A COMPENDIUM OF ONE HUNDRED BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER MEASURES YOUR CITY COULD START TO IMPLEMENT TOMORROW MORNING TO SAVE THE PLANET . . . cut GHG emissions, get people to work on time, reduce traffic accidents, save lives, clear the air, improve health, strengthen the economy, create a sense of community and improve accessibility, mobility and quality of life for all.

We often hear that sustainable transportation reform  is going to require massive public investments, large construction projects, elaborate technology deployments, and above all and by their very nature are going to take a long time before yielding significant results. This is quite simply not true. This approach, common in the last century and often associated with the “American transportation model”, no longer has its place in a competitive, efficient, democratic city  And we can start tomorrow, if we chose to.

To get a feel for this transformative learning reality let’s start with a quick look at a first lot of ideas for Slow Street Architecture as a major means for reducing traffic related nuisances, accident prevention and improving quality of life for all.  These approaches are not just “nice ideas”.  They have proven their merit and effectiveness in hundreds of cities around the world. There is no good reason that they cannot do the same in your city. Starting tomorrow morning.

(For further background on external sources feeding this listing, see Sources and Clues section below.)

Green Map of Reykjavík

The Green Map of Reykjavík is a joint international project of Nature.is, the Green Map® System, the city of Reykjavík and the University of Iceland. The goal of Green Maps all around the world is to make eco-friendly options in the fields of culture, commerce and travel services more visible and accessible to all. Green maps have been developed in over 600 municipalities, cities and neighborhoods in 55 countries. Iceland is the first country which classifies the whole country according to the Green Map system.

The printed edition Green Map of Reykjavík is the first of its kind here in Iceland and is based on the online version Green Map of Iceland here on www.nature.is which covers the whole country of Iceland with over 3.000 registrations in 100 categories.

A COMPENDIUM OF BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER MEASURES your city could start to implement tomorrow morning to SAVE THE PLANET . . . cut GHG emissions, get people to work on time, reduce traffic accidents, save lives, clear the air, improve health, strengthen the economy, and improve accessability, mobility and quality of life for all.

We often hear that transportation reform  is going to require massive public investments, large construction projects, elaborate technology deployments, and above all and by their very nature are going to take a long time before yielding significant results. This is quite simply not true. This approach, common in the last century and often associated with the “American transportation model”, no longer has its place in a competitive, efficient, democratic city  And we can start tomorrow, if we chose to.

To get a feel for this transformative learning reality let’s start with a quick look at a first lot of ideas for Slow Street Architecture as a major means for reducing traffic related nuisances, accident prevention and improving quality of life for all.  These approaches are not just “nice ideas”.  They have proven their merit and effectiveness in hundreds of cities around the world. There is no good reason that they cannot do the same in your city. Starting tomorrow morning.

(For further background on external sources feeding this listing, see Sources and Clues section below.)

A COMPENDIUM OF ONE HUNDRED BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER MEASURES YOUR CITY COULD START TO IMPLEMENT TOMORROW MORNING TO SAVE THE PLANET . . . cut GHG emissions, get people to work on time, reduce traffic accidents, save lives, clear the air, improve health, create a sense of community, strengthen the economy, and improve accessibility, mobility and quality of life for all.

We often hear that transportation reform  is going to require massive public investments, large construction projects, elaborate technology deployments, and above all and by their very nature are going to take a long time before yielding significant results. This is quite simply not true. This approach, common in the last century and often associated with the “American transportation model”, no longer has its place in a competitive, efficient, democratic city  And we can start tomorrow, if we chose to.

To get a feel for this transformative learning reality let’s start with a quick look at a first lot of ideas for Slow Street Architecture as a major means for reducing traffic related nuisances, accident prevention and improving quality of life for all.  These approaches are not just “nice ideas”.  They have proven their merit and effectiveness in hundreds of cities around the world. There is no good reason that they cannot do the same in your city. Starting tomorrow morning.

(For further background on external sources feeding this listing, see Sources and Clues section below.)

Tools – 21/07 Action Plan Placeholders

 

              You never change things by fighting the existing reality To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. – Buckminster Fuller

World Streets, Paris, 21 July 2019.

