anything. You can bet that none of our collaborators are going to get rich through this association -- but you can also bet that there is great satisfaction on their part.
And since this is about sustainable transportation and sustainable cities, it would seem fair for us to know at least something about how these people actually get around themselves and their day-to-day lives. They are, I can tell you from personal acquaintance with many of them, quite fit lot and this is no accident. A number of these people cycle and walk for transport every day. (That reminds me, we should carry out some kind of small survey of our authors and collaborators in order to see if we can learn something about their transportation habits.)
What sets them off from the rest? As editor and oft-times collaborator in projects in many parts of the world, I have been able to get to know many of them quite well indeed, often over some years. What can I say about them that might not be immediately apparent from the pictures? The phrase comes to mind from the wonderful film that we shared with you all earlier this week on courage and leadership when the former mayor of Bogotá, Antanas Mockus, who when confronted by the press concerning his lack of political allies and links with the power structure, he countered by saying " Soy un hombre independiente", I am an independent man. Yes that's it - they are independent men and women. (See film here - http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2010/05/lessons-in-leadership-profiles-in.html.) 
How can we end this? Here is who we are: Chinese and Americans, Swedes and Indians, French and Germans, English and Irish, Japanese and Koreans, Dutch and Australians, Serbs and Croats, Finns and Turks, Filipinos and Malaysians, Austrians and Czechs, Danes and Canadians, Brazilians and Mexicans, Argentines and Slovenes, Russians and Poles, Swiss and Chileans, Portuguese and Taiwanese, Indonesians and Kazakhstanies, Greeks and Icelanders, and more. 
We are this. We are an ad hoc, unplanned, independent, uncontrollable, United Nations of concerned citizens. We are assuming our responsibilities. And we are going to win!
One day on World Streets: 9 May 2010
Eric Britton,
Editor, World Streets
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
When English is not enough. Well then let's do it in Italian,.
(Or Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Chinese, French or . . .)
1. Start here: Italy, Italian and New Mobility. In June 2009, after four months of successful publication and an enthusiastic public 
reception in many parts of the world, the World Streets team found ourselves talking with an Italian colleague, the environmental activist Enrico Bonfatti who had been scanning the readership maps of World Streets and in the process noted that there were only one or two regular readers of the publication in Italy. Why? Good question.
Might it be that there was no interest in the concept of better explanation?
2. Time and language:
We concluded that Italy was in many ways a typical case, and that while there is plenty of interest in many parts of the country in these matters, almost everyone is suffering from major information overload on the one hand -- and furthermore that very very few of us, even those of us who know another language well, are all that comfortable if we have to read daily dispatches on these complex if interesting matters in anything other than our own main language.
Now that may come as a surprise to anyone who thinks that English is taking over as the universal language. But if you actually take the time to speak with and get to know the people who are working with these matters at the level of cities, agencies, public interest groups, or even universities in different parts of the world, you will see that when it comes to day-to-day communication all of us really do work best in our main language. (The reactions to this claim turn out to be quite interesting and are by no means unanimous. However we have found upon careful examination and discussion with those directly involved that the thesis stands up to inspection and is realistic and relevant. So we have not hesitated to make it a pillar of our work.)
3. 1 July 2010: Nuova Mobilità goes on line in Italy.
After careful consideration and diligent preparations over a two-month period, starting on 1 July and with 
Enrico Bonfatti stepping forward as managing editor of the new publication, we set out on an adventure to bring these concepts into the daily life of colleagues across Italy, with the publication written in careful Italian and adapted for the Italian institutional context and felt priorities.
Over the remainder of 2009 we saw readership expanding regularly and could see from the stats that the journal was being visited by individuals and groups in more and more cities up and down the peninsula. As of this date we are seeing something on the order of anywhere from 100 to 200 Italian readers checking in each day, and thus far have noted visits from more than 60 Italian cities and, somewhat surprisingly, roughly 2 dozen from other parts of the world.
