The 20/20 Challenge

1. The 20/20 challenge has a single objective: Target and achieve for your city a 20% reduction of CO2 from traffic via a carefully studied and phased 20 month implementation period.

2. The underlying justification for CO2 reduction on this scale is that it can only be achieved in a pluralistic democracy via the creation of a better, safer, cleaner, more economic, more resource-efficient, and, not least, fairer transportation system.

3. Once you have launched the necessary preparatory steps, investigations and negotiations, you may find that a modified set of targets may be more appropriate for your city. Who knows better than you? Not to matter: recalibrate and keep going!

4. It is likely that in your city a number of the measures that are needed are already in some way operational or under study. What the 20/20 program offers in this context are two things: (a)Better support and higher visibility for the good things that are already out there and working, and (b) an overarching set of criteria which help to turn all these measures from a list of lots of good things to do into a unified, time defined, high profile program that the public can see, understand and judge their city government on.

5. The goal is to mobilize the entire city around a broad-based multi-part remedial program which can then go on to generate visible results against specific announced targets out there for all to see and judge their performance. (No possible ambiguity; no place to hide; no term so long that ultimate responsibility can be ducked.)

6. This target and level of ambition has been publicly accepted as feasible by a large and growing body of international experts and authorities (many of whom are identified here in the Interntional Advisory Council).

7. With the appropriate level of political and public support, the planning, negotiation, preparation phase to lay a solid base for success can be carried out within an intense 3/6 month period..

8. What is required to get the job done is to create and implement a quite complex but entirely do-able integrated package of proven measures attacking the problems on many fronts.

9. And it will cost you less than another yard of urban freeway..

Mrs. Mayor: The ten advantages of 20/20 for your city

1. It is ambitious (as it needs to be to make a difference.)

2. It is focused (20/20 and that's all)

3. It is simple (hence easy to communicate and sell)

4. It builds on and engages a broad local base.

5. It is effective. (It can handle the challenge.)

6. It is cheap. (Can be made to work within your existing resources.)

7. It is positive (Targets "car-like mobility" for all, a very different way of thinking).

8. It can be guaranteed (through careful planning and consultation)

9. It provides a consistent, high profile, broad overarching policy umbrella and incentive package for doing and better supporting all the good things you certainly should be doing anyway.

10. It is great politics. (Visible successes during electoral term. Great national and international visibility for your city?)

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Main Building Blocks of the program

The main building blocks of this independent peer initiative include:

1. This website: An interactive, highly linked, multi-level website, with extensive information and communications tools built in.

2. The 20/20 Action Plan: An aggressive Outline Program Proposal and Strategy for practical, high impact, short term, explicitly targeted array of remedial actions to be studied, adapted and deployed at the level of your city starting in 2005, supported by ...

3. International Advisory Council: A distinguished international high level advisory panel of recognized experts and leaders spanning the wide range of regions and fields that need to be brought in to the solution process.

4. Working Partners and Alliances: International, regional and city partners who in the final analysis are the people and groups who are going to translate all this into palpable on-street, in-lung reality.

5. Organization of Flexible Operational Clusters: In parallel with the Council, the Partners and through The Bridge, a number of informal working groups are springing up with common regional, sectoral or city foci to help lay the base for more and better city projects.

6. The Bridge A state-of-the-art multi-level Information and IP Communications Platform bringing together low cost high quality internet tools available to knit the Panel, the resources, the network more generally, and the interested cities together.

7. World Resource Inventory: Direct contact and continuing exchanges with a World Wide Inventory of Programs and Sources active in related areas with coverage and competences as needed to meet the challenges.

8. Discussion, Feedback, Comments A rich process of comments, observations, ideas and proposals from the Panel and others interested in advancing this agenda.

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How 20/20 fits in with the rest (International Partnership Strategy)

The fox knows many things -- but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

The Kyoto World Resources Inventory has thus far identified more than five hundred groups and programs as working in this and related areas world wide: each in their own way, in their chosen own target area, with their own time focus, with their own tools and goals. And, if they are lucky, with resources to do the job. In which case it's a fair question to ask: why should we as an informal world citizen consortium with no assigned institutional mandate dare to think about adding with our own efforts to all that? Might it not be preferable for us just to get out of the way let all these other people simply get on with the business at hand? Hmm.

Certainly no one thing is unique about the Kyoto World Cities Challenge, other perhaps than the fact that like Isaiah Berlin's proverbial hedgehog we know only one thing: the true need for dramatic, effective, short-term, no-excuses action in our chosen target area of transport and sustainability in cities. Against this backdrop here are the defining factors that in our view combine to make Kyoto Cities a potential winner, certainly different from the rest, and perhaps a good partner for you and your colleagues in your work.

1. Single focus: (a) CO2. (b) Traffic in cities. (c) Very sharp, openly targeted decreases (20%?). (d) To be achieved in a very short period of time (20 months?). That's it!