This is a temporary placeholder for several key postings and tools in support of the collaborative 2020 World Streets Climate/Space/New Mobility Action Plan at https://worldstreets.wordpress.com/tag/climateactionplan/.  To be completed and updated shortly.

If you have questions or suggestions, please feel free get in touch  as below.

“The power of a new mobility concept depends not on
how well it solves a given, targeted problem. But on how many problems it (partly) solves.”  –   Marco Te Brömmelstroettoo

# # #

Project Convener:

Eric Britton
13, rue Pasteur. Courbevoie 92400 France

Bio: Founding editor of World Streets (1988), Eric Britton is an American political scientist, teacher, occasional consultant, and sustainability activist who has observed, learned, taught and worked on missions and advisory assignments on all continents. In the autumn of 2019, he committed his remaining life work to the challenges of aggressively countering climate change and specifically greenhouse gas emissions emanating from the mobility sector. He is not worried about running out of work. Further background and updates: @ericbritton | http://bit.ly/2Ti8LsX | #fekbritton | https://twitter.com/ericbritton | and | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbritton/ Contact: climate@newmobility.org) | +336 508 80787 (Also WhatApp) | Skype: newmobility.)

View complete profile

 

 

 

Putting World Streets to work (Opening Day 2008 perspectives)

The editor, Paris, 30 March 2008:

If this is your first visit to World Streets, you may find it useful to check out the following to get a feel for how this is supposed to work.

Heavy traffic on the way to sustainable cities and sustainable lives. . .

The Planet’s Sustainable Transport Newspaper.
Welcome in an information-overload age to World Streets: the 21st century weekly newspaper that has a single job: to provide our world-wide readers with high quality, readable, concise information, food for thought, surprises and leads specifically on the topics of sustainable mobility, sustainable cities and sustainable lives, world-wide.

World Streets is an independent, internet-based collaborative knowledge system specifically aimed at informing policy and practice in the field of sustainable transportation, and as part of that sustainable cities and sustainable lives. We want to make sure that World Streets is a good read, and a fast one, for our overloaded colleagues working on these issues in cities and countries around the world, as well for others trying to follow the full range of issues involved.

World Streets/Social Networking ABCs

In our world-wide outreach to readers we are trying to put to work the full range of available contact and sharing tools to best serve and to make best use of these carefully developed networks. Among them the dozen-plus focused Facebook Groups which seem to lend themselves pretty well to these purposes, and also LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Scribd, Picasa (public photo galleries) and Twitter (still something of which we are hard pressed to see the fit, but one perseveres).

Online List of 219 Available World Climate Change Initiatives *

Climate Action Plan (CAP)

A Climate Action Plan (CAP) is a framework of strategies intended to guide efforts for climate change mitigation. More specifically, a climate action plan is a detailed and strategic framework (ecosystem) for measuring, planning, and reducing Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and related climatic impacts. It can be scoped and carried at any of a wide range of geographic or government levels: national, regional, cities or even neighborhoods or eco-districts.  No less, such an action plan can be carried out by and at the levels of large or smaller companies, employers, cultural centers and events, schools and universities, and even families or individuals.

As an example: Municipalities design and utilize climate action plans as customized road maps for making informed decisions and understanding where and how to achieve the largest and most cost-effective emissions reductions that are in alignment with other municipal goals. Climate action plans, at a minimum, include an inventory of existing emissions, explicit reduction goals, targets, and timetables, and analyzed and prioritized reduction actions. Ideally, a climate action plan also includes an implementation strategy that identifies required resources and funding mechanisms.