What is especially striking about this map for those of you happen to be familiar with Italy, is that in addition to the expected heavy readership in the northern half of the country, we are also seeing real interest from the South. This is an excellent sign for the future.
And if you wish to practice your Italian, nothing could be more simple: all you have to do is click to www.nuovamobilita.org. And if your usually excellent Italian should fill you, no problem, you will see the machine translation tool on the top left of the site. Benvenuti nel futuro della mobilità sostenibile in Italia.
4. What about other language/country editions?
One lesson we have abundantly learned over the last year of hard work in creating and publishing daily this Italian Journal is that it is not a job to be undertaken lightly. Despite the fact that roughly 2/3 of all the articles that appear are adapted from the latest postings of World Streets, there is more to it than simply having the skills to produce a good translation. The articles need to be selected and adapted for Italian readers, in the Italian cities, institutional and policy context; --but in addition to that there is the entire challenge of creating specific Italian content, which is also a time-consuming mission and which continues to be a process that even after all these months still needs to be fully engaged.
As result, we have discovered that organizing and maintaining anything along the lines of Nuova Mobilità is pretty close to a full-time job for one talented, hard-working person. This of course has economic implications, with which our readers will be entirely familiar.
5. Bridging the language gap:
What to do in the event that there is still this challenge of finding a way to bridge the language gap, but in a first instance perhaps not taking on the full load and financial implications of creating a new dedicated publication? This is a problem which we are facing with several colleagues and concerned organizations in Sweden, Finland, Portugal, France and Taiwan -- and here is the way in which we are collaborating to get the job done.
The key lies in the creation of a special monthly edition of World Streets which provides in the target language a careful synopsis and one click access to the full contents of all content and commentaries published in the daily journal over the preceding month. These monthly reports are specially created by the World Streets team, working closely with the collaborating national sponsors in order to ensure that the final product is not only accurately and quickly developed, but that it is presented in a form which is agreeable to read and easy to move beyond through one-click links to the full sources in each case. * * * Here is an example of a typical World Streets Monthly Edition, in this case is prepared to summarize for our subscribers/sponsors all items appearing over the month of April 2010 - http://tinyurl.com/ws-apr2010. For a copy of the other language editions, get in touch and we will be pleased to share them with you.
6. The last kilometer challenge
The "last kilometer" or "last mile" is, of course, a term from the telecommunications and cable television industries involving the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider (in this case World Streets) to an end-user (in this case you and your busy colleagues). Here it is specifically aimed at supporting and expanding the network of those agencies, local authorities, universities, operators, associations, consultants and concerned citizens working on these issues within their country or region.
The following diagram and notes are intended to give a picture of how this can be made to work.
Once the current monthly report has been prepared with our language partner, they are then dispatched to all of those in the host country who are concerned with these matters. This listing turns out to be quite extensive in all cases thus far encountered, and includes not only the key national ministries and agencies charged with matters of transport, environment, cities, economics, social justice and more, but also all those working on these challenges at the level of the specific city or local administration, researchers, transportation operators, university programs, consultants, public interest groups, concerned citizens, and the national media.
Our goal in each case is to create an outreach in which the map in each cooperating country will gradually grow and eventually come to resemble the same level of coverage which we are achieving in Italy.
7. Want to discuss a collaborative outreach project?
We will be pleased to provide further information on both approaches and invite interested readers to get in touch by phone, e-mail, snail mail, Skype or, best of all, this is the power so we can talk about all this in person. Here is a quick summary of our main contact information:
Eric Britton, Editor
World Streets/The New Mobility Partnerships
8, rue Jospeh Bara, 75006 Paris France
Tel. Europe - +331 7550 3788
USA +1 (213) 984 1277
Skype: newmobility
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Lessons in Leadership / Profiles in Courage
"Bogotá Change"
The Colombian presidential elections will be held in less than three weeks on May 30. The campaign is all about ideas, leadership, and courage. And what could be more critical for a country or a city event to have these lined up together with a 
proven capacity to innovate, administrate, and to ensure that good policies and measures are continuously being scrutinized for performance and adapted to ensure that they are making the fullest possible contribution, year after year after year? Grab a cup of coffee and check out "Bogotá Change". You are going to learn something.
