Self-Organized CFDs 
Page in process. Comments/suggestions welcome.
| The Trickle Up Approach |
In certain political circles and philosophies it has long accepted that anything that brings great resources, wealth or knowledge to the "upper echelons" of society, will also make a much broader social contribution as the accumulated wealth "trickles down" and eventually makes those lower down on the socio-economic ladder better off. Maybe so, maybe not.
In the event, the trickle-up theory works in quite another way. The emphasis in this approach is to nourish the base -- which in our particular case here means starting not by making transport and infrastructure decisions from the top down, but rather by informing and thereby giving voice and power to the citizens to better understand the issues and thereby to make their own choices. The original Bogota project in February 2000 provides a good example of how this works, beginning with a well planned, strongly supported car free day, then moving into a meticulous and very extensive follow-up phase which entails creating a whole panoply of new transport arrangements, and finally going on to the popular referendum in which more than a million voters gave their overwhelming stamp of approval to a long term rebuilding effort, the goal of which is the construction of a fully sustainable transport system for the city in which the private car plays an extremely limited role. This is the kind of process that we should have in mind as we move ahead on the many more modest projects and actions that are needed to lay the groundwork and develop the massive political support and underpinnings which are needed to achieve something along these highly ambitions lines.
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And this is where concepts like Critical Mass can come in. In the last couple of years we have seen it work rather convincingly in a number of cities where a variant of this self-organizing approach has been outstandingly effective in creating a bottom-up approach to support mass cycling and on-line skating events. ("We're not blocking traffic... We ARE traffic!" See Critical Mass .) Another good place to look for inspiration is Slow Cities.
The essence of self-organization is that system structure often appears without explicit pressure or involvement from outside the system. In other words, the constraints on form (i.e. organization) are internal to the system, resulting from the interactions among the components and usually independent of the physical nature of those components. The organization can evolve in either time or space, maintain a stable form or show transient phenomena.
As has been said, you don't have to
be a city to do a car free day.
Without having to wait for anybody to make up your mind for you, you can, for example, get together and organize it in and with your local friendly ...
Where do you start?
So even if your mayor is not yet ready to bite the bullet and organize a full-scale aread-wide CFD for your city this year, this does not mean that you and your family, your bridge club or local labor union can't give it a try yourselves. And if you and a few other pioneers like you manage to pull it off this year, the next time around there are going to be more people and places that are ready to join you. In fact, if you go about this in the right way, you may even find that the mayor and city council are ready to hear from you and possibly even to give you a hand.
Under these circumstances with the city itself on hold, there may have to be a bit of bending of the more literal "car free day rules" to make this work. Thus, for example, while some groups may be able to handily their mobility chores for the day on foot or by cycle, and others who may even find that there is some sort of public transport that will do the trick, there are going to be lots of instances in many places in which a car is still needed. Well, how to have a car free day if you still end up getting into a car. The answer to that of course is to put a lot of people into it. Then what you have may look to some as a 'car' in the all too usual sense of the word, but we see it in that case as a small bus or a shared taxi. Or...
Some things you can study, organize and do
Once again, this list is just suggestive. We are counting on you to help us complete it over the coming months.
Basically all you need are three things, starting with the desire and decision to do it. Once you have that, the next step is to develop a strategy. And finally and as part of that, it will be helpful to have working materials that can help you in the planning and organization. With this in mind, we invite you to turn to the Planning Your Day section which has a whole battery of tools and guides in the Do-it-Yourself CFD section.
What do you need?
We would ask you to help out the group as a whole by registering your project idea once you have begun to sort it out. We want your efforts to be known to others, as a source of inspiration and information. You also may find that others may approach you in turn with ideas and suggestions that you may find useful.
Register your interest and your Event
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