The significant problems we face cannot be solved by
the same level of thinking that created them.
- Albert Einstein
-

Eric Britton thinking out loud on the decade ahead

Paris, 5 January 2010

2010 is such a nice round number. And since I am today right in the middle of trying to figure out how to pay for all this work, present and future, I thought that before digging into the next round of work and various more or less genteel appeals for support, I would sit down to see if I might, in a couple of pages, make it clear -- at least to myself, and to a few old friends whose guiding comments I would also like to have -- what it is I want to do with the next ten years of my life. So here against this background is my "work plan/path" for the next decade.

1. World Streets:
We call it with only half a grin, "The killer app for sustainable transport ." Continue to edit and improve this international peer network and collaborative publication and resource. Streets is a terrific communications project in a highly important area of public policy and private practice, the only one of its kind, a specialized worldwide sustainable transport daily with a checkable track record and one for which I know that, with the right resources, we can do a lot better in the future.

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2. New Mobility Agenda:
Continue to maintain the main New Mobility focus programs, but one by one turning them over to others who have shown they can be counted on to continue to maintain and improve them for some years. These programs are not only useful in themselves in each focus area, but also provide valuable contacts and raw materials for World Streets. (As an example check out the latest interactive series on world wide carsharing at http://tinyurl.com/ws-carshare .)

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3. World Streets in languages:
People who work in local transport matters operate in their local language; so if you want to reach them you have to do it their way. We have already developed a first "other language" edition of World Streets, the Italian sister publication, Nuova Mobilità. Against this proven template we are looking for local partners to develop at least six or seven high performance, highly individualized versions of World Streets, aimed at serving different language and geographic/cultural groups, among them Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, and Turkish.

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4. Back to France:

I have not been nearly active enough here in recent years. My plan therefore is to create in the first half of 2010 a new association entirely devoted to the New Mobility Agenda, entirely in French and with our first project to be the creation of the French "sister " of World Streets, La Nouvelle Mobilité (with full tailoring to the French scene and not just a facile translation, following our excellent Italian model). Our partner search for this project will be critical and needs immediate attention.

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5. Shared Transport in China:
This is really a huge and hugely important deal. The goal, no less, is to create a new low-carbon high-amenity alternative template for transport in and around cities in China. The potential fit and impact is enormous and we already have taken a first bite out of the apple.

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6. African Streets:
Over the years we have helped develop and maintain a network in Africa relating to transport and, in particular, transport and women. Our goal will be to work with others to set up something along the lines of World Streets but specifically intended to inform all concerned with new mobility ideas for transport in Africa. (No one else is doing this job, and the language factor is one to be considered.)

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7. Major technical overhaul
Total overhaul of our technical work and communications arrangements (hardware, software, links, communications, etc.) which are hopelessly 20th century (we're seriously talking Moore's Law here), in order to create seamless interactivity between what today are cordoned into hopefully old-fashioned stuff like websites, blogs, list serves, various tel links, email, voice, podcasts, videoconferencing, messaging at different levels, and various graphics and video servers. After all these years of experience, I really know what we want to do and I am sure that the results will be extraordinarily useful. We are also getting very close to breaking down many of the language barriers, as we are seeing virtually every day in our work. It's not there yet for most people, but for the genuinely curious and flexible, it already is.

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8. Associations/Linkages
There are -- and I know this for a fact -- more than one thousand institutions, programs and groups around the world active in areas which have substantial overlaps with our concerns at World Streets. We have been successful at one level in creating different kinds of dynamic links with them, which you can see if you scroll down the left menu of the site to the section entitled "Key Sources, Links, and Blogs." Moreover, if you click to www.Knoogle.net you will see that we have set up a combined search engine - with which a single click can help you search more than 700 of these related programs around the world for specific topics or projects. But that is not enough. We need to create more active partnerships with a small number of these, and this is something worth close attention.

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9. International events:
I have had real success on a number of occasions with helping organize and moderate high-profile international events, conferences, prize competitions, the goal of which is to broaden the consensus behind the best of the ideas begging developed via our work and that of many of our international collaborators and colleagues. The best known of these was the Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities, but there have been more than a dozen others.

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10. Teaching/University links:
Under my present working arrangements I do, in fact, quite a bit of de facto teaching and monitoring, working for the most part with young people in many parts of the world. This is highly rewarding, but it probably would be a good idea for me to develop some kind of more structured relationship, partnership even with one or more universities or research or policy programs, the more open the better so that this process can be more thoroughly and systematically exploited

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11. The Little Book:
I have a project for a very small, hopefully very readable book to bring the best sustainability ideas developed via the New Mobility Agenda and World Streets into the mainstream (my goal: 90 pages, 9 dollars, fits in your pocket - a lively companion for a two-hour ride on a train or plane.) Stay tuned.

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12. Media:
I have shown (I am told) that I can be a pretty effective media partner. If you go to www.media.newmobility.org, you'll see the dozen plus projects ranging from feature TV documentaries and films to 90-second YouTube clips. Let's do more. (This is the other half of making the best of these new ideas stick - first you have to look, listen and understand, then you have to communicate. And then you have to lead yourself or push the leaders. It's that simple.)

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13. Children's Books
In partnership with illustrators and other writers, children's books along the lines of the very naïve "Family Mouse behind the Wheel," (I already have the first half-dozen themes and portions of the text worked out).

14. Phased turnover of New Mobility mandate to next generation:
Starting this year, I look forward to bundling the sustainable transport challenges over to the generation that is coming along quite nicely and who soon will be able to do just fine in this area without me (many may say this is already the case, but, just between us, I bet not yet). Indeed the language editions and the process of dynamically linking them and turning them into not only a lobby for sustainable development but also a knowledge-building system should combine to make me a replaceable part. Hooray. But even if this is not going to happen overnight, it is still important to put it into the program.

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15. Britton back to basics: At some point in this period, I should like to swerve at least a fair part of my time, attention and work back to my original passion: sustainable development and social justice, with a strong tilt to work, community, and -- believe it or not coming from me -- overhaul of the tax system (starting with income tax which was my kissin' cousin Cordell Hull's bright idea and for which he is not to be forgiven).

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* * *

As you can well imagine, all that makes for a fairly daunting workload, but surprising as it may seem these are exactly the issues which are the stuff of my very full days. You will immediately see that none of these pretend to be one-man shows; indeed in virtually all cases many others are involved, teams and talented individuals, and my own role is far more strategic than operational (that after all is what I do.).. But let's get back to this again in 2020. In the meantime we had both better get back to work.

Eric Britton
Paris. 5 January 2010.

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