Vision: Some first reflections on what is, what can be a “Slow City”.

Draft notes for a thinking exercise and comment.

–  Eric Britton, Institut Supérieur de Gestion, Paris, 6 June 2017

To create a city that works for all, we must start with a vision. Policy without vision is like driving blind-folded. In this short posting we would like to explore the vision of a Slow City.  You will have your own ideas on this but here are ours.  And of course your comments and suggestions are as always most welcome.

Soft techniques in martial arts (and good governance)

An important element of our Better Choices sustainability  strategy is to achieve our carefully-considered objectives for the city, often very demanding, without avoidable social conflicts and divisions into opposing camps.  For that we need to be attentive to soft policy techniques.

Softness is often confused with weakness. But not in the martial arts. The goal of the soft technique is deflecting the attacker’s force to his or her disadvantage, with the defender exerting minimal force. With a soft technique, the defender uses the attacker’s aggressivity, force and momentum against him or her, by leading the attack(er) in a direction to where the defender will be advantageously positioned (tai sabaki) and leaving the attacker off balance; a seamless and to many invisible movement then effects the appropriate soft technique.

Campaign Help Wanted: Nobel Peace Prize nomination

Dear friends,

I am in the process of preparing a formal nomination of our most creative Dutch colleague, Luud Schimmelpennink, for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition  of his outstanding and unique on-the-street contributions over the last half century, showing the way to sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives. You will find a series of articles and testimonials in support of this goal here at https://worldstreets.wordpress.com/tag/thanks-luud/, with more shortly on the way.

Our immediate need is to have the support of  several more official nominators for the Prize, the exact conditions of which are spelled out here. You can reach me at: E. eric.britton@ecoplan.org. S. newmobility T. +336 5088 0787

Video Archives : Glasgow 2010 White Bikes Festival

 

On clicking to the video, you will see the Full Screen icon ¤  just before the vimeo button.

Glasgow homage to Amsterdam’s historic White Bicycles

 

Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2010

“The White Bicycle Plan proposes to create bicycles for public use that cannot be locked. The white bicycle symbolizes simplicity and healthy living, as opposed to the gaudiness and filth of the authoritarian automobile.” (Provo Manifesto)

For Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2010, NVA staged a re-enactment of the infamous Witte Fietsenplan (White Bike Plan).

Did we hear anyone say. . . Thanks, Luud?

A GREAT IDEA HAS WINGS:

HERE’S A NUMBER  LUUD CAME UP WITH IN 1967  (that it took the world a full generation  to understand and finally equal).

The number was 10,000.

(But it was not only a number — it was at its base a wonderful, original and city-transforming, environmental and life quality concept.)

This was the number of white bicycles that Mr. Schimmelpennink proposed in his public bike master plan for Amsterdam in 1967. (Proposal rejected by the municipal council.)

After that radio silence on the  post-White Bike front for seven years.  It took until 1974 for the first new public bike project when the city of La Rochelle launched a free bike-sharing programme, Vélos Jaunes (Yellow Bikes). Followed at first slowly, cautiously but then increasingly with a mounting wave of tidy new projects, most in Europe, most successful, and almost all of them small.

How one lion-hearted Amsterdam inventor gave bike-sharing to the world

In the 1960s, a Dutchman named Luud Schimmelpennink created a ‘”white bike” plan to fight against harmful pollution and cars. His invention has changed public transportation around the world. So why did his bicycle-loving home city never embrace it?

 

In the beginning were the Provos (and the White Plans)

To understand Luud Schimmelpennink’s White Bicycle Plan, it helps to have a look at the broader context of values, philosophy and politics that were prevailing in Amsterdam at that time –  the Provos, a Dutch counterculture youth movement in the mid-1960s.

Grassroots 2017 campaign: Thanks Luud for all you have done, taught and inspired us.

I propose we keep this simple and collaborative.  Starting as we did yesterday with a simple announcement suggesting that perhaps this could be an idea well worth pursuing, together. And then as a next step  in this process opening up several coordinated channels for your thoughts, comments and perhaps additional articles and references on Luud’s work and contributions that may, small step by small step, start to give us a firmer foundation to pursue this idea.

So at this point I believe that my best contribution will not be to add additional essays with my own thoughts and reasons on this, but rather to open up the field for sharing your thoughts.

“The bike is anything but nothing”

(BC) A New Mobility Strategy for your City

Basic principles and strategies of the New Mobility Agenda

The shift from old to new mobility is not one that turns its back on the importance of high quality mobility for the economy and for quality of life for all. It is not and should not be seen as a step down in terms of life quality.

A New Moment for Carsharing in the Netherlands

Over the last decade carsharing has increasingly proven itself to be an effective mobility option in cities around the world, serving for well more than 1000 cities on all continents. A key element of an integrated mobility strategy for people and for cities, it is a thrifty transport mode and largely self-financing.

People choose to carshare not because they are obliged to, but because it offers a choice. They do it because they see it as a better, more economical way to get around for a portion of their trips. Properly positioned it has been shown that carsharing can offer significant potential for energy savings, pollution reduction, space savings on the street, and reduced requirement for expensive public investments in infrastructure to support cars and/or conventional public transport. However in the last several years the sector has begun to change in some unexpected ways.

Groningen: The quiet example

What? You know all about transport in cities and you have never heard of Groningen? Well, check out this : an unexpected street interview in Groningen, a slice of life as filmed by our old friend and transport innovating colleague Robert Stussi. He has titled it: “A Homage to Hans Monderman”. Hear, hear!

ARCHIVES. A GREAT IDEA HAS WINGS: sustainable transport innovation from sunny Amsterdam. (Feb. 2009)

A benevolent virus approach to transportation reform