Not all that long ago Bogotá, the Colombian capital, was considered one of the world's most dangerous cities. At an altitude of over 2,600 meters up in the Andes mountains, seven million people were fighting a losing battle against drug crime, corruption, poverty and, not least, against each other.
But in 1995 the colorful and independent Antanas Mockus surprised many by being elected to become the city's Mayor, after having been fired as the vice-chancellor 
of the university where he had mooned his ungovernable students in a fit of rage. Mockus's anarchistic and untraditional methods set about a social revolution that meant that Bogotá today is a role model for cities such as New York and Mexico City. 'Bogotá Change' tells the story about how this happened, and shows that politics in fact can be both funny and deeply inspiring.
If you are interested in how a city in a developing country was transformed through leadership, vision, and much work, this video done by a professional movie producer from Denmark is a good investment of 60 minutes of your time.
The story in brief:
By the way, it is about the administration of three mayors in that city, in "one of the world's most dangerous cities": two one-time political rivals, Antanas Mockus 
and Enrique Peñalosa, both of whom are now united with another Mayor of Bogota, Lucho Garzon, and Sergio Fajardo, former mayor of Medellin. Coming together to bridge the political gaps they have recently created the Green Party (Partido Verde) and they have come from 5% of the anticipate vote in just 6 months ago to lead the Presidential polls for the election taking place in two weeks.
Quite an interesting process, which included a primary between Mockus, Penalosa and Garzon, where all three travelled to every corner of the country on a bus, always together, shared financing, never spoke a negative word of the others, and following the selection of Mockus as Presidential Candidate all three, in addition to Fajardo are fully engage and committed in the campaign as a TEAM.
Viewing the film:
Let's have a look at the backdrop to this inspiring story, thanks to a film that has been put together by a Danish film team in their Cities on Speed series (more on that below). You can do this in at least three ways.
All four films in this series are available for purchase from The Danish Filminstitute - details at http://www.citiesonspeed.com/.
Alternatively, you can check out the seven part series which has been posted to YouTube (IP??) and which you can access here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OdhD5D5its&feature=PlayList&p=0AD7F4A77E828E07&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1
If you are not sure, let me invite you to start here and please view at least the first two episodes, barely ten minutes in all. Then you can either continue with YouTube presentation (full screen recommended) -- or, if you will, click to http://www.megavideo.com/?v=0MKNIESG for the full 59 minute film. (If you are like me, a bit overworked and under brained, you may not think you are going to sit through the whole thing. Okay. Let's see what you do.)
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About the filmmakers –
Producer: Henrik Veileborg, Upfront Films, hv@upfrontfilms.dk
Director: Andreas Møl Dalsgaard, andreasmol@hotmail.com
Cities on Speed
For the first time in history, over 50% of the world’s population is now living in urban areas. By 2050, this figure is expected to increase to 80%. At this very moment, giant urban organisms are growing at unprecedented rates. For some time now, growth in cities like Shanghai, Mumbai, Cairo and Bogotá has far outpaced planning. These cities are expanding so rapidly that urban administration and the keeping of official statistics have become largely impossible, and population figures are increasingly nothing more than rough estimates. They are truly ‘Cities on Speed.’
The Cities on Speed series consists of four documentaries, each of which pinpoints key problems in Bogotá, Mumbai, Shanghai and Cairo. Based on the perspectives of a series of noteworthy characters, the four films present drastically different views on the global megacity and the challenges brought about by their explosive growth. Cities on Speed portrays radical urban problems, and people with radical ideas on how to solve them: from underground parks in Shanghai and mime traffic police in Bogotá, to the so-called ‘garbage people’ in Cairo and 100,000 new Nano cars in Mumbai.
