[sustran] Next Great World Car Free Day - Asia/Pacific Region

Eric Britton ecoplan.adsl at wanadoo.fr
Wed Mar 20 19:37:21 JST 2002


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Ex Sum for Asian Cities:

The goal of this little cooperative UN regional project is to bring a
dozen or so mayors and their senior representatives from the
Asia/Pacific region to Fremantle Australia to observe a smaller
"bottom-up" Car Free Day project, and to participate in a Regional
Practicum to test for possible applications to cities across the region
on the lookout for ideas that might help them move to greater
sustainability..  For more, go to http://uncfd.org.  
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Paris, Wednesday, March 20, 2002
 
Dear Friends,
 
Here is some advance news on the next World Car Free Day event, which is
going to take place in Fremantle Australia on Thursday, 9 May, in
cooperation with the United Nations Car Free Days Programme.  The UN
team is working with the City of Fremantle and a growing array of
participating Australian government and other concerned agencies and
groups, to organize around the CFD events the second Regional CFD
Practicum for mayors and their representatives from the Asia/Pacific
region.  You will find the first rounds of information on this on the UN
site at  http://uncfd.org , and shortly on the new Fremantle site, which
will be at CarFre.com.
 
This second event of the UN program is going to provide a rich and we
think highly instructive contrast with the first, which was the cycle of
activities organized around the latest Bogota Car Free Day, which you
will also find described in detail on http://uncfd.org.  In Bogota we
saw a situation in which the Car Free Day started out covering all of a
sprawling Third World mega-city of more than seven million people of
whom fewer than 20% car users, whereas in Fremantle the starting point
is the central area of a small town of fewer than thirty thousand with
close to total car dependency.  Too small to count?  Hmm.  
 
It may pay you to keep your eye on Fremantle as this develops, since it
sits within an extensive metro area, Perth, of well more than one
million people, and where it may turn out that the small project at the
origin has far more extensive impacts than one may have first
anticipated.  How do you start something like this in an area of total
car dependence?  How do you make it extend to other parts of the region
and other cities?  Is there a lesson for all in their casual Australian
title, Shed your Car Day?  Will it make a difference that one of their
main partners from the outset in this has been the local Chamber of
Commerce? Can this ‘start-small’ approach also have lessons for the
Third World, perhaps as many in its own way as the very large projects
such as Bogota?  
 
-          On the look-out for Partners:  As yet, this is a project that
is working on a shoe-string budget. Yet it has world level goals.  How
are these going to be achieved?  Through cooperation, partnerships and
volunteers.  Here are some of the things on our short list that we are
on the look out for and where you may be able to be of help:

o        Funds to cover travel and related expenses for mayors from the
Asian region, who feel it could be useful for the to attend the three
day Practicum in May.
o        Support to permit Webcasting of the Fremantle events so that
they can be observed and studied by people and cities anywhere in the
world.   

-          Independent Monitoring and Reporting: One of the things that
the organizers have much in mind is to give special attention to the job
of providing in-depth independent expert monitoring and analysis of the
Day, its impacts, and the attitudes of people before, during and after.
 This is important because it is the exceptional CFD that does this,
thereby offering to other cities as well as their own citizens some
reliable concrete indicators of actual accomplishment.  And what might
be done better the next time around. 

-          An Open Process:  The members of this forum and others are
invited to share your ideas and suggestions for good ways to monitor Car
Free Day events, so that we have a firm idea of what happened, what
worked, and what may need more work and thought before launching the
next round of projects.  The results of this analysis will be posted on
the site, and it is hoped that the basic working format will provide a
useful tool or point of departure for future projects anywhere in the
world.

-          World CFD Inventory:   The UN programme is also working to
develop an open world wide inventory of Car Free Day projects, past,
present and even planned.  You will see more on this at
http://uncfd.org. 
 
In conclusion:  As you will see from the website, the goal of this
entire operation is to report to the forthcoming World Summit on
Sustainable development of the UN, which is being held from August
16-Sept 4 in Johannesburg, South Africa.  The World Summit (“Rio plus
10”) is particularly on the lookout for promising new approaches to
advance the word sustainability agenda, and we think that Car Free Days
is one.
 
Questions, suggestions and challenges are more than welcome.  If you
feel that they are of universal interest, we invite you to post them to
the site here at WorldCarfreeDays at yahoogroups.com, otherwise I will be
pleased to hear from you here at eb at uncfd.org.
 
With all good wishes,
 
Eric Britton 
 
Senior International Advisor
United Nations Car Free Days Program at http://www.uncfd.org 
 
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