[sustran] New Mobility/Year Agenda - Fast 2006 Update

[Eric Britton]

New Mobility/Year  Agenda - Fast 2006 Update



1.	The New Mobility Agenda <http://www.newmobility.org/>  at
http://www.newmobility.org has undergone a major overhaul. You should find
it more informative, transparent and easier to find what you are looking for
once there. Have a look and if it is not good/useful enough for you, let me
know.


2.	Cruising speed:  World <http://worldcarshare.com/>  Carshare, World
Car Free Days <http://worldcarfreeday.com/>  , and the Agenda
<http://www.newmobility.org/>  itself . . . are all on a roll. (As is The
Commons <http://ecoplan.org/> .) Steadily improving and extending coverage,
brining in new members, offering new tools, and doing their bit for
sustainability. If you are following any of these, you will know about all
that. But if not (yet), let us invite you in to have a look. Who knows, you
may stay around for a while.


3.	xTransit <http://www.newmobility.org/> : Yes, again one of our
strange words. But it appears to be needed to pull together all the many
bits and pieces so as to provide a coherent platform for discussions and
exchange on what has to be the hottest transportation topic on the Agenda:
<http://www.ecoplan.org/general/go-to-xtransit.htm> The "third way" of
getting around.  <http://www.ecoplan.org/general/go-to-xtransit.htm> Getting
people around in cities in road vehicles, smaller than full sized buses,
driven by real human beings, dynamically shared with others, and aided by
state of the art communications technologies as the only way to offer "car
like" mobility in most of our 21st century cities without killing the
cities.  Check it out via http://www.newmobility.org 


4.	Kyoto World Cities 20/20 <http://www.kyotocities.org/>  Challenge:
This perhaps most important of our collaborative projects has sat on the
sidelines over these last months while we hammered away with our limited
resources at other parts of The Commons, with the thought that this work on
the concomitant parts of the New Mobility Agenda were going to be important
raw materials for making this policy project zing. What's missing? The link
between our very real collective hands-on competence in terms of how people
can get about in cities, sustainably, and all those higher visibility
programs that are out there are targeting climate issues, mayors' Kyoto
initiatives (but where is the hard core of their transportation proposals),
et al -- but few with the kind of transportation competence that is needed
to make real progress out there on the city streets.  Can you help us make
those links with these other groups and the cities themselves? So far, we
have not been able to do this job. 


5.	United Nations Car Free Days <http://www.newmobility.org/> :  This
one got stuck somewhere in some office in that big building in New York.
Have a look at what we propose on the site and let us know if you have any
ideas for this great cause. It is too important, too good to end its life
there in some drawer.  Pop in and have a look at our proposal for next
steps.


6.	Our Wikipedia New Mobility <http://www.newmobility.org/>  Projects:
Promise! There is more to this than you may at first blush think. Our goal
here is to stimulate our informal international expert consortium to "put
our brains together", and in the process to tap our collective intelligence
to build a free, high-quality, comprehensive on-line encyclopedia and get
out the word that solutions are in sight. For the benefit of all in a world
in which old ideas and old and bad practices die hard. (We want to help them
out the door.)


7.	Self-Organizing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Organizing_Collaborative_Network>
Collaborative Networks:  Sound kind of familiar. Well that in fact is almost
exactly what we are here. And since that is the case, we have set out to
examine this concept more closely and in public. For more on this, you are
invited to turn to the new entry in Wikipedia on this, and to join in with
your ideas and additions.  (It reads quite nicely with the in-process entry
on Knowledge Building <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_building>  and
Self Organization <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization>  which I
also invite you to have a go at.  They are all part of what we are dong
here, and since we have between us some years of hands-on experience
together in this, who better than we can help define the meaning of these
terms in the field of policy and practice)


8.	Finance:  Oops. Big problem. Big challenge. Normally I do the heavy
lifting here, paying for all of this out of my consultancy earnings. But I
have been spending too much time with these programs, and we need to find
new ways to pay for it. Now, we are going to keep all this going one way or
anther but it ain't easy. We are not looking for your money (that would
corrupt the whole concept of being 'off the economy' which is so central to
all we do. But it would be good to have your ideas about possible
foundations or other sources of support. Or your thoughts on how to
integrate some parts of all this into some form of 21st century cash machine
(a la Skype, Google, who knows, but no ads). 

Failing any ideas on that, what you can do is to write me a brief letter
with some kind of "attestation" that all this work is serving some useful
purposes, at least as far as you are concerned. Than if you can properly
sign it so that you are properly and impressively identified, I can then
place that into our eventual applications as we start to shop around for
support.

 

There we have it as this New Year opens up before us, with its challenges
and its opportunities. As you may have noticed we remain entirely optimistic
that we have the means to deal with these problems, and that the only thing
we need to find is a bit of imagination and solidarity to put all our big
brains and even bigger hearts to work.

 

 

Eric Britton

 

The New Mobility Agenda is on line at http://www.newmobility.org 

Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara                     75006 Paris, France

Tel:  +331 4326 1323                                        Skype:
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E:  <mailto:mobility at ecoplan.org> mobility at ecoplan.org            Backup:
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T. +1 310 601-8468   E:  <mailto:eric.britton at ecoplan.org>
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