Building knowledge and support: New Mobility Focus Groups

Group problem-solving and collaborative tool development have been among the key objectives of the New Mobility Agenda since its creation in 1988. Our thesis was and is that there are a growing number of able people and clever innovative projects around the world that are leading the way — and that it can be useful if we here at World Streets can help to open up peer dialogues and better link and support them. The tools we have developed and continue to make pretty good use of are, by today’s standards, very simple, but they do work.

You will find here in the lower half of every World Streets page a short note/link reporting the latest postings of each of these New Mobility focus groups, which in all bring together more than one thousand people from more than fifty countries on all continents working in these areas in open discussions and exchanges of ideas and information. For background in each case, all you have to do it click the title link. If you wish to join the discussions, follow the routines set out on each home page.

For additional background, we invite you to consult www.newmobility.org, and on the fora www.talking.newmobility.org.

Going from old to new mobility requires a lot of barn-building, collective action by engaged and competent individual citizens ready to put their minds and muscle together to build a better world (and, while they’re at it, a lot of better barns.)

1. The New Mobility Cafe
   The Cafe is the main watering hole for the Agenda: offering a free, public, flexible discussion space for people and groups who feel that our transportation systems need to be, and can be made to be, more sustainable and more just — and who wish to freely exchange ideas and information about it.
3. World Transport Forum (a>
   This forum goes back more than a decade, and at present serves more than five hundred transportation experts, activists and policy makers world wide. The main business of the forum is to provide support and interactive discussion space for the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice. For exchanges of a more general nature and strategic materials relating to the transport/environment theme, we point you to the New Mobility Agenda and its Cafe (see above). The Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice is at www.worldtransportjournal.org.)<!–
4. Global South – Sustran Network :
   The Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia & the Pacific — an email discussion list devoted to people-centered, equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries (the ‘Global South’). Sustran: a major discussion forum on urban transport in developing countries.” Discussions are well focused, expert-based and of very high quality.
5. World Carshare Cafe
   . . . offers a free shared central repository of documents, information, experience and counsel for people and groups around the world who feel that the idea of some creative reshuffling our attitudes and use of cars might be in order, at least for some people and some places. (World Carshare is at http://www.worldcarshare.com)
6. Car Free Cafe
   “What we are looking at here is not quite zero cars (in most places) but, let us say, many fewer cars in our cities, a more tranquil environment, and a lot more safe and happy people.” Free flow exchanges and shared information on how to address and achieve “less car” solutions to the challenges of transport in cities. Lots on non-motorized transport and car/traffic reduction measures. Rather informal and laid-back.
7. 6. “>Value Capture/Tax Reform forum
   A new mobility forum created to serve people and groups around the world who are interested to find ways for our societies to come to grips with the troubling but important issues of value capture and land tax reform in an age in which important public services remain substantially under-funded
8. World City Bike Forum
   This moderated forum offers a flexible discussion space and shared library – given over specifically to exchanges of information, sources and ideas for people and groups around the world interested in city or public bikes. It is intended to be a useful supplement to the public information you will find at the World City Bike site.
9. Kyoto World Cities Forum
   Welcome to our reserved communications center, message archive and shared library. The list is lightly moderated to make sure that the exchanges are in line with our time-pressed colleagues’ interests — and keeping in mind our obstinate single focus on implementing practical, low-cost, near term reforms in our cities. For more general discussions about new mobility and other transport related issues, we would point you to our very lively New Mobility Idea Factory,
10. >GATNET – Gender and Transport
    This is the discussion group of a community of practice that began with a program on mainstreaming Gender into the World Bank’s Transport Sector. It is open to all those who are interested in issues relating to improving mobility and access for poor women and men in developing countries.

10.  World Streets Forum
The World Streets forum serves as a depository for all postings and messages specifically related to the journal and its activities. They appear there in the order originally posted.