Finland’s Classical Crescendo

As Helsinki’s New Concert Hall Starts Its Second Season, the Nation’s Musical Culture Thrives

By J.S. MARCUS , Wall Street Journal, 6 Sept. 2012 Full text with photos and comments at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443618604577623412599218388.html

Finland can lay claim to being the musical superpower of the Nordic countries. The most important orchestras in Sweden and Norway now have Finnish conductors. Jean Sibelius, Finland’s national composer, has a renewed pan-Scandinavian appeal, and contemporary Finnish composers are some of the most sought-after in the world. But until last year, Helsinki, the center of Finnish musical life, lacked an acoustically viable concert hall.

“What I really appreciate about Finnish audiences is their curiosity…. They want to take things in.” Opera singer Karita Mattila

That all changed in late August 2011, when the city inaugurated the new Helsinki Music Center, home to both the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Nordic countries’ oldest permanent orchestra, and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, known for premiering new works by Finnish composers. Outfitted with an acoustic system designed by Yasuhisa Toyota, responsible for the sound at Los Angeles’s acclaimed Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Music Center is a popular success, regularly selling out concerts of all kinds.

The new Music Center is just the shiny tip of a large iceberg. Buoyed by a rising generation of conducting stars and soloists, and a thriving musical culture that extends into the provinces, Finland is settling into a new golden age for classical music, turning what other countries often regard as a moribund luxury into a vital part of everyday life.

Helsinki begins its new classical music season in earnest this week, and many of the city’s leading musical personalities see the Music Center’s second year as its real first season, with orchestras regarding the first year as a necessary period of adjustment. “As expected, it took about one year to get used to being there,” says John Storgårds, the 48-year-old chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, about the new facilities. “The first year was a development process.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Storgårds will help bring in the new season with Brahms’s Symphony No. 1, part of the orchestra’s first Brahms cycle in its new home. “I specifically wanted to do it the second year, not the first,” he says of the four Brahms symphonies, which are at the very center of the orchestral repertory.

The Music Center’s predecessor, Finlandia Hall, is “a beautiful building and an important national monument,” says the conductor Hannu Lintu, but it was also a notorious acoustic dead zone. Designed by Finnish master Alvar Aalto, the white-marble 1971 building was “really dry,” says Mr. Lintu, who is scheduled to take over as chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra next year. It “didn’t focus the music from the stage to audience,” he says. “It was almost impossible to produce anything, because the hall didn’t support you.”

Mr. Lintu, the 44-year-old shooting star of the Finnish conducting scene, will act as principal guest conductor of the Radio Symphony this year. The orchestra’s new season at the Music Center begins tonight, with Mr. Lintu conducting works by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and 47-year-old Finnish composer Veli-Matti Puumala.

Mr. Lintu says the Music Center’s new main hall, which seats 1,704, is like “an X-ray machine—you can hear everything.” With its intimate, amphitheater-like setting, the main hall has also created a new sense of community, he says.

“We Finns are not very good at communicating,” he says, invoking a cliché that many Finns will also admit is true. “We are shy, and we are quiet.” Now, he says, the main hall allows people ” to see each other’s reactions.” The audience, he says, “can experience the music together.”

This year, the €190 million Music Center will also inaugurate its new house choir, which the two orchestras will share. On Sept. 21, the Radio Symphony and the Music Center Choir will perform Brahms’s “A German Requiem,” conducted by the orchestra’s former chief conductor, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, now chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic.

Messrs. Storgårds, Lintu, and Saraste are just three of several Finnish conductors with international standing. Others include Esa-Pekka Salonen, principal conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra; Sakari Oramo, chief conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra; and Osmo Vänskä, music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, a new critical darling among American ensembles.

Mr. Vänskä says that Finnish conductors enjoy such high standing these days because “it is our tradition to be practical.” Mr. Vänskä says he is “one of the musicians,” not an authoritarian figure, as conductors are often regarded in Central European orchestras.

Mr. Vänskä is known for his now legendary recordings of the seven Sibelius symphonies with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, part of a massive project by the Swedish BIS label, which culminated last year, to record the composer’s complete works.

An hour away from Helsinki, the smaller city of Lahti has its own vibrant musical life, centered around its decade-old concert venue, Sibelius Hall, known for a highly adjustable acoustic system that many regard as one of the world’s best. When the Lahti ensemble played the new Helsinki venue for the first time last fall, the city sent 19 busloads of music lovers to the capital—”as fans do in ice hockey,” says Lahti’s new chief conductor, Okko Kamu.

A central fact of Finnish musical life is audience openness to new and difficult works of music by contemporary composers. The best known is Magnus Lindberg, 54, a recent composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic. His works are marked by innovation, like his 1980s piece, “Kraft,” which converts junkyard refuse into musical instruments. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who is himself a composer, attributes Finnish musical sophistication to the country’s much-lauded educational system, which fosters musical talent but has also helped create a new generation of eager audiences. “This small nation has been able to reach its full potential,” he says.