More at: http://www.citiesonspeed.com/. For the Bogata film, http://www.citiesonspeed.com/citiesonspeed/Bogota_ENgelsk.html
Copies can be ordered direct from http://eshop.dfi.dk/Shop/ItemList.php?CategoriSelect=14. Price: € 40.00.
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What are the lessons that I take from this engaging, challenging film?
1. Leadership is not a committee matter. It is rare. It needs to be uncommon, courageous, original and inspiring. And viral!
2. Transportation is not something in itself. If we try to separate it from the greater whole of which it is but one part, we will never achieve either the mobility system or the city that should be our goal.
3. Continuity is both difficult and critical. It is one of the first victims of political football.
4. There are new ways of thinking which combine deep democracy and everyday practicality. We would be very weak, very foolish, and very amenable to manipulation by entrenched interests if we were not to recognize this and act on it.
What are the lessons you take from this film? Click comment below in order to share them with us all.
Eric Britton,
Editor, World Streets
Monday, May 10, 2010
And what if, instead, you share your car?
Next generation carsharing hits the street
The concept of "organized carsharing", in which people join groups which allow them to put their own cars at their members' disposal for short-term rental, is one that has been around for 
decades and which has really taken off over the last dozen years. But of late we are seeing a new kind of carsharing paradigm emerge: in which people rent out their own vehicles on a flexible basis to anyone belonging to a member group, with the whole thing orchestrated by a package of software services and set of operational and legal obligations, with the end result of that your car goes to work for you (finally!). This is peer-to-peer carsharing and after years of being an item of occasional discussion among cognoscenti is now starting to hit the streets in earnest.
- Dave Brook, Carsharing.US
A couple of months ago I had in mind 2 "next big things" - car2go and peer to peer (p2p) carsharing. I've held off writing about p2p in anticipation that RelayRides would go live and I could talk about it as it actually works not as a hypothetical. (Full disclosure, I'm consulting with RelayRides.)
Since then p2p carsharing and car rental has been all over the internet — Spride, Gettaround in the US; Whipcar and Wombat Car Club in the UK. (For what it's worth, there's a parallel movement to peer to peer car rental going on, as well — Spagg for example, and there are similar p2p car rental companies in Germany and Australia.)
What is peer to peer carsharing? It's traditional carsharing using privately owned 
vehicles temporarily made available to a carsharing company for others to drive. Like traditional carsharing the vehicles are decentralized, they're available by the hour, and they include gas and insurance in the rates (ideally full insurance coverage, not state minimum coverage).
But first, a point of clarification: some of the services that claim to be carsharing don't actually meet what I would call the minimum requirements for calling themselves carsharing — most importantly lacking "unattended access", through a lockbox or electronic technology. If you've got to meet the owner to exchange keys at the beginning and end of the trip I just don't see how that will provide sufficient convenience of access for drivers.
Here's why I think unattended access important: if you want to claim to be carsharing I want to be sure it will deliver the benefits that so many of us have worked so hard to establish over the years — fewer cars on the road, fewer parked cars, VMT reductions, increased use of transit, bicycling and walking. If not, why should local governments support carsharing? Car rental, even so-called hourly car rental, has never demonstrated these benefits. (Because of the lack of unattended access, in my mind, this excludes Spride and Whipcar as real carsharing at the present time) leaving RelayRides and Gettaround as the only bona fide peer to peer carsharing services.
Why is peer to peer so attractive?
Well, it's certainly a good deal for car owners, who can easily make several thousand dollars a year from their car ("Don't work for your car, make your car work for you," as Spride says.) Need I say more?
For the carsharing member (driver or renter in p2p terms), some adjustments will be necessary — it seems likely that in most cases instead of knowing a couple of favorite vehicle locations near your home or office, you'll have to go on the internet (or ideally smart phone) to locate the cars that are available during the timer period you have in mind; and there may be a little anxiety finding the location the first time, particularly in cities.
