New Mobility Agenda:
The following programs are all currently receiving our attention. A quick one-click visit to the respective opening Web page should serve to provide you with an in-depth update in each case. As you review them, bear in mind that a fair portion of the interactive activity in almost all cases takes place within the respective @World Forum, including in the Message Centers, Libraries, and Files & Media sections.
The Commons honors diversity and what we like to call cognitive dissonance. More than a thousand people of a wide variety of backgrounds, disciplines and points of view from all continents and more than fifty countries participate in these exchanges. We do not always agree easily, but we listen well.
The common theme of all programs under The Commons is sustainable development and social justice, focusing on the better understanding and management of technology in the daily lives of ordinary citizens. Each program depends on the creation of active and informed international peer networks, which we refer to as "invisible colleges". The currently most active of these programs are introduced here:
Transport, access, mobility and communications are major themes of The Commons. The most active of our programs in this broad area include:
Knowledge Building and Networking:
Public Interest Projects and Programs:
The gateway to The Commons: A wide open, independent first-stop-shop on the web for concerned citizens, researchers, students, policy makers, entrepreneurs, investors or social activists interested in quickly getting a feel for world sustainability issues, views and developments from an unbiased critical perspective. We invite open discussion, information sharing, diversity, complex thinking and collaborative initiatives for action.
An informal collection of some of the most interesting and challenging communications, excerpts and working notes coming in to The Commons and its various public interest programs.
While the goal of all of programs under The Commons lies our shared commitment to sustainable development and social justice, we have long believed that in the pluralistic, often democratic and certainly hugely disparate world in which we live, the path to these noble, to these crucial goals lies in good part through our ability to harness available technology to these ends. And not least, among these the "Information and Communications Technologies" (ICT) which constitute the major building blocks of an Information Society. Check it out.
This is an enormously rich area of enquiry for anyone who cares deeply about sustainable development and social justice.. This first set of projects are looking into it from the perspective of transportation decisions and practices on the one hand, and ICT on the other. And if you think that there are significant differences between men and women, and that it is important to recognize them and take them into account, then this is an exercise that you may not wish to miss. Prepare to be surprised.
When our public servants invest our hard earned taxpayer dollars in investments that improve our communities and increase the value of real estate in the impacted areas, some or all of this increment should be recouped in order to fund much needed public services. This is easy to say but hard to do. This is the focus of the lively informed discussion underway here.
This year once again we have nominated two unusual innovators who are leading the way to a better world for this year's World Technology Prize for the Environment. Both are working - one starting in the Netherlands and the other in Seoul Korea - with an approach that we are calling Regenerative Technology. If you go to The Commons site, you will see the link and there see that case for Hans Monderman and the Mayor of Seoul.
One-click references to more than 600 programs identified around the world which are each in their own way taking up their corner of the sustainability challenge. (This inventory will, we hope, be turned into a more easily searchable database in the near future. We see this as a cooperative task.)
A 21st century group work platform, mediated by a steadily expanding series of electronic and communications tools, and specifically targeted to encourage and support alternative thinking and hands-on experimentation in the fast-changing, often troubled and seriously under-explored new world of work. Attention to ways in which work/technology interface.
The New Mobility Agenda:
For most cities, climate change and the Kyoto Protocols are not very high on their list of priorities. Far more important for them is the stark reality of their mobility systems in crisis - too much traffic pouring in year after year, mounting pollution and public health problems, accidents, swelling subsidy costs, poorly served groups, and the list goes on. More, these problems are taking on threatening proportions at a time when the traditional transportation and policy models are proving themselves not only inadequate in the face of the challenges, but actually are calling for measures that threaten to make things substantially worse. Keep reading for more, including the Kyoto Challenge Blog: http://kyoto-compliance.blogspot.com/
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Last updated on 5 August 2005