“What I really appreciate about Finnish audiences,” says Finland’s superstar opera singer, Karita Mattila, “is their curiosity.” She says Finns “really concentrate” on unknown pieces. “They want to take things in—they may later decide that they don’t like something, but they take it in.”

The banner event of the new season so far is Ms. Mattila’s appearance this month at Helsinki’s Finnish National Opera, where the soprano stars in Janáček’s “The Makropulos Case.”

Finnish interest in contemporary classical music, says young violinist Pekka Kuusisto, also has much to do with the legacy of Sibelius, who proved that “music from this tiny country can have international significance.” Composers like Mr. Lindberg knew “before they started that they could make it.”

For decades, government support for classical music has been broad and deep. In a country of 5.5 million people, there are some 15 symphony orchestras, dozens of working composers, and surprisingly low ticket prices. The top ticket for both of Helsinki’s ensembles is often less than €30, and low prices mean diversity among concertgoers. “We have young audiences,” says Ms. Mattila.

Finlandia Hall is still standing, as gorgeous as ever, a few minutes’ walk from the new Music Center. Its new life as a conference center and popular-music venue does lead to some bittersweet reflections from former audiences, young and old.

“Everybody grew up going to concerts at Finlandia Hall,” says 35-year-old Pekka Kuusisto. “Everything was so beautiful—except for the way it sounded.”

In the “mind map” that follows, we present a first level of goals, which have been abstracted from a far more complex map which at present identifies roughly five hundred system components, values and targets. But let’s see what happens if we take this process one step at a time.

Map 1 showing 12 key Values driving the project

We can talk about why those particular values are there.  And yes they do represent what we hope is a complex, consistent and ultimately effective philosophy and value set clearly laying out what we believe to be important and determinant.  At this stage these are only words, but in the context of our EBT program. each of these values is subject to analysis, discussion and of course considerable differences of opinion.  The value of the exercise above all is probably that it is explicit and open.  No hiding going oni here.

When you see that short list at the very least you can see what we are trying to get at with the project, a sort of bottom line of what we view as the most important values driving the whole operation .

But now let’s jump up a level and see what our “system” starts to look like at a higher level of complexity — this times in the form of a mind map showing the fifty most critical components;

Map 2: 50 Values (Note: click maps to magnify)

Now things are starting to get more complicated, but once again the map points up what we belive to be the most important values that will ultimately  drive policy, investments  and the performance of the system.

And if we move up a notch to bring in the first one hundred fifty key words, we get something that starts to look like  this.

Map 3: 150

Now as you dig into this map you really start to get an idea of the level of complexity of which we must be aware and operational.

Now our final step (for now).  This is what our ecosystem start to look like when we expand it to some five hundred components.

Map 4: ca. 500

This is as far as we have taken this process at this point.  But if your mind works this way, this can be a handy device for organising your own mind maps and thoughts on this challenging  subject.

Let me end with a slightly more aggressive thought on our subject, which is this. If you are not prepared to handle this level of complexity, then city transport policy is not for you.  It’s that simple.

#  # #

PS. What do you do if you are a mayor, ultimately responsible for transport policy and investments in your city, when (a) you are not a transport expert (though you do almost certainly have your opinions) and (b) you have probably less than 5% of your time available even to think about this part of your demanding mandate?

That’s a good question and one that is well worth asking.

Event Wrap Up: Transantiago and Metrobús
– How to achieve social sustainability? –

Profoundly reforming an urban transportation system is as complicated as trying to rebuild a house with the residents inside. Despite all the shortcomings accompanying the status quo of many urban transportation systems today, both the transportation operators and the users have adapted to the market conditions within which they operate, such that any change must proceed with caution.

In other words, grand plans to improve public transportation in our cities must search for a balance between the technically desirable and the politically feasible.

Putting all the emphasis on only one side (e.g., the technical) can derail reform, or weaken it to the point where the desired results are not realized. Although certainly not the only ones, two critical aspects to consider in the search for this balance are: the way in which reformers approach negotiations with existing operators; and the way in which they communicate with, and open up to the participation of civil society, more generally. Both aspects influence not only the feasibility of implementing reform but also the sustainability of the system once reformed.

In this context, our Centre of Excellence, together with the Institute of Sociology of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning convened a diverse group of academics, authorities, operators, and members of civil society to discuss and share lessons from the implementation of Transantiago, in the Chilean capital, and Metrobús, in the Mexican capital. The event took place on Thursday, 31 May at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in Santiago, and was inaugurated by the Chilean Minster of Transportation and Telecommunications, Pedro Pablo Errázuriz.

