Getting all of Bogotá behind us - A Sociological AsideGetting all of Bogotá behind us - A Sociological AsideOur basic challenge is that we have before us a group of seven million people whom we would like to get on our side for the Car Free Day. Moreover, we are dead sure that unless we have a great majority of them with us on the 24th, things are going to work out a lot less well than we would like. In parallel with this, we also know that we are proposing to them a concept that is not only unfamiliar, but is very quite different from the wave of media, advertising and the like all of which more or less are pre-conditioning them to have very different attitudes toward the thing we have in mind.
So, before we get into the fine detail of our media and organizational recommendations, let me comment first here on the basic underlying issue that we face. I ask your patience if it seems to you a bit abstract and windy, but it looks at what I believe to be an important truth which we would do well to understand and then possibly find ways to put to work. Then later today, I can get you my more detailed and concrete recommendations to you.
The "car culture", as you might want to call it, which many if not all of us still hold in our minds either consciously or unconsciously and which thus does happen to influence our perceptions and decisions, even if we are not always explicitly aware of it, has led to a situation of what two thoughtful analysts, Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy, call "automobile dependency". It's an interesting concept I think, and they have had their latest look at it in their 1999 book "Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence", where they define it as "a situation in which a city develops on the assumption that automobile use will predominate so that it is given priority in infrastructure and in the form of urban development." Sound familiar? This in a phrase is the mental environment in which our Car Free Day has to operate and find a way out. In other words, if almost everybody involved is tracking along certain lines, what is it that you can do to get them to question their basic assumptions which appear to them to be "logical, realistic and even desirable". Not an easy task!
So, the first step in our communications program has to be accepting that this is the situation we face.
Fortunately not all the news is bad. And whether most people have noticed it or not, there is a new show in town, and that is what I call the emergence of the "post-modern" man (and woman). There is a whole new generation of people out there who are starting to have an entirely different attitude toward cars. This boils down to something like: cars are all right I guess if you need them, but if I had a choice I would prefer to take a bike, run or in-line skate. In fact if public transit were worth a damn (then you have to check the city in question) I guess I would prefer to take (a terrific) bus than my own car, because if I take my own car I can't read, can't look around (and hey! this IS a beautiful city), and I can't meet any new and maybe interesting people.
This is basically the mind set of our post-modern person. And is it total madness? Many of my long time transportation colleagues tell me they think it is. They claim that people just can't imagine a world that is different from the one they grew up with and which still is sold to them by the media very day. But if we check out the increasing number of people, including many younger ones who are doing well in Europe's cities, in university communities, we can see that the post-modern man (i.e., post-automotive) is a growing if still nascent trend.
Our work with the concept of carsharing has been an eye-opener in this regard. As you will see if your check out the @World CarShare Consortium, there are already some 490 identified places in the world where you can get a car quickly when you need it without having to go out and buy one. More than 100,000 people use these systems, and they are all, to coin a phrase, post-modern. Their concern is access and transport, not personal identification with a crepitating ton of steel and glass.
What does this mean in the context of a city like Bogotá where today only about one person in six has access to a car (but with the number growing very fast of course)? Well, it suggest to me that it might be interesting to see what might be done to create not a car culture in the city, but an access culture. We know that a city, by its basic geometrical limitations, just can't accommodate the geometry of the car as its major mover of people and goods. If you try to make the city do that, namely the imposable, the result is, as we have seen in thousands of cases, that the city just collapses, morphs and somehow goes away or is less standing as a shattered hulk. A sad, dangerous and abandoned space that once was filled with people living their daily lives.
So, many words later, this is the challenge of the Car Free Day and the people and groups that want to make it work. How can we use our ability to communicate and reach into people's minds and get them to thinking in new and more creative ways about how they can adapt not their city to the requirements of the car, but rather the use of the car - and indeed of the whole movement system of which the car is but one part - to the requirements of a city which is economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable?
The Morning Countdown - Part IIPeople like stories. And a good story commands our attention in part because it has a good rhythm behind it. Moreover people like series of stories even better, like the child who wants a bedtime story before going to sleep EVERY night. Or anyone who has happened to get hooked on a telenovella and just has to see the next episode.
So let's spend a bit of time each day over the next several weeks in telling some of the stories behind the Car Free Day, and indeed behind daily life in the city of Bogotá (and maybe a few other places as well). And getting the rhythm right.
What you really need at this point is a storyboard to set out step by step the organization of a typical program, but let's see if we can agree on some of the basic principles first: the storyboard can then follow.