For the carsharing company it transforms a major expense (leasing or owning the fleet) into a variable cost that they only pay when the car is actually making money. And, the lower cost structure means that carsharing can be feasible in less dense, more suburban locations (i.e. lower hours per day utilization), increasing the benefits of carsharing beyond the center city and close-in neighborhoods of the relatively few cities in the US that presently have carsharing. That's the heart of why I think is peer to peer a next big thing.
A side benefit of p2p is that, in the same way that using carsharing instead of owning a car (or 2) can be a transition to car-lite lifestyle, renting a car out to others may also serve as a transition to a car-lite lifestyle for vehicle owners.
Why now?
Until now the hangup in getting peer to peer off the ground has been insurance. The issue has been figuring out whether there's an issue (and how to resolve it, if there is) about where/when the vehicle owner's personal auto insurance policy ends and the carsharing policy begins in the event of a claim. Apparently, the economic climate has loosed up the insurance underwriters' grips on the reins at insurance companies. (Whatever it takes, I guess...)
Another reason may be the explosion of interest in the iPhone and smart phones in general, which I think will make finding and booking p2p vehicles much easier and more spontaneous than having to log on to a carsharing company web site at home or work. And, no doubt, the down turn in the economy got the juices flowing with all sort of unorthodox start ups.
Finally, in this survey of peer to peer carsharing, I would be remiss not mention the unsung pioneer in the peer to peer carsharing world: a little community car club in the UK with the unlikely name of Wombat Car Club. They figured out the insurance years ahead of anyone else and have a very generous payment plan for car owners. Thanks for leading the way.
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About the author:
Founder of Carsharing Portland, the first commercial carsharing company in the US 
in 1998, Dave Brook is a consultant in carsharing and new mobility services to start up companies and government agencies. He occasionally posts articles on carsharing in North America and the world to his website www.Carsharing.us, in which this article was posted on 9 May 2010.
For more on P2P C/S:
* Gettaround - http://gettaround.com/
* RelayRides - http://www.relayrides.com/
* Sambil (= ‘Co-car’) http://www.sambil.se/
* Spride Share - http://spride.com/
* Whipcar - http://www.whipcar.com/
* WOMBAT Car Club - http://www.wombatcarclub.co.uk/index.asp
Several of these providers offer explanatory videos on their site.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
World Streets: First Steps on Facebook
We live in a time of not only ever greater problems and challenges before our sector but also one of fast evolving tools and other means of collaboration. 
each of the dozen-plus specialized fora and discussion areas that make up the New Mobility Agenda, and of course World Streets itself. We are obliged to work with the available free tools. Here is the latest addition to the lot - World Streets on Facebook.
In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.
World Streets on Facebook:
- A. de Tocqueville, 1835
To some of you this may seem like a bit of a stretch, but after all it is 2010 and after all (again) we are losing and losing big the war of sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. We have some important messages to share among us, and here is where we really have to make use of every tool out there which might be put to work for our good cause.
Hence in this case -- and why not? -- Facebook. So just yesterday we set up our best first cut of a Facebook page for World Streets, which you can now see, join, comment and use at www.facebook.worldstreets.org.
Home page text:
World Streets: First Steps is intended to serve as an open door for the Facebook community to the issues and contents of World Streets, the 21st century daily newspaper that has a single job: to provide you with high quality, readable, concise, food for thought and leads specifically on the topics of sustainable mobility, sustainable cities and sustainable lives, world-wide.
Signing in:
To access the site you have first to create a Facebook page, but as most of our readers know this is no big deal and can be set up quickly in a reserved, professional and secure manner. That done, once on line all you have to do is click to www.facebook.worldstreets.org and there you are on the home page.
In closing, let me be the first to indicate that I do not at all have a clear picture of how this Facebook interface is going to work out. But I would be a poor friend of sustainable development and social justice if we did not at least give it our best shot.