The design of the event aimed to focus on discussions rather than formal presentations. In the morning, authorities and operators from both cities spoke at a roundtable moderated by Professor Christopher Zegras, from MIT. Private sector participants included: Jesús Padilla, President of Corredor Insurgentes (the principal private operator of the Metrobús system), and Simón Dosque and Hector Moya (Managers of Transantiago’s Buses Vule y Subus Chile, respectively). Authorities included Jorge Rocha, Director of Planning and Evaluation of Metrobús, and Carolina Simonetti, from the General Coordination of Transantiago.

Among the noteworthy conclusions from the discussion:

• Success apparently hinges upon moving from a scheme of confrontation (authorities versus entrepreneurs) towards one of collaboration and trust.
• The inclusion of existing operators in the BRT systems is, perhaps, necessary, but implies a complicated process (building consensus within the operators’ organizations themselves and the negotiation of contract terms) that undoubtedly increases project costs.
• These types of projects provide an opportunity to move from an association-based system (of gremios) towards a business-based system. This transition can be painful and generate losers, but it likely reduces negative externalities (accidents, congestion, pollution) and, perhaps, improves service levels for the user.
• The agreements generated with operators for the initial stages of the project should be flexible enough to be adjusted to the changing conditions during implementation.
• It is crucial to strengthen the parties involved (authorities and the private sector) that are committed to successful reform. Within both groups there are heterogeneous interests which the opposition can take advantage of to sabotage the process. In the case of authorities, it is important to avoid, as much as possible, an institutional design within which decision-making remains subdivided among multiple sub-units, as such a scheme fragments vision and responsibilities.

In the afternoon, Professor Manuel Tironi (Instituto de Sociología, PUC) moderated a dialogue titled “How to increase and improve citizen participation in the design and implementation of integrated BRT systems?” Marco Priego (EMBARQ, Mexico) and Sofia Lopez (Ciudad Viva, Santiago) participated as members of NGOs that have emphasized the need to modify certain aspects of the transportation systems in their respective cities.

To provide the perspective of the authorities on these topics, the participants included Jorge Rocha on behalf of Metrobús and Germán Correa, ex-General Coordinator of the project that eventually became Transantiago. Among the conclusions from the roundtable:

• Citizen participation should be included, in a sustained manner, in all project stages.
• To speak of “citizen participation” in the abstract is not useful. We should specify the types of participation being considered and desired and clearly distinguish citizen participation (as an interactive political process) from simple marketing and information provision.
• There is a lack of specialists with experience in organizing citizen participation that can strengthen urban transportation system projects and improve prospects for success.
• Knowing citizens’ actual preferences is necessary to better approximate their behavior (e.g., in models); but such knowledge is insufficient for integrating citizens into the processes of design and implementation. We should also (a) better know their daily non-discursive activities and (b) enable them to participate more directly in decision-making.
• The success of citizen participation (and systems better-aligned with users) depends on recognizing the diversity of users and user profiles.
• We should take advantage of the possibilities for real-time interaction with users/citizens enabled by new communication technologies.

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This workshop was made possible thanks the support of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI). The material discussed will be analyzed more deeply and serve to further strengthen the research of one of the research groups that participate in the Centre of Excellence ALC-BRT.

Download the full program of the Workshop (in Spanish).

Presentations (in Spanish) by:

• Arturo Ardila-Gómez: Transporte y sustentabilidad política.
• Christopher Zegras: Metrobús: BRT en Ciudad de México.
• Manuel Tironi: Transantiago: Objetivos, Características y Desafíos.

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Editor’s note:

Thanks to all those behind this fine project in Santiago for taking the time and trouble to summarise so well what many of us have concluded over the years, especially when it comes to projects that are pushed too hard, too fast, and too blindly to achieve the kinds of broad acceptance that is needed if our transportation reforms are to succeed and endure.

An earlier posting in World Streets last year, “Outreach for success: Local Actors & Implementation Partners”, which you can pick up at http://wp.me/psKUY-1zd, offers a handy “partners” checklist which we have developed over the last two decades as a kind of survival kit to guide our work with innovative projects and programs in cities.  This checklist  identifies close to one hundred types of organizations, groups and programs who are the partners — or if you get it wrong the adversaries — of your new project or initiative, pretty much wherever you may find yourself on this planet.

The days of authoritarian projects pushed without full citizen involvement and support are coming to an end, and if not yet as fast as we would like to see, nonetheless on the way out. At least in our legitimately democratic societies and cities. And for the rest, well the most useful thing that we can do for them will be to provide great and democratic examples showing that the path to excellence lies through equity and inclusiveness.

