[sustran] The New Mobility Agenda - Focus programs and peer discussions

[Eric Britton]

Dear Friends,

 

If you follow the discussions here, it may be useful for you to know a
bit more about how the New Mobility Agenda websites and focus discussion
groups are organized. The following note intends to do that job. 

 

We have talked about email overload in the past, and just below you will
see our suggestions on how to avoid that unpleasant state of affairs. 

 

Eric Britton

 

 

 

The New Mobility Agenda – Focus programs and peer discussions

 

The New Mobility Agenda has a twenty year track record as a fully
independent, open, and diversified world wide collaborative peer program
concerned with showing how progress can be made, step by careful step,
toward more sustainable communities and lives by creating more human and
more efficient transportation arrangements. 

 

The Agenda has been organized into a cluster of related but specific
focus groups -- each with its own targeted concerns, working style and
membership base. For each program (indicated here in large font), there
is a corresponding discussion forum and shared library which can be
reached directly in all cases via the top menu (where it may be marked
as Forum, Café, or Idea Factory). The discussions are lightly but firmly
moderated to ensure that they keep on track, produce more light than
heat, and generally provide good value for the busy participants.  See
the final section of this note for a few use hints.

 

 <http://www.ecoplan.org/general/welcome.htm> Welcoming Note: Before
actually participating actively in any of the groups, we invite you
most energetically to read our Welcoming Note
<http://www.ecoplan.org/general/welcome.htm>  here. Also: There are
pretty good internal Search tools in most of the following. These help
to turn what are otherwise just ephemeral one-time messages into useful
and in many cases quite substantial databases. Give it a try using your
selected keywords. 

 

 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewMobilityCafe/join> Email overload?:
Some busy readers may wish to sign into the Daily Digests, particularly
for the New Mobility Idea Factory and the Lots Less Cars Café, both of
which can get quite busy from time to time and generate what may to some
prove an uncomfortable flow of email and references. No problem.  Click
to the forum in question, go to “Edit Membership” on their top menu,
click and put yourself down for the Daily Digest, preferably in their
quite nice “Fully Featured” version.


The New Mobility Agenda <http://www.newmobility.org/>  (The Politics of
Transportation.) – at http://www.newmobility.org
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewMobilityCafe/> 

The New Mobility Idea Factory, opened its virtual doors in 1988 as the
Access Café, offering a free, public, flexible discussion space for our
international peers, concerned citizens and groups who feel that our
transport systems need to be, and can be made to be, more sustainable
and more just -- and who wish to freely exchange ideas and information
about it.  Unlike most generally similar fora the focus is above all on
the Politics of Transportation. The orientation of the exchanges is
strategic, informed and generally sober if often quite contentious.

 

Kyoto World Cities 20/20 Challenge <http://www.kyotocities.org/> :  --
http://www.kyotocities.org 

The Kyoto Cities <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/%20Kyotoworldcities/>
Forum  Since 2004 a reserved area for announcements and discussions in
support of Kyoto World Cities Program, Organized around a single
question:   "What can you do in your city to reduce traffic and its
negative impacts dramatically (say on the order of 20%) in a very short
period (we propose 20 months), and within your existing transportation
budget." 

 

Lots Less Cars in Cities Idea Factory – http://www.lotslesscars.org 

 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lotslesscars/> Lots Less Cars Forum
"What we are looking at here is not quite zero cars (in most places)
but, let us say, many fewer cars in our cities, a more tranquil
environment, and a lot more safe and happy people." Free flow exchanges
& shared information on how to address and achieve "less car" solutions
to the challenges of transport in cities. Lots on non-motorized
transport and traffic reduction measures. And lots of disagreement.
Quite activist, rather informal and laid-back.  

 

New Mobility Advisory/Briefs – at http://newmobilitybriefs.org 

 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewMobilityCafe/> The New Mobility Idea
Factory  serves as the forum for the Briefs.  Informs and advises local
government and concerned agencies about measures and policy options
which can get visible results within a time horizon of two to three
years. Supported by Accelerated Learning Sessions which tackle key
topics in intense three day workshops, the first  being organized in
Monaco for European subscribers and other s interested from 29-31 March
2007: The Monaco New Mobility Policy Dialogues: Accelerated Learning for
City Managers, Planners and Decision-makers

World Transport Policy & Practice – http://www.wtransport.org 

The  <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldTransport/> World Transport
Forum goes back more than a decade, and at present serves more than five
hundred transportation experts, activists and policy makers world wide.
The main business of the forum is to provide support and interactive
discussion space for the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice.
For exchanges of a more general nature on the transport-environment
theme try the New Mobility Agenda and its Idea Factory.

