[sustran] The Great Leap China Car Free Days Idea Factory

[Eric Britton]

The Great Leap China Car Free Days Idea Factory

Outline draft proposal for an open brainstorm

 

Kindly preserve Subject line in future posts;

 

It’s soon 2007 and we have now accumulated a dozen years of international
experience with Car Free Days of many sorts in many places. Against this
background the goal of this proposed group thinking exercise is to see what we
might get out of it if we launch an open group brainstorm on how the best of
this experience and past lessons may be put to work in China in the months and
years immediately ahead. Caution: We are certainly not talking here about
anything like some direct “transfer of experience”, not least because in fact
the overall record of accomplishment of the Car Free Days movement
internationally is, despite occasional successes, hardly what one might call a
model of success. But there are in all this some germs of ideas, and the goal of
this group think and talk exercise will be to see if we can scratch together and
come up with something that might have some uses.  Eric Britton. 

 

I. The Three Great Truths . . .  of China, Cars and the Future.

 

1.	They are going to be more and more cars coming onto the streets and
roads of China -- and coming at rates never seen anywhere in the world in the
past.  And these cars will be used. Ineluctably. And there is nothing that
anyone else can do about it.  It is thus not only an ‘all-China’ problem, but it
is also an ‘only-China’ problem when it comes to addressing and solving it.
2.	There are at least three basic reasons why this challenge truly needs to
be met, as a huge priority: 

a.	For the country and its citizens, its environment and its future; 
b.	For the rest of the world in terms of the potential for huge world wide
negative environmental and climate impacts; and 
c.	For a world badly in need of new models of behaviour and collective
problem solving in areas such as these.

3.	On the positive side of the ledger, the Chinese elephant is just about
unique in the world, in that it is one which can turn on a dime, when it decides
to. This means, for better or worse, that once the political decisions have been
made at the appropriate level, the country can embrace entirely new patterns of
behaviour.



II.  The Challenge

 

1.	These very very large numbers of cars are going to have enormous
environmental, social and economic impacts.
2.	Much of this is going to be very negative indeed.
3.	The absorption capacity of almost all Chinese cities and towns for these
large numbers of new cars are very very limited.
4.	There are however choices – though it would seem that these are not very
clear to those who are making the decisions (or really much anyone else) these
days.
5.	The ‘time locks”: There are two that come to mind: 

a.       Most important, the environmental and other impacts which are already
underway and which threaten the country both in specific places and indeed as a
whole. 

b.        And the coming great events, including the 2008 Olympics in Beijing
and the 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai.  

It may be that for various reasons it will be the concerns about the latter
which drive the move toward a pattern break.

6.	The country is keen to innovate and to demonstrate new patterns in the
process.

III. First Great Leap Brainstorm

 

1.       Use all the available distance and group work tools to somehow get
together with Chinese experts, politicians, the media and civil society to have
a look at one specific idea.

2.       Specifically to see what might be done if they were to build on the
dozen plus years of experimentation and lessons learned in the Car Free Days
movement in many other places.

a.       To concentrate entirely on the challenges of cars in towns and cities. 

b.       NOT to accept any of the existing Car Free Day models, but rather to
search and innovate one that just might open the door to new thinking and new
practices which can possibly lead to a major “pattern break” and a new model,
both for China and for the world. 

3.       To carry out this idea search in a way that those of us who are not
Chinese understand fully that our role if any is simply to try to lend a hand on
the understanding that the ultimate decisions and solutions will be entirely of
their doing.  Put in other terms our goal is to put our experience and a certain
number or raw materials into their hands for them to work with. 

4.       Here are four possibly useful examples that I propose we start by
looking over and discussing to see what if any useful lessons can be derived
from them. (This is my personal  shopping list on this and I put it forth her
just to get the ball rolling. You will most probably have ideas of your own. I
would hope.)

a.       The, I would like to call them, Enrique Penalosa Car Free Days in
Bogotá. (I will be pleased to discuss why I chose to call them as such.)

b.       The Italian Ecological Sundays – (Domeniche Ecologiche)

c.       The South African national Car Free Days program

d.       The self-organized Car Free Day events in Pasto Colombia.

Again the goal here is not to select some sort of ‘top ten’ projects as in a
beauty contest, but to see if we can open up the exchanges with a first handful
of real world examples that differ from each other and might possibly have
application potential in the activities that we would like to help make happen
there.

5.       One idea that I would like to see receiving some attention from the
beginning, is not so much that of a uniform national program along the lines
that the French and EC have pushed, but rather perhaps a Cities Program, even
some sort of cooperative competition in which specific cities carve out a
particular idea that they are ready to run with, and to this in public and as a
contribution not only to their own citizens but also to other cities and groups
across China who are looking for ideas that can make a difference 

6.       How to develop and advance these ideas:

a.       Through exchanges if possible focusing on a single main collector site
–I suggest the Lots Less Cars Idea Factory at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/LotsLessCars/ 

b.       On the other hand this will have to outreach to bring in the many
people and programs who have expertise and competence in these areas. This is
quite a long list and perhaps at a next stage we can begin to scope it out as
well. 

c.       Some group work tools that we might want to think about using in
addition to the above:

                                                   i.      Some kind of dynamic
Wiki(pedia) group work project 

                                                 ii.      Google Documents (This
note is posted as an open document which you can rewrite as you wish at
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9b63x7_28g7dpc3.)

                                                iii.      Also posted to The New
Mobility Group Blog at
<http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2006/12/great-leap-china-car-free-days-id
ea.html>
http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2006/12/great-leap-china-car-free-days-ide
a.html  where comments are invited. 

7.       And now it’s your turn!

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