COP15 has given us ample reason to reflect not only on the climate/ governance and the climate/transport links – the latter which we have taken as a pillar of transport policy for some years now – but also on our own contribution here at World Streets to the process that now must be engaged, and for which every capable pair of hands is needed.
Year-end 2009 Special Edition:
In this Special Edition of World Streets, you will find first and for the moment most important, an announcement informing you about our switching for the interim from daily publication while launching a major outreach for funding and other support so that we will be able to continue in 2010. In addition, you will find first entries concerning our intentions in selected key issue areas for the year ahead.
Contents of Special Edition:
I. World Streets in transition
II. Mission for 2010 1. China
2. Africa
3. Share transport
4. The Year of the Woman in Transportation
5. Language editions
6. Sustainable transport linking
7. Collaborative workshops and events
8. Major themes for 2010
I. Catching our breath: Closing down the World Streets daily edition
(temporary - see below. Effective as per 21 Dec. 2009.
“Passion is great; financial support makes the passion available for the long term."
- From a reader in Canada
Our main lesson from COP15 is that from now on we have to ask more of ourselves. World Streets, it is worth recalling, is a public interest venture that encompasses not just one but four closely related synergistic activities. World Streets is of course (a) a publication, but it is also (b) an on-going long-term collaborative process (the New Mobility Partnerships whose considerable international network in fact provides much of the content of the journal), (c) a valuable reference resource in its specialized field, and (d) an active international lobby for sustainable transport and social justice ready to support you in your city or worldwide. Today we are considering the near term future of the publication side of this package.
As of this date, 21 December 2009, the first working day after COP15 so painfully wound down, we are shutting down for an interim period World Streets as a daily publication, the planet's only sustainable transport daily. But please do not take this as a surrendering of our mission. To the contrary, what will follow now represents an aggressive challenge on our part which is needed if we are to be a meaningful factor in the process that now needs to be engaged.
We do this because as things stand today we need help to ensure publication at the level needed to ensure our fullest contribution for the year ahead. We have done a workman-like job over the first year of publication in 2009 and are proud of our accomplishment, but that is not going to be good enough. The events of the last months before, during and now after COP15 have convinced us that we need to develop a more powerful voice if Streets is to make a difference.
Against this background we now intend to give all of our attention in the weeks ahead to the task of finding the financial support that is necessary ff we are to continue our mission. And since this is not at all our area of expertise, that is perhaps where you may come in.
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MORE:
Closing down World Streets in its present form as a daily is hopefully going to be a very short term proposition. Behind it are three realties to which I would draw your attention:
First, a bit of good news: Even without additional new content the World Streets web site represents a valuable resource for anyone looking for new ideas, background information, leads and working links to the leading groups and programs working in the sector worldwide. That part of our contrition is not about to be taken off the net and is and will stay there for all to use, and as always freely. (Your working guide to this will be the materials and links you find in the quite long and admittedly a bit complex to reference left hand column. One more thing we need to clean up in 2010.)
Second, some more good news: Even during this difficult interim period we will be honoring our commitment to our many collaborators who have developed the excellent habit of sending us from time to time outstanding articles, references or news which merit worldwide circulation. Thus, we will continue to review and print their contributions promptly, as the present circumstances permit. (So think of World Streets during these next cold winter weeks not as dead but as hibernating, with one eye wide open.)
Third, the tough news. And that is: if you are a reader of World Streets we now ask you to give serious thought to joining us in the search for support so that we can not only continue but do better yet. Details on this will be found in the final section of this posting. However as a quick run-up to this you may wish to bear in mind that our daily operating costs are on the order of $500 and that over 2009 we have somehow miraculously, given our exceptional lack of business acumen, found a temporary way to cover all these costs ourselves, a situation which however is clearly not sustainable. And this is where we turn to you and others who share our concerns and ambitions.
PS. If you need a reminder as to why World Streets has an unusual, a unique even role to play in the year immediately ahead, here are three quick one-click references to make our case:
* Our four page/four minute summary and mission statement. Click here.
* Comments of one hundred of our readers who explain why this is important and worth continuing. Click here.
* And of course World Streets itself. And if you have not really dug in here yet, you may find it useful to scroll down in the left column and pick out just any month for your quick inspection. You will be able to sort your way quickly through the brief introductions to select those articles which may be of particular interest. And with that you are starting to have a good feel for what this is all about.
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II. Our 2010 Mission:
Through World Streets, and behind it the New Mobility Partnerships, many allies and collaborators, to give especial attention to advancing the new mobility/sustainable transport agenda in the following key areas.
Here in brief you have the main objectives of the 2010 work program for which we have already laid a substantial base. We are ready to go for 2010.
1. China: Supporting the transition to sustainable transport planning, policy and practice
China: 1.3 billion people, half of whom already living in cities and more pouring in daily: two million kilometers of roads and streets, and more abuilding; 170 million motor vehicles and already the world's biggest car market, and a planning and investment process that is still all but entirely locked into "old mobility" practices (that is continuing heavy investments in favor of the same infrastructure that all those cars, trucks, buses and motorized two wheelers are going to travel. And all of course burning fossil fuels at world record rates, with all that entails.). This in a few lines is the transportation legacy that the Western world has given to China.
