[sustran] Time for a change?

[Eric Britton]

Dear Friends,

 

Even great ideas need to be rethought and renewed from time to time.

 

Since 1994, this program has been called World Car Free Days and has sat here at
http://worldcarfreeday.com seating away and trying to do its part in getting its
message across. And what is that message? Well not so much Car Free Days per se,
but rather, as we put it in the opening lines of this fine café: “Not quite zero
cars (in most places) but, let us say, a lot less cars, a more tranquil
environment, and a lot more safe and happy people.”

 

So here is my question to you and I would very much like to have your counsel.

 

Is it now time to change our name to: “The Less Cars in Cities Open
Collaborative”?  Or something along those lines?

 

Now this is not by any means to suggest that I am running away from the idea of
organizing your own Car Free Day. Heaven forbid! as my dear grandmother would
have put it.  A Car Free Day got right can be a wonderful instrument for
mobilizing opinion, building local consistencies for change, for fewer cars and
for better and softer (and more efficient) cities. But it is only one of the
instruments that we need to be considering.

 

I probably should add by way of further background in the case you are not aware
of it, we also have a collaborative program, the New Mobility Agenda (at
http://www.newmobility.org <http://www.newmobility.org/> ), but the focus of the
agenda is much wider than ‘less cars’ strategies and events. Still, you can see
how they relate.  But that said, I also think that there is a place here for a
more focused (and maybe at times a bit wilder) program. 

 

Thanks for letting me know what you think we should if anything do with this.
In the meantime, what about checking into the 

 

Eric Britton

 

PS. By the way and for the record and just to be sure, this is not (exactly) an
anti-car forum. There are plenty of them around – check
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff
<http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2GGGL_enFR177
&q=anti-car> &ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2GGGL_enFR177&q=anti-car for a list of more than
300,000. What you have here a 'lots less cars in cities’ forum which is, as you
will see, a very different animal indeed.

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.jca.apc.org/public/sustran-discuss/attachments/20060721/fe5f56d6/attachment.html