2. But is it only CO2 and Kyoto? Not by a long shot. We chose CO2 reductions as an initial target since they have a high profile and also provide a strong surrogate for the overall challenge of transport dysfunctionality. Cut CO2 and you cut traffic, pollution, accidents, costs, time abuse and the list goes on. Most of the world's cities lie in countries that have no legal Kyoto thresholds. But their needs in this respect are even greater.

3. Geographic coverage: Program coverage is world wide (but can only work if it takes on one city at a time). This is above all a city project, a city decision, a city action. It does not depend on international treaties, other levels of government to foot the bill; it works within the city, its existing asset base, quality of leadership and degree of public support. In that city!

4. Explicit targeting: You take up the challenge, do your homework and then set the targets that are going to do the job in your city. And then you either succeed or you fail. And all that firmly in the public eye. (No place to hide.)

5. Big House/Open Doors: Invites enormous diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, geographies and competences, reaching way beyond the 'normal' transport or even environment groups, enriches the perspectives. Both for the Kyoto program overall and at the level of each city.

6. Strong female leadership and participation. In large part motivated by dissatisfaction with traditional male dominance and the values that appear to go with it. <

7. Car-like mobility: This may surprise, but quite frankly we do not see democratic pluralistic societies agreeing to accept large downgrading of their mobility arrangements. Which gives us our target: as good or better conditions of transit than they are getting out of their cars under present arrangements. (Think about it!)

8. International peer support network: The personal engagements, combined with the very high quality and great variety of backgrounds of the distinguished individuals who have agreed to support the 20/20 Challenge through the International Advisory Council. Members have both an international support role, and also as their time permits are helping to create "clusters" to support discussions and initiatives in their own city.

9. Working partnerships: Organized from outset as an open international partnership project, working links are being set up (a) with international and national groups with broader sustainability agendas, and (b) at level of individual cities informal working groups are being created to lay the base for their local 20/20 programs.

10. Comfort Zones (and lack thereof): Many programs and almost all committees seek to achieve "Comfort Zones" in which all interests present of lurking in the background come to a general agreement as to priorities, what needs to be done, how to do it, etc. Kyoto Cities seeks quite the reverse: a large number of competing ideas and points of view, plenty of room for internal contradictions and conflicts, and a good and continuing dose of cognitive dissonance as a means for accommodating all this necessary variety.

11. Supporting context of intensive technology-based IP networking: The state of the art, practical, user-friendly Communications Bridge holds the underlying key to brining the pieces of the puzzle together and thereby making the whole thing work.

12. Culture change: The project is above all about governance, democracy and citizenry in the 21st century. In its own small way it proposes and examines a new model. Once a 20/20 project has been carried out and the results assessed, your city will never look again in quite the same way at their transport, environment or indeed other problems of governance and quality of life. Which is why we sometimes call it . . . "the nose of the camel".

If you take the time to work your way down this list, you will appreciate that this program and approach is not for everyone. It is certainly not for the timid nor for the all-too familiar half-interested. Indeed it cuts sharply across the grain of conventional thinking and behaviour in many respects. That is because it has to. The challenge is huge and immediate, and it requires a bold, high responsibility, high energy, no excuses approach. Is it for you?

The Kyoto World Cities Challenge is one well defined remedial program that cities can, if they wish and have the guts, start to engage immediately. It is not the only thing that they or the rest of the world should be doing to confront the challenges of environment and the costly dysfunctional transport arrangements that hinder almost all of them in their life quality and economic viability. It may not even be the best one around. But the issues are so important and so largely unaddressed, that if you have any concerns at all you probably should take a closer look (http://kyotocities.org).

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But who is going to make this work in YOUR city?

Let's start here with a simple if harsh truth: Nobody else is going to do it for you. Not world government! Not politics as usual! Not brilliant technical teams parachuted in from outside! Not technological progress and great inventions! Not industry and the private sector working under their own steam and incentive system! You - the active citizen and your neighbors working in close partnerships with local government.

Gaining control of the mobility arrangements in your city is above all a challenge to you and your community. Somehow you have to figure out how to create a strong local base of support for the kinds of integrated measures that are going to do the job, and get local government behind all that is needed to be done.

Short answer: You. You as an active informed citizen, energetic problem solver, community leader, good team worker, and citizen who cares about your city, your children, and, yes, your planet.

That's the good news.

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Does it have to be "20/20" -- or nothing?

1. Absolutely not! 20/20 is a challenge, a point of departure for your analysis and discussions. Nothing says that a 20% reduction (of what?) in 20 calendar months is going to be the right "formula" for your city.

2. Your careful preparatory analysis and broad city-wide consultation process will tell you what is going to work best for you. It may be 20/20. Or, as in the case of Cambridge Mass., to cite one example, 10/10 (i.e., ten percent CO2 reduction by 2010. Or . . . and the list of possibilities goes on.

3. The only gross error that you as a serious citizen, community leader or loving parent can make is not to take this challenge seriously.