Help from Wikipedia

* Useful tools and references from Wikipedia, http://bit.ly/2Bre9A1

WORLD STREETS CLIMATE COLLABORATIVE PROJECT PHASE 1: TIME FOR A COMMUNICATIONS CHECK

* * * WORLD STREETS 2019 CLIMATE ACTION NETWORK * * *

 

As we gear up for this open collaborative world-wide Climate/Mobility Challenge 2019 project — see http://bit.ly/2D8DNJR for some first references — this would seem like an ideal time to ensure that the roughly fifteen thousand-plus international colleagues are efficiently connected, taking advantage of the free communications packages which are at our disposal. So, this is to invite you to get online at your convenience with Skype and WhatsApp, both of which we have used extensively and easily for some years and for both free one-on-one and group communication. Quickly now:

THE CLIMATE/MOBILITY/PLANET NEXUS? (And why we are not solving it . . . )

 

The GHG Protocol for Cities

Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories

An Accounting and Reporting Standard for Cities

The World Resources Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) have partnered to create a GHG Protocol standard for cities known as Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC).  (Source:

The GPC provides a robust framework for accounting and reporting city-wide greenhouse gas emissions. It seeks to:

TRANSITION STRATEGIES: Selected Wikipedia checklist of key terms, concepts and references

Intended as a handy research aid, checklist and reminder for students, researchers and others digging into the Slow City and related technical and policy challenges. A certain familiarity with these concepts is desirable; more than that I would say essential.

It is particularly important that those responsible for planning and policy be comfortable with these concepts. Anyone prepared to work in the field will already have familiarity with, say,  9 out of 10 of the concepts identified here.  It concerns the stuff of sustainable transport, sustainable mobility and sustainable cities.  (I would draw your attention particularly to those entries that are marked with two  asterisks * * which touch on some of the more subtle and essential components of a sustainable transport policy.)

From the beginning in the late eighties the New Mobility Agenda was conceived as a shared space for communications and didactic tools zeroing in on our chosen topic from a number of angles,  and over the last eight years World Streets has  continued in this tradition. I hope that what follows may be useful to some of you.  As you will see, I think it is an important and powerful tool — which those of us who care can help shape and put to work for the good cause.

How much can you trust Wikipedia — and what you can do about it

COSTS, BENEFITS AND HIATUS OF THE ORIGINAL PENANG TRANSPORT MASTER PLAN

Credit: Simphewe Nkwali (Eco-Mobiliy Johannesburg

* * * COLLABORATIVE THINKING EXERCISE (DRAFT 1) * * *

– Government of the people, by the people, for the people

Please have a look and, if interested, may we have your thoughts about these and other impact areas that in your view need to be taken into consideration in order to have a full and shared understanding  of these impacts of the proposed and latest SDS Penang Transport Master Plan.

We need to be clear about this. The objective here is not to criticize or belittle the State’s efforts at improving the short-comings and potential of today’s transportation arrangements in Penang.  Rather the goal is to provide open citizen feedback to their proposals to all levels of government, civil society and the public at large.  As President Abraham Lincoln put it at a hard moment for history  in America: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”.  Your responses are welcome here or to penang@ecoplan.org. Thank you.

ON A SCALE OF 0-10: please show us your views concerning how the proposals, measures  and their potential set out in the  SDS PTMP do in the following legitimate areas of citizen interest and concern. Some of these are quite specialized as you will see as your work your way down the list, but don’t let that bother you.  Just share your views with the items that strike your attention. With a careful eye to both long and short term impacts (say in the coming three years, 2018-2020).

* * * For latest version of SDS MP : http://pgmasterplan.penang.gov.my — See below the listing of the principal infrastructure projects proposed by the plan.

52 BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER MEASURES your city could start to do tomorrow morning to cut GHG emissions, reduce traffic accidents, save lives, strengthen the economy and improve mobility and quality of life for all.

We often hear that transportation reform  is going to require massive public investments, large construction projects, elaborate technology deployments, and above all and by their very nature are going to take a long time before yielding significant results. This is quite simply not true. This approach, common in the last century and often associated with the “American transportation model”, no longer has its place in a competitive, efficient, democratic city  And we can start tomorrow, if we chose to.

To get a feel for this transformative learning reality let’s start with a quick look at a first lot of ideas for Slow Street Architecture as a major means for reducing traffic related nuisances, accident prevention and improving quality of life for all.  These approaches are not just “nice ideas”.  They have proven their merit and effectiveness in hundreds of cities around the world. There is no good reason that they cannot do the same in your city. Starting tomorrow morning.

(For further background on external sources feeding this listing, see Sources and Clues section below.)