Tell us what you think, either here or on Facebook. This is after all a team enterprise.
Eric Britton
Editor - editor@worldstreets.org
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Promoting road safety and clean air in Kathmandu
This is the second article in a series coming in from Nepal, showing how the combination of traffic restraint and the push toward the creation of pedestrian- 
friendly areas is giving results in their capital city. The reader should bear in mind that the traffic situation on most of the city streets is extremely chaotic and dangerous, above all as a result of the explosion of fast-moving two wheelers. The city also suffers from major air quality problems due to a noxious combination of heavy traffic, dirty engines, thin air, natural meteorological factors and its location in the high Kathmandu Valley.
- Charina Cabrido, Clean Air Initiatives for Asian Cities. Kathmandu, Nepal.
The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) recently closed the Hanumandhoka Durbar Square from all kinds of vehicles as part of the government’s initiative to preserve the monument zones and reestablish the World Heritage Site as pedestrian friendly area. This aims to secure the safety of people walking in the city.
In Kathmandu, large portions of the population prefer to walk. In fact, 18.1 percent of daily trips are made entirely on foot, and of the nearly 56.5 percent of the commuters who use different modes of public transport, a large percentage walk as part of their daily commute.
However, inadequate planning has lead to many unnecessary fatalities and injuries. According to a study conducted by Kathmandu Valley Mapping Program (KVMP), pedestrians account for up to 40 percent of all fatalities in Kathmandu City in 2001.
The Clean Air Initiatives for Asian Cities and Clean Energy Nepal proposed for the implementation of exclusive zones for non – motorized transit within congested urban zones based from the results of its walkability survey.
What KMC has done is something that we must applaud. Urban cities with improved land use and transportation planning deliberately include pedestrianising streets to contribute to good health and quality of life. Based on a study made by the WorldWatch Institute, a short, four-mile round trip of walking helps reduce 15 pounds of pollutants in the air that we breathe.
Heritage Walk Project in Hanumandhoka Durbar Square
The heritage walk project in Hanumandhoka Durbar Square motivates people to take action to improve Kathmandu’s air quality. It reminds us that walking is the most socially inclusive mode of transport and is available to most people, regardless of age, gender, education or income. When you walk, you contribute to the creation of a healthy environment by reducing traffic congestion, air and noise pollution and creating a safer, more social and liveable community.
It also creates a good impression for many visiting tourists in this country that there are safer and quieter roads that is designed entirely for the people. Pedestrian facilities that create safe and attractive environments with a range of amenities will encourage walking and attract visitors to these areas.
Pedestrian-friendly urban design is one of the key enabling conditions for effective transit systems. It tends to lower crime rates and accidents. With the segregation of people from vehicles, the safety of pedestrian and transportation abilities are greatly improved.
The concept of pedestrianisation is relatively simple, its benefits almost immediately apparent, but its implementation is hardly easy. This is not only part of KMC’s turf, it is everybody’s responsibility that road security practices are being followed to ensure that safer and quieter roads bind us all.
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Background article from the Kathmandu Post, 17 April 2010:
Source: http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2010/04/17/top-stories/Basantapur-an-amblers-paradise/207301/
To conserve Basantapur Durbar Square, a UNESCO world heritage site, the local administration on Saturday announced a ban on vehicular movement within the area. Ambulances and other emergency vehicles will, however, be allowed to ply there.
Programme chief of the Hanumandhoka Durbar Square Conservation Programme that falls under the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), Harikumar Shrestha, said on Saturday that the fresh restrictions will come into effect from Sunday. The authorities will also impose a ban on political meetings and other gatherings in the area. Cultural programmes, however, are permitted.
The Kathmandu Metropolitan City had earlier imposed a ban on vehicular movement there, but it was not implemented largely due to lack of cooperation from locals and other stakeholders.
