[sustran] [World Streets] Correspondents update: 6 April 2009

[Eric Britton (Paris, France)]

[http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/2009/03/world-streets-correspondents.html]
We have now entered the second month of World Streets existence, and
our almost a week into the construction of our new World Streets Map,
so let me take a few minutes of your time to try to update you quickly
on where this is heading from this point on.

1. Moving target: if you are a little confused about how all of this is
supposed to work here at the beginning, let me assure you that you are
not the only one. What we are setting off on here is a collaborative
communication learning process, the basic underlying philosophy and
broad goals of which are I hope pretty clear (see today's opening
editorial), with the rest to evolve as we move ahead and learn. I am
comfortable with that and hope that you will be as well.

2. Peer-to-peer: I have always considered that one of the goals of a
really successful public interest contribution is that it is wide open
– i.e., that it provides materials, clues and tools which can help
enable good things to happen without necessarily the provider of the
tools of the initial ideas for ever emerging as the necessary central
fulcrum of everything that the initial push might set off. This is
definitely one of the objectives of World Streets, and I hope that you
will take this as an invitation to run with any of this with your own
ideas and initiatives. Of course I have to hope that whatever it is
will be consistent with the basic philosophy we so strongly believe in,
but in any event I am confident that the quality of the fundamental
ideas and philosophic principles is sufficient to guarantee that this
will pretty much have.

3. Correspondent contributions: As originally promised this is a no
obligation activity, and I propose that in the first months the pattern
that will suit you best will be the one that we mutually learn as the
project advances. Again the sections Contributor Guidelines and
Correspondents are useful as background reading which I can heartily
recommend prior to posting or commenting if you will. I might add that
we have particular interest in contributions which will fall under the
categories including Honk!, the infamous Bad News Department, Toolkit ,
outstanding new projects or programs, people or groups that are making
a difference, and basically anything that might be going on in your
city or area of interest which has universal interest and potential
application.

4. Eyes on the Street map. This is a pretty good microcosm for the
rest. It is intended to illustrate in a striking manner the way in
which we are attempting to combine the global and the local. There are
a couple of ideas that we are looking at integrating into both this map
and the project overall:
• Local identification: Each city symbol needs to link to a specific
person and a specific place. When you click a city, take Pune in India
as example, this will take you direct to Sujit. I have tried to take
him at his exact address in his neighborhood, 383 Narayan Peth, but I
am going to need a little help from him in order to pinpoint the exact
location of his home. I hope that we will be able to do this for all of
our cooperating colleagues. (You will hopefully appreciate in this
context why I have so doggedly insisted on the initial identification
encompassing both the name of our cooperating colleagues and the
city/country affiliation. Also In this regard, kinldy you make sure I
have your exact street address so, as close as possible to attaching it
to your listing.)

• Green Map: I am also playing around with the concept of linking each
city to a Green Map (See www.greenmaps.org). As part of this, have
already placed links not only in going but also in Barcelona, Seattle,
Cape Town and one or two others.

• Traffic cams: Another possibility that I intend to have a closer look
at is that of finding the nearest traffic cam so that the visitor can
get some kind of feel for what the streets actually look like at
different points in time in that place.

4. Expanding World Streets coverage: We already after less than a week
have more than 40 kind colleagues who have indicated that they will be
pleased to exercise this item street function in their city and more
broadly. I would hope during the course of April, the second month our
new journal, to bring this up to ensure coverage of something like 100
world cities, i.e. cooperating colleagues.
• Geographic: More coverage of Africa, the Middle East, the former
parts of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, Latin America and Asia
are definitely called for as priorities. And I think we should be very
ambitious about coverage in both China and India.

• Gender: One of the basic pillars of this project is that we need to
engage more women in the process of planning and decision-making. Thus
far of the first 40 correspondence coming in, only eight are women. To
rectify this, I intend to adjust the outreach in these next ages to
give heavy reference to qualified female colleagues, so if you have
nominations for me please be sure that they will be immediately
activated.

Sorry to have tied up so much of your time with this, but I think it is
important that we get off to a strong start and a shared understanding
of the best way to go about all this. Of course as always your
suggestions, corrections, and ideas for doing better are enormously
well.

Eric Britton
Editor, World Streets

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Posted By Eric Britton (Paris, France) to World Streets at 3/31/2009
02:59:00 PM
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