The leading edge
How it works
The presentations
Local outreach and dialgue
Notes on organization
The Presentations
1. The Old Mobility Impasse
2. The winds of change
3. What is New Mobility?
4. The Greening of Paris
5. Now, what about your city?
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This website presents an outreach program of the New Mobility Agenda which consists of two main parts: (a) the presentations and dialogues, and (b) the collaborative outreach sessions, meetings and dialogues to be organized in support of the visit that you will see introduced in the section that follows immediacy below under the heading .
| Learning from the leading edge | |
The broader context of this project is that of the Reinventing Transport in Cities program, and the specific goal is to see if we can find ways to get together with interested groups and agencies in the city to create a cost- and time-effective way of sharing a certain number of the more critical, strategic lessons learned in the last years at the leading edge of innovation and experience in cities, public agencies, and others concerned who are doing their part to advance the sustainable transportation agenda.
It is important that we keep in mind the complex, often unexpected nature of these lessons. And moreover that they come from both successful implementations and projects, but also dome from lessons learned from measures and projects that have run into trouble along the way. It is the process of rapid damage control, creative adjustment and fine-tuning to save and improve a good idea that may have got off to an iffy start that can be among the most important lessons to be shared.
Likewise, it is useful to avoid overly simple thinking about where all these good ideas are coming from. Yes, it is true that there is a great deal to be learned from the experience and innovations of leading European cities. For various reasons, they have had a considerable head-start in matters of new mobility. Moreover they are further engaged in a process of friendly competition which means that good ideas get picked up quickly and adapted in many places.
But the good ideas are by no means limited to the borders of the Old Continent. So when you begin to look carefully you will see that there are strong ideas and examples to be learned from coming out of a certain number of cities in Latin America and Asia, while even in the car-full and largely car-stuck cities of North America and Oceania, there are some interesting things going on. But it is until now at least still Europe which is the main heartland of innovation and success.
The material you find here have benefited from critical scrutiny and commentaries by members of our highly respected International Advisory Council and by worldwide colleagues in the New Mobility Idea Factory, much of which has been incorporated into the materials as they now stand. This is very much a collaborative undertaking.
| Background materials for presentations | |
The five presentations are posted here in working draft form which we invite you to consult, use and adapt for your own needs. They have been developed to support a cycle of presentations and group discussions, starting with a general introduction to the "old mobility impasse" and then moving beyond that in discrete steps, passing through a quick intro to the latest cycle of projects here in Paris and ending with a number of points, questions and suggestions about how one can work on this base to create a new mobility profile for your city. You will see how they work if you spend a few minutes with them in the following order:
- The Old Mobility Impasse
This opening presentation attempts to pull together in a dozen slides a summary view of why we need to change, to reinvent even, our policy and delivery models of transport in cities. A more complete treatment of these various points will be found in the extensive section of the site entitled, "The Old Mobility Impasse". - The Sudden Winds of Change
This component summarizes the important role that the climate change issues are taking in influencing the transportation policy debates more broadly. And at an even higher degree of immediacy, the policy vacuum that appears so painfully in the wake of the somehow unprovided-for acceleration of oil prices. Of these two "winds of change" the former is in our view far more critical, but it's the latter which pinches most painfully for most people today and thus can serve as a policy instrument. Between them, they two are redefining the level of urgency for major near-term reform of our transportation arrangements in cities. It would be an enormous waste not to profit from these largely "exterior" factors to advance and accelerate the much needed new mobility reforms that are at the heart of this program. - What is New Mobility?
How does it work, and what do we need to do now to create these new patterns in our cites? Once again you will find far more extensive materials and backup in the section of this site entitled The New Mobility Strategy, which in turn provides existing materials and references and links to leading sources on information and insight on these matters world-wide. - The Greening of Transport in Paris
This section provides by way of leading example a quick overview of how one city is undertaking to reinvent transport for its citizens and visitors, and in the process providing a defining example for other cities seeking to do the same. The treatment isolates five specific on-going innovations, that the city is combining to create the underpinnings of a new model. Paris is not the only example of a city which is in the process of breaking the mould and the old limitations and shortcomings, but it gives the reader a fine starting place, which you can then fill out and extend for yourself through the good references provides here showing how this is going on in other leading cities around the world --and most of which, incidentally, are in Europe. So far. - Now, what about your city?
This closing section of the brainstorm represents our best attempt to step back from the wealth of materials you will find on this subject here and in other leading sources, and provide a reasonably brief summary of how in our view cites, your city we would like to think can start the wheels turning on this new process.* * * We put these before you at this point as an open set of raw materials and tools intended for handy browsing, collegial exchanges, questioning, discussions, and eventual future presentations, including maybe by you. Long as it may be in this form, it shows just the tip of the very large iceberg of the considerable changes in thinking, policy and actual practices which are at work today shaping the transport sector of leading-edge cities around the world. But that of course you know.
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