And incidentally something that is worth thinking about in the context of the conflicts and tensions that arose with mainly US but also many other national representatives in Copenhagen last week. Think about it: our Chinese brothers and sisters are working with the system that we, the West, gave to them. Now whose responsibility is that?
There is a positive side to their situation however that need to be taken into consideration and which just may be the instrument of their transformation into a pattern of mobility, climate, society and economy that may prove far more convivial for them. And that is for various reasons, cultural, historical, political, they are today in a position a bit like that of the elephant who, surprisingly agile, can, if it decides to, turn on a dime. This is most unusual and something that can be said for few countries on this beleaguered planet. And certainly something we should be aware of, targeting and trying to work with from the very beginning.
So for all these reasons China has to be the world's most important single target for conversion to sustainable transport planning and practice.
We think that World Streets and the rest of our world colleagues, North and South, and collaborative network could have a role in this critical transition process. And here is one reason why it is so important to start now.
What do we have to offer in this context? Here are four on-going collaborative projects and programs in addition to the English langue edition of World Streets – and the machine translate versions which you can check out at http://tinyurl.com/ws-chinese-s (simplified Chinese) or http://tinyurl.com/ws-chinese-t (traditional Chinese):
- Partnership projects in both specialized focus areas and overall strategies with cities and public agencies – See New Mobility Partnerships at www.newmobility.org and www.program.newmobility.org for first background
- Share Transport: the third way of getting around in cities – We have already done a lot of preparatory work in this area and we have heard from a certain number of Chinese colleagues that this approach may be an important one for transport policy in both cities and outlying areas. See www.ShareTransport.org (You may also find some interest in checking out the International Advisory Panel for this project at www.COST.ShareTransport.org
- Low Carbon cities This is an ongoing program in China and Taiwan which strikes us as a strong point of departure and which we would like to support and make better known through World Streets.
- Car Free Days in China This is not only a program which we have in fact launched initially in 1994, but also one have already seen that there is much that be done to build on this joint approach.
- Collaborative Workshops and Master Classes: See the work program for the latest approach on this at www.faro.newmobility.org
- Chinese language editions of their own "World Streets" – See http://nuovamobilita.org as an example.
And behind the pages of World Streets we are working hard to bring in additional Chinese colleagues and correspondents, and then work with them so the World Streets also grows into a reliable source of information and perspective of what is going on in our field in this great and oh so important country.
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In a fair world it should be impossible to ignore close to one billion of the poorest people on the earth living in its second-largest and second most-populous continent. With already one third living in cities, most of whom in slums, with the flow of people from the country side continuing at record rates.
The transportation arrangements in most people's daily life in Africa come in several flavors: ranging from world class traffic jams making it close to impossible to negotiate the streets of the larger cities for hour each day, to at the other extreme no provision for vital survival transport (water, wood for fires, food) for the remainder of the continent.
Now the fact is that most of transport policy and investments on the continent are aimed at the creation and extension of motorized transport infrastructure. And it is precisely this strategy that had led to the present imbalance.
The key to unlocking the African Streets challenge can be summed up in a single phrase: Fair transport for women and children. What works well about this, is that when women and children are fairly served everybody ends up being better off. This can and should be our central theme
So, in 2010 World Streets hopes to do what we can to give far more attention to the challenges and accomplishments of fair transport in Africa.
Share Transport in Africa: Another international project for 2010 that is already getting interest in a number of African counties (Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Namibia and South Africa among them) – is the
World Share/Transport Forum. Shared transport is a long and honorable African tradition and for many often the only way of getting around longer distances. That said, it has not been favored or understood really by policy makers in the field. Our collaborative international program is intended to address this gap. Reference:
www.COST.ShareTransport.org Here is our Africa challenge in a visual nutshell. This map records the geographic distribution of people who checked into World Streets this morning:
At this point we are not sure of how to best make our contribution. Certainly it will be important (a) to have more feature articles on "African Streets", in the
hope of creating higher quality information and a stronger network of people and groups who can help African cities and rural areas move toward world-level sustainable transport policies and practices. And no less important (b) to see if we can find ways to get copies of Streets and its messages onto the desks of planners, decision-makers, operators, citizens and national and local government officials.
As a first step in this direction we have started to organize in an informal task force of people working in place on these issues who have a wider outlook on what is
going on and what could be done better. We presently have participants from South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya. Uganda. Namibia, Nigeria, and Egypt, and are in contact with the GATNET network for transport and gender which has a strong African orientation, as well as several UN programs. It's a start.
Would you like to join this task force. If so, all you care to do is click
here and let us know who you are. The rest can follow.
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To follow: 3. Share transport
4. The Year of the Woman in Transportation
5. World Streets Language editions
6. Sustainable transport linking
7. Collaborative workshops and events
8. Major themes for 2010
Your contribution.Click
here for details on how to support and enable World Streets in 2010.
[Monday, 11:00 Paris time. This posting continues this afternoon.]
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