TEN GREAT YEARS OF VELIB’ IN PARIS: 2007 – 2017. Introduction and researcher/student quick toolkit:

Vélib’ station in Paris in happier days – 2008

Vélib’ was for ten years an exemplary large-scale public bicycle sharing system in Paris, France. Launched on 15 July 2007, the system encompassed around 14,500 bicycles and 1,230 bicycle stations, conveniently located across Paris and in some surrounding municipalities, with an average daily ridership topping 100,000 in 2017. (Ridership, other key data to be updated.) The name Vélib’ is a portmanteau of the French words vélo (English: “bicycle”) and liberté (“freedom”).

After ten years of sensational performance offering handy and almost free bikes to hundreds of thousands of satisfied Parisians and visitors every day, the project suddenly went terribly wrong as it was preparing to go into a new phase, and has in the last months crashed out of existence. As a result Paris and the world are poorer places

Why did this happen? What are the losses? Were they inevitable? And what are the lessons to be learned? Yes of course in Paris for the future of shared bikes there, but also in towns and cities around the world who might wish to learn these lessons for their own shared bicycle initiatives.

We here at World Streets, who have been following and riding Vélib’s (and Vélo’v’s) literally every day since opening day in Paris on 15 July 2007, have decided to have a look-in on this unexpected story — and in the coming months see what happens if we can share our observations and findings with our international readers and others who may care to drop in here to see if they can find useful information and views on this strange and most unexpected turn of events. Let’s get started.
_______________

Who read World Streets where this morning?

The above map reports the locations of the 561 readers checking into World Streets over the last five days. (Of our total 7,280 registered readers as of this date.)

But what about them?  Where are they coming from?  And what do they read? Let’s have a look.

SEARCH THE NEW MOBILITY AGENDA: World wide library and research toolkit at your fingertips

Few things are more frustrating in this needful world than to see useful ideas and hard work ending up anonymously cloistered on some distant dusty shelf, real or virtual, and not be accessible to people and groups who could put them to good work,  especially at a time of crisis as that we are living through right now. This was one of the challenges we faced at  World Streets  from the very beginning. How to keep all these good ideas and useful tools alive and available beyond the day on which they were first published  and made known  to the world.

SEARCH WORLD STREETS: World wide forum, library and research toolkit at your fingertips

Few things are more frustrating in this needful world than to see useful ideas and hard work ending up anonymously cloistered on some distant dusty shelf, real or virtual, and not be accessible to people and groups who could put them to good work,  especially at a time of crisis as that we are living through right now. This was one of the challenges we faced at  World Streets  from the very beginning. How to keep all these good ideas and useful tools alive and available beyond the day on which they were first published  and made known  to the world.

52 Better, Faster, Cheaper measures that your city could start to do tomorrow morning to reduce traffic accidents, save lives, strengthen the economy and improve quality of life for all.

We often hear that transportation reform  is going to require massive public investments, large construction projects, elaborate technology deployments, and above all and by their very nature are going to take a long time before yielding significant results. This is quite simply not true. This approach, common in the last century and often associated with the “American transportation model”, no longer has its place in a competitive, efficient, democratic city  And we can start tomorrow, if we chose to.

To get a feel for this transformative learning reality let’s start with a quick look at a first lot of ideas for Slow Street Architecture as a major means for reducing traffic related nuisances, accident prevention and improving quality of life for all.  These approaches are not just “nice ideas”.  They have proven their merit and effectiveness in hundreds of cities around the world. There is no good reason that they cannot do the same in your city. Starting tomorrow morning.

(For further background on external sources feeding this listing, see Sources and Clues section below.)

SUSTAINABLE PENANG WHATSAPP AS A CROWD RESEARCH TOOL

Dear friends, we have a wonderful resource here with Whatsapp Sustainable Penang in the form of a searchable database of all of our exchanges since the generous creation of this great collaborative tool by no less than the formidable Engineer Lim Thean Heng all the way back there on December 14, 2015.

Just in case you didn’t notice it the transcript of all of these conversations which I have collected and inspected in searchable form run for more than half a million words of what . . . Not just idle chat, but rather the exchanges of a conserved citizenry about the sustainability challenges of Penang in all its dimensions, including of course the running battle of the Penang Transport Master Plan .