[sustran] Rewarding New Mobility Initiatives World Wide

[Eric Britton]

Paris, Friday, May 04, 2007

Dear Friends,

As many of you here know we are strong supporters of any device, event or
award that brings attention to path-breaking New Mobility initiatives
anywhere in the world that can make a difference in their communities – and
especially those that demonstrate techniques and tools that can be put to
work quickly, cheaply, wisely and well in other places.

Over the last years we have, with the help and support of many of our
international colleagues including perhaps you yourself, managed to get
international recognition for people and projects that are serving to break
the old patterns and stasis that is presently choking our planet and the
daily lives of many, including the poorest and most vulnerable.  And we
think that in each case this in its own small way is helping to make a
difference and helping to encourage and support at least some people and
some places in their heroic efforts to do something about our present and
most unsatisfactory, dangerous and unfair mobility and access arrangements.

So when we find ways to get high profile international recognition for the
path-breaking work of heroes (the word is not too strong) like Hans
Monderman, John Gehl, and Enrique Peñalosa, Ken Livingstone and London’s
heroic (like it or not) effort to break the ice on road pricing, Mayor Lee
Myung-Bak of Seoul for his teams “restoration technology” efforts to green
their transport system, outstanding carsharing projects like Caisse-Commune
(Paris), Greenwheels (Netherlands), Co-operative Auto Network  (Vancouver),
Nordic Carshare (Helsinki),  City CarShare (San Francisco), Walk to School
programs in many places, and all of the vast work of the Stockholm
Partnerships for Sustainable Cities that has brought recognition and honor
to more than 220 projects world wide – well, we think that this is an effort
which really needs to go on.

But it’s a cooperative deal, and what I am writing to you about this morning
is in an attempt to collect your ideas and suggestions for programs, awards,
and other forms of recognition that we might be able to put our combined
efforts to work on. I best make this one point clear first however – and
that is that our quest at this point is not for nominations of people and
projects that are deserving of such international recognition, because we
really follow the field quite closely and indeed have many many ideas
already on this, No, at this particular point what we are looking for
specifically are your suggestions for programs and awards that we should
know about in order to make these outstanding ventures known. Names,
addresses, URLs, contact points and people, and all that we need to know to
get down to work. Also, if you want to lend a hand in this, it would be
great to hear from you about that as well.

Since this is primarily about New Mobility ideas and projects, may I suggest
that our future discussions of this be carried out under the Idea Factory of
the New Mobility Agenda ( http://newmobility.org <http://newmobility.org/> ,
top menu), and to address your suggestions and counsel on this the correct
address would be NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com
<mailto:NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com> .

One never knows where this sort of thing will take us, but my guess is that
it is the right thing to do.

Eric Britton

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