[sustran] FW: TRANSPORT

[International Bicycle Fund]

TRANSPORTThe contents of the following message that might interest this
group are in the second half of the message.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ceri Collingborn [mailto:claridge at appleonline.net]
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 2:37 AM
To: ibike at ibike.org
Subject: TRANSPORT


OPENDEMOCRACY : "HOW YOU TRAVEL IS WHO YOU ARE"


I work for a new, internet discussion forum, www.openDemocracy.net.
openDemocracy is an independent, non-profit project which aims to develop a
global dialogue about major questions of politics, culture, and human
experience. We want to expand the space for high-quality but accessible
debate by involving a wide range of voices – from policy-makers
and academics to NGO activists and refugees. Reflection on individual
experience is as welcome as analysis or polemic.

CITY&COUNTRY

At present, as well as responding intensively to September 11, we are
running debates in three distinct topic areas - the future of Europe, the
global media, and City&Country. I work with the co-editors of the
City&Country section, Roger Scruton and Ken Worpole(both are prolific,
respected British writers).

We have just concluded a debate about Planning, which moved between
architecture, land use and suburbia to find surprising agreement on the
relevance of aesthetic considerations to decisions about the lived
environment. The debate is accessible by visiting this page and following
the links : http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/Strand_home.asp?CatID=4

TRANSPORT

Now, we are starting a debate on Transport. We are interested in all aspects
of the topic - economic, political, environmental, cultural - and in
including perspectives from many different countries around the world. We
also wish to take an original approach to this subject, one whose centre is
'lived experience' rather than public policy. We will, therefore, pose basic
questions like : why do we travel? Have place and settlement been defeated
by constant movement? What are the ideas and emotions tied up with different
forms of travel, and what kinds of social relations and behaviours do they
imply?

This is the reason for giving our Transport debate the title : "How you
travel is who you are".

So our starting points will be human needs and engagements, and from there
we will ask what transport or travel polices might flow from different
patterns of living and flourishing. We will discuss (among other topics) the
journeys between home and school or work, the relationship between the car
or bicycle to different landscapes, holiday and leisure travel, the
connection between modes of travel and ideas of individual and national
freedom.

To give a few examples : we may look at why cycling in Amsterdam makes for a
different experience from flying across the Pyrenees, or driving across
America; how each mode of travel seems to produce its own literature and
culture, from the walking tour to the road movie; and how the experience of
movement in wartime (Czech and Polish airmen or snow-skiing Finnish soldiers
in the Second World War, bicycling Vietnamese soldiers and Israeli tank
crew) informs later communal memory and even attitudes to transport policy.

WALKING

In approaching the subject like this, we hope to cross boundaries of the
mind as well as geography, and to put the relationship between mobility and
lived experience at the heart of arguments about long-term social and
environmental sustainability.

To open the debate, we will discuss the most elemental form of human
transport : walking.

THREE QUESTIONS

We would like to make the debate as international as possible (60% of our
readership is outside the UK). We want to address the attitudes to various
forms of transport in different countries. So, I would like to ask you :

1 Could you please look at our site, especially the City&Country section,
and let me know if it interests you?
2 If you have colleagues, friends, or people in other organisations you
think might be interested in openDemocracy, could you let them know about us

(by sending this letter or our web address)?
3 Could you recommend to us the names of people, whether in your
organisation or outside, who might be interested in our debate or even in
writing articles for us?

Please let me know if you would like me to register you to receive our
regular email updates. This would also allow you to write contributions in
the discussion. To do this I will need your name and email address.

I hope that openDemocracy, and the Transport debate in particular, would be
of interest to you, and I look forward to hearing from you.

With best wishes



Ceri Collingborn
Tel: 00 44 1666 510 327, Fax: 00 44 1666 510 607
ceri.collingborn at openDemocracy.net




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