Family Mouse Behind the Wheel

Of Mice, of Men and . . . of Penang

When I first visited Penang back in late summer 2013 in response to an invitation by Think City, I had several weeks to profit from a steady diet of site visits, lectures, master classes and intense skull sessions with ten different key groups (including media, local government, transport operators, auto industry and lobby, regulators and police, gender balance, cycling and pedestrian groups, civil society, the universities, and finally “hacking sustainable mobility”). All of which, as I travelled around both the island and mainland, gave me an excellent occasion to start to get a feel for both “halves” of Penang.  Not a city, not a state, but in fact an in many ways typical and varied metropolitan area.

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The more you solve the problem the bigger the PROBLEM gets. Even in Mouse Town.

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Civil Society didn’t quite work this time.

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Finally. The American Dream

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Finally. The American Dream

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No no. Stay tuned. The mice have not said their last words. This battle has yet to be joined.  Stay tuned.

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It’s getting late in Penang so we cannot read the whole story to you tonight.  So we have to stop here when the well-connected Beaver Construction company showed up, without any prior public notice, to start the work on the road.  And the first victims were, of course, the trees.

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Oops!

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And then, a very strange and altogether unanticipated thing occurred. Alvin bought a Proton.

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And into this happy world slipped a letter.  And a kind invitation.

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It all started innocently enough. With a simple letter.

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Someone a lot wiser than me, once told me many years ago: when you are facing a really different problem, why don’t you see if you can step back a few paces and put it in a form that you can discuss with children and hear what they may have to say.

I recalled this in the early nineties when in the face of the many mind-bending complications of sustainability and mobility — such as we are facing here today — I decided to write a little scenario for a children’s story on the topic, which eventually became, with the great shaping inputs of two of my friends (Wolfgang Zuckermann for the words, and Roget Tweet for the music), Family Mouse behind the Wheel. Want to have a look?

Family Mouse moves ahead on fifty language worldwide Odyssey

Today we want to tell you about a bit more concerning progress on a collaborative international project on a children’s book exactly on our subject. Back in mid March, we announced our intention to produce a 2011  edition of this successful  children’s book, but this time in (our target) fifty language editions. Read on to see where things stand today. All the more  if any of you out there might be interested in lending a hand so that we can create handsome print and electronic versions for worldwide distribution and use. – Alvin reports from Paris

A family of small mice needs some help with new mobility

Today we want to tell you about a children’s book on our subject, and beyond that to see if any of you out there might be interested in lending a hand so that we can create a handsome electronic version, and possibly in other languages.

– Alvin reports from Paris.