[sustran] International Forum on Urban Poverty - critical reactions to draft

[Britton (EcoPlan Paris)]

Dear Brian,  

Your note comes at a time of a great push around here on some outstanding
projects so I cannot give it the time and level of attention that I should
like, but let me share at least one or two  thoughts with you  on this in
the hope that it may be useful to you in your most worthy undertaking. 
(I'll put it on the site as well in an attempt to see if we can get some
confirmation, sheer denial, or useful additional observations and
suggestions by others in this most capable group.)

The overall  thrust is, to put it mildly, hugely challenging.  Might it be
too challenging in terms of the breadth of scope and its expansive
ambitions?  I dunno.  My first reaction is that a tighter focus might just
achieve more concrete results. 

In that respect, transport to my mind  is a terrific place to start. It's a
real issue, it touches so many other things, the thrust of policy in most
places til now has been so terribly wrong-headed (and easy to correct, at
least if the will to do so can be found),  Not only that, , it makes a
terrific 'learner system', so that once a given place gets a bit better at
working out these local access issues for themselves, they are going to
have the vision, cooperative structures and confidence in place that would
allow them to tackle some of the really perplexing development issues that
they face.

And no less to the point, I might mention that I have over the last thirty
years watched a very large number of noble efforts (and less noble) of this
ilk come and go, and once all  the nice (and not so nice)  folks have had
that nice  time together, they then just scurry on back home leaving behind
them few if any traces on the sands of time and society (unless they
managed to scoff up a contract or a bit of support for what they do, which
is almost always ye more research or another meeting -- neither of which, I
might suggest, are necessarily the point in life!).. 

>From which I have to conclude that this particular  way of trying to 'build
knowledge, consensus and lay a base for useful action' just doesn't work --
I.E., the time- and place-centric world of the old conference mentality has
had its chance and failed to achieve the needed impacts.  FAILED!!!

Does this mean that we no longer wish to gather people around a table from
time to time in order to take advantage of more prolonged physical contact
in a focused manner?  No, but we sure gotta do it very  differently indeed
if we wish to leave anything more than one more lot of supine bodies on the
ground once the smoke has cleared.

This forum itself, this thing that Paul and his colleagues are trying to
hard to get right (not so easy that, eh Paul?) provides us with a valuable
clue. But there's a lot more to it than that.   We have a whole new
universe of communications technologies and possibilities out there which
we now must learn to orchestrate in new and much more ingenious ways to
achieve the complex objectives of the sort of things that you are setting
out in your draft note.  Our own little (and of late rather neglected) WWW
site STEP - the Sustainable Transport Emergency Program - provides yet
another example.   Last year I wrote a little piece which I entitled the
"The Information Society/Sustainable Development Symphony Orchestra"
wherein I endeavored to make this point at more length.  Now, it's not so
good that I can really recommend it for your consumption, but perhaps with
this note and the additional reactions it may elicit I may at least have
been of a bit of 'help'.

More on this if you wish.  Once good way to take this exchange  further
could be to  try some of the others means of communications that are at our
disposal. 

With all good wishes for the success of your efforts,

Eric Britton

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