[sustran] WorldTransport Forum People first: Transport Planning and Policy for the Urban Poor

[Eric Britton]

On Behalf Of Aaron Thomas
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 5:06 PM
To: WorldTransport at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: WorldTransport Forum People first: Transport Planning and
Policy for the Urban Poor

 

  

Given that it is the urban poor who bear the brunt (bear the largest costs)
of destructive/exclusionary transport systems while gaining the least, it
seems difficult to justify postponing a discussion of this topic that Eric
so wisely has proposed. 

 

Is an acceptable compromise with Lake's point about preparation to hold a
less formal / more open forum discussion on this topic for at least part of
August, i.e. instead of polished articles, wider participation in the form
of open discussion and contributions?

 

with good wishes,

Aaron

 



 

2009/7/22 Lake Sagaris <lake at sagaris.cl>

  

Eric - This is a great topic - urban transport and social justice/poverty
elimination. But I think we should take more time to organize it and plan
several columns/opinion pieces/informative articles to provide a solid basis
for any discussion. I think several people from Interface for Cycling
Expertise partners in developing countries could contribute, but we need
more lead time to do a good job. I will copy this to some of them.

 

All best

Lake

 

  _____  

From: WorldTransport at yahoogroups.com [mailto:WorldTransport at yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Eric Britton
Sent: July-22-09 3:40 AM
To: WorldTransport at yahoogroups.com
Subject: WorldTransport Forum People first: Transport Planning and Policy
for the Urban Poor

 

  

Dear Friends,

 

Over at World Streets - http://WorldStreets.org/ -- we have started just
this month to organize month-long 'conversations' on selected  sustainable
transport topics which we believe can be enhanced by specifically focused,
time-delimited discussions. The first of these (still in process for the
month of July) has been looking at carsharing from a number of angles. You
can get an idea of how this works out by clicking to
http://tinyurl.com/ws-carshare.

 

The focus topic selected for August is a new collaborative approach in Italy
which you can check out today at  http://tinyurl.com/ws-italy . 

 

That's just fine, but I have been burning over the last two years or so to
organize an all-continent  collaborative conversation to have a closer look
at People first: Transport Planning and Policy for the Urban Poor, and I
would now like to see if you might have any thoughts for us on that if we
were to make it a focus topic for August or September. 

 

The need is huge, we have been seeing here through your conversations about
Indian cities, but there is a big and all too often unjust world out there
and the urban poor are being ignored - other when they get angry and start
burning cars and buses - in our sector as in many others. And indeed in ALL
parts of the world.

 

So we have a real topic here, and for my part and if we can get enough
support for this idea, I would like to dig in already in August, even though
that is only a bit more than a week away. Our topic is so very rich, so very
important, and so very much neglected when it's time to plop down the
taxpayer dollars for transportation investments, that it really should not
wait.

 

So if you agree on this, it would be great to hear from you, and if there is
a sufficient positive response I can start to hammer out a draft "work plan"
for the month, again for your review and remarks. Then August comes and we
all start to be as mart as we can. It will be a great month, and maybe at
the end one of us will decide to write the whole thing up to show how a
couple of dozen, hundreds perhaps citizens and groups who care can show the
way.

 

I am very eager to hear from you. Do we have a topic? A consensus to get
started?

 

Eric Britton 

 

| editor at worldstreets.org | World Streets <http://www.worldstreets.org/>  |
Paris  | +331 4326 1323 | Skype newmobility

 

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