[sustran] May there be many more such days!

[Eric Britton]

 Exec Sum: The bottom line here is to point you to a delightful  photo
montage by Bill Cunningham, New York Times photographer of car-less streets
in New York at
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/30/fashion/20080830-street/index.
html . But first a word from our sponsor: '-)

 

 

Fourteen years ago next month, I, in a moment of pure passion, tossed out a
challenge in a keynote address to a distinguished audience of some four
hundred planers, policy makers and various media types in an international
conference on Accessible Cities (Ciudades Accesibles) in the form of a
proposal which I called "Thursday - A Breakthrough Strategy for Reducing Car
Dependence in Cities". It was basically a strategic plan for harnessing
car-free or car-less days as a tool for first educating and then changing a
city.  If you click to http:// <http://www.carfreedays.newmobility.org>
www.carfreedays.newmobility.org  and once there pop the word "Thursday" into
the Search box and then hit the first item, it will take you to the full
original proposal and game plan.

 

Here is how it opened:

 

Thursday is a proposal for a city, neighborhood or group... 

.         To spend one carefully prepared day without cars. 

.         To study and observe closely what exactly goes on during that day.
And then... 

.         To reflect publicly and collectively on the lessons of this
experience and on what might be prudently and creatively done next to build
on these. 

 

The point of departure for this exercise is the determination that you
cannot usefully engage in meaningful dialogue with addicts : that what you
have to do is start treating them in some way. As often as not this means
thrusting the poor souls (especially poor in this case, since we are in fact
talking about ourselves) into a no-choice situation, at least for a time. In
this particular instance our proposed "treatment" will be to find an answer
to the following question in three main parts:

 

.         Is there a way to get drivers out of their cars in one or more
cities... 

.         In ways which will be tolerable in a pluralistic democracy... 

.         For at least be long enough to allow those concerned to learn a
great deal more about the whole complex of things that need to be adjusted
and introduced to make a car-less (or, more accurately, less-car) urban
transport paradigm actually work? 

 

One of the main tasks of planners and policy makers is (or at least should
be) to ask creative questions. This one turns out to be a pretty interesting
question indeed: one that presents us with quite a neat set of targets and
opportunities.

*          *          *

 

This comes to mind fourteen years later in the context of Bill Cunningham
lovely piece on car-free NY streets because it is very much the kind of
thing I had in mind in the first place. The cheerless truth is that of the
thousands of tries at Car Free Days in almost as many cites, few have got
much beyond the annoyance stage for most people in the cities concerned. 

 

But this project ginned up by the consortia of the city's ever stronger and
more able public interest groups and the mayor's office is an example of how
to take a great joyful step in the right direction. There have, fortunate,
been dozens of cities that have taken this approach, and in all cases, step
by step, they change the picture for the city as a whole.

 

As Mr. Cunningham says so innocently: May there be many more such days! 

 



http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/30/fashion/20080830-street/index.
html