Towards Sustainable Transportation: Videos (english)

TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION
OECD International Conference, Vancouver Canada

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Videos

Schedule - Video Program

The purpose of the video program is to use a visual medium to provoke thoughts on the subject of sustainable transportation. Videos will be shown at specific times but can also be viewed on request between the scheduled show times. (Please enquire at the registration desk.) All viewing will take place in the Waterfront Conference Centre Foyer.

Descriptions :

2040 - A Message From The Future (26min.)
Transported in the future, the viewer looks back dispassionately at the demise of the Auto Age. Striking parallels are found between the Auto Age and the Pyramid Age! Both were besotted with myths of unlimited mobility, and both created unsustainable and socially unjust cities. But toward the end of the twentieth century attitudes changed in the Auto Age cities... an ecological revolution took place that radically changed the shape of cities. This video shows the seeds of that revolution were already planted and growing strongly in the 1980s and 90s. (Australia Council for the Arts / David Engwicht Communications)

Automania (5min. 31 sec.)
As every morning, Mr. Doe is getting ready to get in his car to drive to work. But what happens? The doors won't unlock. Why? Good souls suggest various things: the clothes hanger... the taxi (crazy), the bike (dangerous), urban transit (trivial)... (National Film Board)

Boomsville (10 min. 12sec.)
North American-style urban growth is portrayed as a voracious monster in this ironic cartoon that traces the growth of a tiny settlement in the wilderness to a sprawling, car-clogged metropolis. An amusing approach to a serious problem, it raises questions about technology, town planning, and alternative ways of life. (National Film Board of Canada)

Cities in the Balance: Creating the Transit-Friendly Environment (23min. 45sec.)
This video illustrates the relationship between transit and land use, and ways to make transit an attractive alternative to the automobile. The video identifies how neighbourhoods can be developed to encourage the use of public transit, walking and bicycles. The main thesis of the video is that our dependency on the automobile is the direct result of how we build our cities. (San Diego Metropolitan Transit Development Board, MTDB)

Inventing the Future

Designing for prosperity (14min.)
Designing our future (11min.)

An educational documentary video that illuminates the emergence of ecological design in the 20th century. The film features the ideas and prototypes of pioneering designers who have trail-blazed the development of sustainable architecture, cities, energy systems, transport, and industry. (The Ecological Design Project)

Public Transit and Liveable Communities (20 min.)
Documents a community-based design workshop sponsored by the City of Ottawa and based on the Project for Public Space (New York City). The 20-minute video examines the lack of connection between a transit station and the community it serves, hightlights ways to make the station more attractive, safer, and user-friendly, and suggests a transit-supportive urban approach that responds to the needs of the community. (Transport 2000 Canada)

The Air We Breathe (excerpt - 15min.)
This video examines the root causes of high levels of summer smog that contribute to high rates of respiratory disease as well as higher mortality rates, and exposes the cultural forces. Facing the high levels of summer smog in the Auto Age, the public was led to believe that moving to the suburbs would guarantee a safer and better quality of life. Prominent scientists, activists, and urban planners map out an alternative road that includes: public transit, alternative fuels, zero-emission electric vehicles, and other environmentally responsible modes of transport. (Jim Hamm Productions LTD)

The Man who loved Machines (9min. 13sec.)
This video tells the story of a man obsessed with machines, who sets out to build a dog house. During the process he engages in "overkill" but finally realizes that for this job muscle power is the most efficient form of energy. A good introduction to energy transformation and entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics. (National Film Board of Canada)

The Romance of Transportation in Canada (10min. 48sec.)
a light-heated animated whimsy about a down-to-heart subject: how Canada's vast distances and great obstacles were overcome. The whole story of transportation is told with tongue-in-check seriousness, from the intrepid trail-blazers of long ago to the aircraft of today and tomorrow. (National Film Board)

Transport in Cities
This video supplies useful background, ideas, facts, and ways and means to help reverse the current architectural deterioration that which menace the kind of city life most of us know and cherish. Brian Richards acts as a guide presenting innovative approaches drawn from many parts of the world. (EcoPlan international)

What on Earth (9min. 35sec.)
In this classic cartoon, the importance of the car in industrialized societies, and how it dictates ways of life, is dramatized in a humorous but telling manner. (National Film Board of Canada)