The means of our story, the instrument, will be the Morning "Countdown" Program. And like any other good story it should be something that people can anticipate and get to in a convenient, regular way. In this case, the guess is that the best time will be just in time to make the morning news each and every day between now and D Day.
The assumption here is that you are going to get TV coverage, but that while important does not have to be the whole story. With or without TV, it will be important to have each event attended by a bunch of the people who are working in and around City Hall, and perhaps others as well. Also a bunch of school children each day, grinning and waving at the camera. There also has to be provision for the print media as well of course.
Ideally every program will be available on the Web site in RealMedia form (so if you don't know how to handle this, now is the time to get the routine and software down pat. Santiago should be able to help. It really is not huge deal.)
In this case, the moderator, the constant smiling presence of our mini-series is the mayor, who each day shows up exactly at the same time to begin his day but, more important, to move the countdown one more day notch to D Day - and to do it in company with some special visitors, who themselves are part of the bigger story.
Let's assume for sake of argument, that each episode is to take somewhere from 10-15 minutes, and be organized and presented so that it commands a high degree of general viewer interest and involvement over the whole time. (This means of course that all kinds of the usual "government statements" or "expert statements" have no place in what is basically a family event aimed at all the citizens of Bogotá.)
Opening shot: The mayor is shown arriving for work at the Palacio de Llevano (in different and real ways? No faking it!) and walks up to the main entry of city hall to the large "Calendar" or "Thermometer or whatever the big graphic display device is that you have put together to show to the city how may days are left before D day.
Next: The mayor turns around and a couple of steps behind him appears today's visiting group (a different one each day, see below. Also note that these people have spent the whole of the previous day (and quite possibly more) working closely with the main project task force discussing the plans both in general and as it affects their particular group, intersts and lives. One major goal of these close discussions is to make a real effort to come to grips with their hesitations, fears and special requirements. And it may be that this particular group has a few specific ideas that they want to talk about briefly concerning their participation in the Day. For example, some of the school children may be interested in getting involved directly in the process of measuring the impact of the day, by making simple instruments for measurements, carrying out traffic counts, drawing before and after situations, conducting their own interviews, etc. Or perhaps some transport project or business group may decide to offer a special Car Free Day price or something of the sort (see later working notes for more on this). Etc. etc.
The point is that each of these groups has something to say and should be treated as full partners in the Car Free Day and not as grateful awed and passive citizens or potatoes or what have you. So as they arrive the mayor welcomes them warmly and invites them to step over to our big 'Ther-mometer' and do whatever it is to adjust it to show that there are now only xx days left before the big one.
Then, before giving them the stage to say their piece the mayor (or maybe one of them) may first present the results of the previous day's poll (see earlier note on polls - and maybe once again a good big graphic representation of the polls results will help make the point both faster and better). Each day two groups are polled: (a) the man in the street and (b) the guest group. It asks no more than 2 or 3 questions, always the same. One of them is: do you support this idea, or not?
They can then talk about that for, say, two minutes or so. T
he mayor can then read a short dispatch of some sort, covering either some new development, some sort of international message of encouragement, a plan for the future, whatever. And once again invite his guest to make a brief comment on that.
That's it. That's all there is to it for that day. Our little story has been told and it's now over. All you have to do is wait for tomorrow and you can hear a new one.
Mascot: I think we need a mascot for our Day. Is there for example any particular animal in the zoo that the children like especially. A gorilla. A huge tortoise. A donkey. The ideal animal would be one that you could have with you each morning, that could be used in the marketing and other materials for the campaign, that would make people smile, would be symbolic, would be culturally coherent. The idea is that the thing would be there and sleeping, gazing or whatever, and a quite but very present part of the scene. Obviously important for the scenes with children, but also a part of your story, a part of your critical continuity, a part of your contact with something more than technology and cars and whatever.
Flower: We also need a symbolic flower, and best of course if it is one that is in season, abundant and somehow that we can link to the rest. The flower, like the mascot, can be integrated in to the marketing etc. materials, and can be an "instrument of exchange" within the various programs itself. (There also is an idea that the police will be marked by and use these flowers too, but more on that later.)
The Last Day: Like all the others but this time the air time is 6:30 in the morning, which of course is the opening minute of the first hour of our Car Free Day. On this day, when the last adjustment is made to the thermometer, it is the mayor who has to do it himself. Because he is the man who is making all this happen. On that one day there is no division of responsibility.
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Groups to invite to participate in the Morning Ceremony