 

Global South Mobility <http://www.globalsouthmobility.org/>  –
http://www.globalsouthmobility.org
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustran-discuss> 

 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustran-discuss> Global South - Sustran
Network : Global South Mobility provides a Collaborative relay station
for world-wide information and discussions. The forum is run by Sustran
- the Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia & the Pacific -- an
email discussion list devoted to people-centred, equitable and
sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries (the 'Global
South'). Sustran: a major discussion forum on urban transport in
developing countries." Discussions are well focused, expert-based and of
very high quality. 

The Gender, Equity and Transport Forum <http://www.gatnet.net/>  -
http://www.gatnet.net/  <http://www.dgroups.org/groups/worldbank/GATNET>


 <http://www.dgroups.org/groups/worldbank/GATNET> GATNET - Gender and
Transport - This is the discussion group of a community of practice that
began with a program on mainstreaming Gender into the World Bank's
Transport Sector. It is open to all those who are interested in issues
relating to improving mobility and access for poor women, children and
men in developing countries. 

 

World Carshare Consortium <http://worldcarshare.com/>  –
http://worldcarshare.com <http://worldcarshare.com/>  

Carshare Café <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarshare> : This free,
cooperative, independent, international communications program supports
carsharing projects and programs, world wide. Since 1997 it offers a
convenient place on the web to gather and share information and
independent views on projects and approaches, past, present and planned
future, freely and easily available to all comers.

 

World Car Free Days <http://worldcarfreeday.com/>  –
http://worldcarfreeday.com 

The  <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lotslesscars/> Lots Less Cars in
Cities Forum – also serves for Car Free Day exchanges. This program
resulted directly from the early work of the New Mobility Agenda, which
led to an international call for days without cars in October 1994 in a
new mobility congress in Toledo Spain. This wide open program looks at
Car Free Day projects around the world and tries to determine if they
are working, not working, useful or in need of a real overhaul. Critical
discussion with at least half of the members convinced that all this is
a good idea. But only half. 

 <http://www.xtransit.org/> xTransit: New ways of getting there -
http://www.xtransit.org/

xTransit  <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xTransit/>  Idea Factory for
small vehicle transit-  Another joker, this one given over to what we
believe to be one of the most important single transport modes for the
future, small vehicle systems, usually independently owned and operated,
and prime targets for technology and supportive rethinking of
legislation and relationships with the rest of the system. Getting
people in and around 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 -- and all of that
as no less than the only way to offer "car like" mobility in most of our
21st century cities without killing the cities themselves (the good old
old mobility way).
 

The Land Cafe: Putting Value Capture to Wor <http://www.landcafe.org/> k
– http://www.landcafe.org 

The Land Café <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/landcafe/> : But how are we
ever going to pay for all this? Check out our very busy Land Cafe if you
are on the lookout for new thinking on this critical topic. An informal,
shared, public interest, knowledge-building consortium -- supported by
The Commons as an independent Open Society project, specifically to
serve and bring together people and groups around the world who are
concerned to find practical ways for our societies to come to grips with
the troubling but important issues of value capture and land tax reform
in an age in which important public services remain substantially
under-funded.

Children <http://ecoplan.org/children>  on the Move!: Small Steps to
Sustainable Lives – http://ecoplan.org/children

The Small-Steps <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Small-Steps/>
Forum: If children cannot get around safely and with full independence
in our communities, then we are in real trouble. If there is a mine
canary to the New Mobility Agenda and the challenges behind it, this is
it. You have a framework here you can work with and the next step is to
extend the net to bring in a couple of hundred concerned citizens like
you (our proven critical mass to get anything done in this fora.)  Dig
in. Get involved.  Make the future.

 

 

*     *     *

Videos, audio, media: You will find that many of these programs are
supported by a variety other than print media, valuable components of
the tool kit needed if we are to move toward more sustainable cities.
You will find this information in the respective sites. 

 

 

 

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