According to Shrestha, a meeting between representatives of Nepal Police, Traffic Police, Kathmandu Metropolis and the District Administration decided to impose the restrictions. They felt that vehicular movement and encroachment in the area were posing a threat to monuments there.
“The move also comes at a time when tourists visiting the historic site are facing difficulties due to vehicular movement there,” Shrestha said. He requested residents, local clubs, organisations and political parties to help the authorities create a “hassle-free” environment for tourists.
The authorities have further come up with alternative routes for vehicles to ease the traffic congestion that will result after the move is implemented. While vehicles coming from New Road and Ason will pass through Indrachowk, Suraj Arcade and to Phyphal, those coming from the opposite direction will follow the same route to reach New Road.
In addition, the KMC plans to put an end to the evening market in the area. The market has been thriving for the past eight years despite strong opposition from locals.
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About the author:
Charina Cabrido is an environmental researcher, a writer and a cycling advocate who 
is working for sustainable urban transport in Kathmandu, Nepal. She is currently associated with the Clean Air Initiatives for Asian Cities, an organization that is active in 8 country networks and over 170 organizational members to promote and demonstrate innovative ways to improve the air quality in Asian cities through partnerships and sharing experiences. Charina currently leads the Walkability Index Survey in Kathmandu to promote improvements in pedestrianisation infrastructures and services. She is also active in developing mass education, awarness and media campaign related to Air Quality Management issues in Nepal through the Clean Air Network Nepal.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Paris' Plan to Kick Cars Off Its Riverbanks
In the pages of World Streets we lean heavily to giving attention to 
concepts and policies which promise near-term relief from the worst abuses of old mobility. But this does not mean turning our backs on longer-term thinking and strategies, as long as they do not contravene the basic sense of priorities which are needed for a consistent and effective sustainability policy. Here is a brief article that appeared in this week's Time magazine which reports on views, pro and con, about the possibility of converting some significant chunks of Paris's urban highway for uses by people, instead of cars.
On a recent Sunday in Paris, stroller-pushing parents, rollerbladers and cyclists eased their way up and down an unusually tranquil stretch of the Seine's left bank. Normally this road is filled with thousands of cars zipping along, but once a week it is transformed into an oasis of calm as part of an experiment by City Hall to see what happens when cars are banned from Paris' riverbanks. So far the experiment, which has been going on for the past few years, is proving popular. Delphine Damourette, 31, a Montmarte resident whose cobblestoned neighborhood is a rollerblader's hell, says the traffic-free Sundays give her a taste of her city as she most loves it — during summer vacation, when Paris slows down, cars disappear, and pedestrians reclaim the Seine. "It would be great if Paris were like this all year long," she says. Soon, she may get her wish.
If Mayor Bertrand Delanoë has his way, by 2012 the 1.2 miles of left bank expressway between the Musée d'Orsay and the Alma bridge will be permanently closed to automobiles, while traffic on the right bank will be slowed, all with the goal of turning the urban highway into a "pretty urban boulevard." The estimated $50 million project — dubbed "the reconquest of the banks of the Seine" — calls for the development of 35 acres of riverside, with cafés, sports facilities and floating islands. "It's about reducing pollution and automobile traffic, and giving Parisians more opportunities for happiness," Delanoë said at the April 14 project unveiling. "If we succeed in doing this, I believe it will profoundly change Paris."
But Parisians have already been through several years of policies — some drastic, some less so — aimed at ending the automobile's reign in the capital. Are they ready for another transformative transportation project? Deputy Mayor for the Environment Denis Baupin, who as transportation chief from 2001-2008 launched tramways, bus lanes, bike paths, the Vélib' public bikeshare and other schemes — all while weathering virulent criticism and monikers like Khmer Vert — thinks they are. "If we can talk about reconquering the banks of the Seine today, it's because we first had the Sunday [closures] ... which allowed people to acclimate to the idea that it was possible, pleasant and positive," he tells TIME. "Mentalities have changed, and desire has grown for a city that's going somewhere, that's transforming and becoming more ecological."
