New Mobility Forum in Brief

"We must be the change we wish to see" -- Gandhi

Sustainable Transportation? New Mobility? 2004?

That's right! We're already well into the 21st century and high time to change our thinking about transportation. The bleak reality of 2004 is that most people in most places are not doing well with today's most heavily

advertised mobility package: the private car roaming at will and untrammeled on the taxpayer-funded public road, co-packaged with long outmoded ideas of how to serve those not "fortunate" enough to base their lives on their cars. Back in the suddenly very old 20th century, the thrust of mainline transport policy was to find ways to fix the system that had wandered into place over the years. But today, we understand that the prioirty is not so much to fix it here and there. We need instead a radical and far-reaching overhaul, starting with our own thinking and vision of the challenge. Which brings us smack to New Mobility.

The "Trickle-Up" Approach to Transport Policy & Practice

The traditional model for transport policy and decision making has been strongly centralized, top-down and heavily expert-oriented. And this model is now exactly at the core of the problems we now face. It also has persistently assumed that most if not all the answers to the transport problems of our cites relied in "transport solutions" -- so-called "in the box thinking". The Commons proposes that this old model needs drastic revision, and suggests that we now need to take advantage of the fact that we have in our cities many bright and capable people and groups who should be actively factored into the decision and solution process. We call this the trickle-up approach -- a shining model for citizen consultation and action, and for democracy, for the 21st century.

Pattern Break?

The core of the pattern break approach to sustainability resides in understanding that people, you and me that is, are largely inertial creatures and that as such we tend to be victims to the world, not as we want or need it but as we happen to find it at our doorstep this morning. And invariably there are always a lot of good reasons for either doing nothing or at least nothing today. One of these being that we do not perhaps know enough so what we need to do is a lot more studies. The pattern break approach by contrast says that it is unlikely that under "normal" circumstances we will ever be able even to see what it is we need, if we are not to change our entire way of thinking, our mental architecture if you will. To which we propose that one good way of possibly achieving this is by introducing some major, possibly very short term shifts in the actual environment and seeing if that can help us see more clearly. One of these might be a day without cars.

Don't forget technology

Or how we can use low cost technology to support international collaboration & advance the sustainability agenda world wide. Technology is not going to solve all our problems and dilemmas of sustainable development. But its role in the move to a more sustainable world is going to be critical. So let's get to work and get good at it.

Or our potential for collective action

If we are ever to start the move toward more sustainable lives and practices, it will require that the experts do more than sit on their hands or when they work them free use them to write more reports and real sincere calls reminding us that we have to become better people. One of the main challenges of The Commons is to provide periodic peer support actions to back outstanding projects and initiatives that need and deserve high level international support. Projects that demonstrate ways to break the deadlock of passive stasis can benefit from such backing, both in their communities and internationally.

The "Edifice Complex"

-- Edifice complex, noun. def. The main argument of The Commons concerning the push to sustainability in matters of not only transport in cities is that we have collectively fallen victim to something that has been called the Edifice Complex. The hallmark of this approach boils down to the following brutal statement: "whenever we see a social problem we automatically assume that the answer is a building, so we start to pour concrete". When it comes to matters of transport in cities however, and particularly cities that are in trouble, we stress that the best way to start is to pour all available resources into the challenge of better management, control and understanding of what we have already built. And then, once we have cleared things up a bit, we can then see what if anything we have to pour concrete for.

Are you part of the problem? Or perhaps, "Part of the Solution"?

Most of us, to be perfectly frank, are a bit of both. But, knowing that, the critical step at this point is for us each to take stock and decide which we want to be. So if you want to be part of the solution, all you have to do is click here and get started.