[sustran] World Streets challenge: Part I and II

[Eric Britton]

In short: Support Medecins Sans Frontières in Haiti today -
http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/donations/.
 
Paris, Sunday, 17 January, 2010
 
Greetings from a city that is living  this mid-January 2010 day in peace,
health and security. Our children are safe, our neighbors about to sit down
to a full Sunday meal, and most of us will venture out onto the streets of
our cities tomorrow morning to another full and peaceful day. You too I
hope. But that is not at all the case in Haiti and its tragic streets.
 
Part I: What we can do today
 
Why do I interrupt your weekend with this unasked-for message?  Because as
it happens over the last couple of decades through  <http://www.msf.org/>
our work with The Commons (since 1973), the New Mobility Agenda (since 1988)
and over the last year on World Streets, I have had the great luck to meet,
correspond with, get to know, and on occasion work directly with several
thousand highly creative people in some eighty countries on all continents,
just about all of whom I know have big hearts and are good neighbors in all
senses of the word.. Now that's a lot of the right kind of people to know
when the going gets tough. So following the latest from Haiti, the following
struck me. Suppose you and I and the others we know bond and carry out the
same simple act that takes just a few minutes -- and which I am sure every
one of us, even the most modest, can afford with no great pain?  If I do it,
if you do it, then others will do it too. We may amaze ourselves. Let's see
how this might work. 
 
It's simple:  We move to our computer or "smart" phone, click to Medecins
Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders at  <http://www.msf.org> www.msf.org
and make a donation, large or small. Say ten or twenty Euros/dollars as a
symbolic statement.  Or perhaps the price of a meal this evening with
someone you love, that latest iPhone that you may not really need, or more,
That will be your choice, but the important thing is that we make our
donation here and now, or in some other way no matter how small. And if you
already did it, well go ahead and do it again. (Click the image here
<http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/invoke.cfm?objectid=31CE24E4-15C5-F00A-
2509330F9BAAC77D&component=toolkit.article&method=full_html&mode=view>  to
view the MSF press conference.)
 
I had already been thinking about Haiti of late for several reasons.
Recently we started work with an NGO --  EcoWorks International who maintain
a small office in Port au Prince, where only two of their ten colleagues on
the ground there have yet to report in– to lay the base for what we hoped
were going to become a series of collaborative workshops with local groups,
agencies and operators in support of low cost, high impact appropriate
transport innovations across the country.  The situation we were originally
looking at on the ground was already about as tragic as you can imagine. But
even that has been catastrophically cut short, for now, though we are ready
to go as soon as circumstances permit. However as you are aware there is a
great deal that must be done first. 
 
So what about this, old friends and colleagues from all over this troubled
planet? What about joining hands today in clicking to MSF's donation page at
http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/donations/. Once there all you have to
do is pick your country and whip through their efficient donation cycle,
using credit card or PayPal. I just did it here through their French site
just now: it took all of five minutes, lightened my purse by a few Euros,
and hey! I feel just one small bit better already. I am not just one more
passive soul sitting this one out next to  a blabbing TV. Of course I want
to have done more, but we each do what we can afford. 

May I then invite you, may I encourage you, may I entreat you to do the
same? You will know that you have done the right thing. And once you have,
if you find a minute please doo drop a quick email to us here to
editor at worldstreets.org  to let us know that you have stepped up to the
challenge, we can add your name to our World Streets honor roll. 
 
If World Streets in all its forms and extensions does not care right down to
our guts about what happens on the streets of the world, we are no more than
idle chatterers.
 
Thank you for proving otherwise,
 
Eric Britton
cid:image007.png at 01CA8874.3B320C40
What we intend to do once the emergency has been met.
 
The importance of safe streets: No city, no place in the world can hope for
a fair future if it does not have safe streets that work for people in their
day to day lives.  Streets are the circulatory systems of our cities, They
are not "roads" which tend to be treated as more or less isolated conduits
down which we try to channel as many vehicles as fast as possible. No
streets are rather highly idiosyncratic, hugely varied human spaces in which
people move and mill around but also do a lot of other things as well. Roads
are for vehicles, streets are for people. We do streets.
 
But in their rightful place: We all know the old one that to a man with a
hammer all problems look like nails. So of course we have to make sure that
all that we think is important is properly understood in the broader context
of the needs and priorities of the people in that place. Alanna Hartzok of
Earth Rights Institute sent us this morning their list of priorities for
rebuilding Haiti.  Putting on my hat as an development economist, let me
share with you my own revised read of the situation. The overall priorities
then, in some kind of rough order . . . 
 
1.     Public safety
2.     Potable water
3.     Access to basic food supply
4.     Sanitation
5.     Habitat
6.     Safe streets 
7.     Appropriate transport (affordable, clean, available to all,
sustainable)
8.     Low cost first-line health care
9.     Public schools for all
10.  Reforestation
 
 And not even one nanometer behind these:
 
1.     Land reform
2.     Agricultural fields (rice and root crops) and appropriate technology 
3.     Transparent public finance 
4.     Wind and solar energy
5.     Dairy farms (goats, cows)
6.     Cotton and hemp fields for fabric and building material
7.     Mangosteen, mango, pineapple, papaya, trees
8.     Nut trees/ coconut trees, ground nuts (peanuts)
9.     Cooperatives.
10.  Small industries.
 
Debt Forgiveness:  A critical step to help Haitians build a better tomorrow
will be to convince global creditors to cancel Haiti’s $890 million
international debt. This I believe should extend to all debts held by the
poor. After bailing out the biggest banks on the planet we are not talking
about huge numbers here. Doing so will help make sure that every possible
future dollar goes towards rebuilding a stronger Haiti, not to servicing old
debts.  
 
United Nations Trusteeship Council: To all of which I have to add a much
stronger role on the part of the much-neglected Trusteeship Council which
needs a far more aggressive mandate for overseeing the next ten or twenty
years in democracy and peace.  In many parts of the world we have for far
too long been fooling ourselves about the importance of that trip to the
polls as a guarantor of democracy. The facts speak for themselves. True
democracy requires a full stomach and a safe walk to the polling place. And
there are times in life when we all can use a little help from outside.
 
International Partnerships for Sustainable Transport: And in this, our
partial bailiwick, I hope that our collaborators around the world will now
turn their eyes and hearts toward Haiti, not only for a bit of help from our
wallets today but more actively in the months and years ahead. Already and
in part in reaction to  the great chaos that soured COP15 in Copenhagen last
month. we are already beginning to get together lay the base for more solid
international collaboration in our field, and World Streets is but one small
example of this. The new International Partnerships for Sustainable
Transport (http://slocat.net/) already groups brings together come fifty of
the most active international, bi-laterals, NGOs and other actors in our
field. So let's all of us get together to work on the fair transport agenda
for poor Haiti. We can do it.
 
Eric Britton
Read World Streets Today at  <http://www.worldstreets.org/>
http://www.worldstreets.org/
8/10 rue Joseph Bara,     75006 Paris,  France, Europe
+331 7550 3788  eric.britton(at)newmobility.org   Skype: newmobility
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