In seeking to take back the Seine, though, City Hall has started a new fight on one of the most historic battlegrounds in Paris for competing visions of the capital. The 1967 creation of the right bank expressway was part of a wider plan to crisscross the capital with high-speed roads, reflecting former President George Pompidou's belief that "Paris must adapt itself to the automobile." That philosophy hit a roadblock in 1975 when grassroots opposition successfully blocked plans for an elevated left bank expressway that would have passed in front of Notre Dame.
The victory was a benchmark for France's nascent green movement and constituted "the last gasp of the Los Angelesation of Paris," says Eric Britton, Paris-based economist and founder of the transport think tank New Mobility Agenda. "It was the beginning of another idea about how to handle mobility, transport infrastructure and the environment in general."
Yet 35 years later, more than 30,000 cars still zip down the Seine expressways every day, and for critics of Delanoë's idea, like French radio commentator Marion Ruggieri, they are "no less than the umbilical cord of the capital for everyone working and living in the suburbs." Worried about how closing the river's banks to traffic will affect those who depend on their cars to make a living, Ruggieri told France INFO radio, "Bertrand Delanoë wants a museum city, petrified in its clichés, reserved to tourists and the privileged, all this in the name of pollution."
Other detractors scoff at City Hall's claims that traffic diverted by the project will be absorbed into the upper quays and that drivers' commutes will only increase by 6 minutes. Environment deputy mayor Baupin, however, is confident that, when forced to, people will change their habits. It's already happened. Thanks to municipal policies such as lowering speed limits and replacing thousands of parking spaces with wider sidewalks and bike and bus lanes, daily car trips in Paris were reduced by 450,000 from 2001-2008. The hope is that by making the river banks automobile-free, more drivers will leave their cars at home and use the east-west-running bus lines, metro, and RER commuter trains along the Seine — all currently under expansion.
But in the end, they may have no choice. "This thing is inevitable, the reclaiming of waterways is happening worldwide," says Britton. "Major cities like Bordeaux and Lyon have banned automobiles from their river banks in recent years and invested 
millions to develop green promenades, tramways and other transportation alternatives — projects widely embraced by residents today after initial skepticism. Outside of France, transformations have taken place even in industrial cities like Bilbao in Spain — which since the 1990s has cleaned up the infamously polluted Nervión river and moved its port downstream to reclaim its banks — and Kaohsiung in Taiwan, the country's busiest port, where the city has transformed shipyards and military complexes into green space and leisure areas."
Baupin believes that all these examples point to a permanent shifting of the tides. "Not a city in Europe would build the Georges Pompidou expressway today," says Baupin. "The movement has finally reversed." Technically that won't be confirmed until Paris City Council votes on the project in July. But with the right bank to still be partially occupied by cars whatever happens, Baupin and the Greens won't be fully satisfied. "This is only a step," he says. It seems the banks of the Seine haven't seen their last battle yet.
Source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1985219,00.html
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About the author:
Jeffrey T. Iverson has been reporting from Paris as a TIME Magazine contributor 
since 2007. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, he graduated from New York University with a master's degree in French Studies and Journalism in 2005, and today writes on a variety of subjects including Paris city politics for TIME, Paris Magazine and other publications.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Curious about where carsharing is going?
All you have to do is check out these two maps which report the last eighty visitors (locations) to check into the World Carshare Consortium -- www.worldcarshare.com -- today and the pattern unfolds right before your eyes.
Pictures telling stories:
Worldwide:
The world map leaves us once again with our nagging question: why are we not seeing carsharing in those broad white swaths, Latin America, Africa, ex-Soviet Union, most of South East Asia, and of course China? Is it because carsharing is a rich man's sport? We don't think so, and before running away from the challenge we invite you to dig deeper. (And be sure that we shall too.)
At the other end of the activity spectrum, have a look at . . .
The European hotbed:
Posts