1. Launching the Equity-Based Transport project in Helsinki
2. End-season projects in Utrecht, Tallinn, Paris and Stuttgart.
3. Lyon move
4. Seeking funding support for World Streets

Helsinki: The first stage of our Equity-Based Transport program has taken a major effort and slice of time since February, but is yielding highly satisfactory results. Thanks to the Helsinki team and the two hundred or so people who have participated in the first stages of work as we walked around it, looked at it from all sides, took it apart, discussed vigorously, and brainstormed on this approach from a wide range of perspectives and mobility environments and needs.

You will be hearing more about this in the coming days and week both here and in more detail on the Equity/Transport blog at http://equitytransport.wordpress.com/ along with the parallel Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/SafeStreetStrategies. In the meantime a good starting place to get into the project is http://equitytransport.wordpress.com/helsinki/. And should this really pique your interest you can receive a copy of the peer review report with a simple note to the editor any time before end-June.

Tallinn: The Tallinn project is especially promising and this is an important
time for the city. The goal in this first stage is to launch a series of conversations in the capital of Estonia with a view to moving to a new agenda for mobility and well-being in the city. The Tallinn project is extensively informed by the work going on in their sister city of Helsinki. I will be meeting and working with a broad range of players and actors during the course of a stay there from 9 to 15 June.

For more on that get in touch with Mari Jüssi, Project Manager, Sustainability Measures Programme, SEI Tallinn – mari@seit.ee. The program is available in Estonian at http://www.keskkonnakogu.eu/?id=10&item=4 (and translates quite usefully via Google). More will be published here in the weeks ahead.

Paris: From 6-9 June I have been invited as Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development at the Institut Supérieur de Gestion, to lead the second in my annual Master Classes series for their last-year MBA program on the topic “Sustainable Development, Economy & Society”.

You can find full program details at http://sdes2012.wordpress.com/, and on the supporting Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/SDES.MasterClass.

Utrecht: The Utrecht project involves cooperation with a group of young
Dutch professionals working in the field of sustainable mobility and sustainable energy. We are looking with them and a distinguished panel of experts specially at the main issues in the area of sustainable mobility in the developing countries, with a particular interest in “learning form the South”. You can catch the work program for the one day event on 2 June at http://www.yes-dc.org/index.php?menu=2&submenu=0&newsid=200#200.

Stuttgart: The Safe Streets Challenge: 2012. From 1 – 4 July, I will be in
Stuttgart where I have been working with the Cities for Mobility team since the beginning of the year to help create a 2012 focus topic and framework ideas on the topic of Safe Streets. I have been invited to give the opening keynote address to their sixth Congress.

For more on this contact the project leaders Worlfgang Forderer at Wolfgang.Forderer@stuttgart.de or Patrick Daude at Patrick. Daude@stuttgart. de. Full details on the conference are available at http://www.cities-for-mobility.net/index.php/events/world-congress-2012/registration and on our supporting FB page at http://www.facebook.com/SafeStreetStrategies. If you get in touch with the organisers before 15 June, there are still places for free participation and low-cost lodging.

Lyon: On April 23rd we moved to Lyon after many years of happy and efficient
work in Paris. Our motive for the move was the desire of the apartment proprietors to take it over for themselves (they are quite right). This lead us to think about perhaps something more than moving next door, so after consultation with colleagues in many parts of France (and limiting ourselves strictly to cities with lively operas) we decided to take our act to Lyon, one of Europe’s major capitals in transport and related cities and sustainability research and action. We have stumbled onto a terrific working and living environment, and if you get this way drop a line to editor@worldstreets.org or give a call to T. +339 8326 9459| M. +336 5088 0787 | S. newmobility.

Funding World Streets: This was the one that I was not able to get to over
these last hectic months. But it is critical if we are to play our full role. The problem is an absolute empty closet of ideas and leads when it comes to hoe to go about contacting foundations and other eventual sources of support. So if you like World Streets and want us to make our full contribution, get in touch and let’s talk about it.

# # #

There you have it, the reason for this long silence. But starting today we are back on line, and just to get things going tomorrow we will be launching the latest edition of World Transport Policy and Practice, Vol. 18, No. 3. Stay tuned to World Streets.

And here is a final reminder on the various programs and projects that relate to World Streets family of initiatives. See, shape and interact with World Streets from different angles via . . .

 World Streets on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/worldstreets
 Twitter – http://twitter.com/#!/worldstreets
 Scribd Library – http://.scribd.com/fekbritton
 LinkedIn – http://tinyurl.com/ws-L-In
 YouTube – http://tinyurl.com/YT-WorldStreets-1
 Picasa – http://tinyurl.com/ws-picasa

Hands-on collaboration: With you and your city?

How can World Streets help support sustainable transport initiatives in your neighborhood, city, country, agency, or public interest or user group? Through special issues or supporting articles? Collaboration in support of conferences, projects, workshops, master classes, city dialogues? Local or other media programs? Cooperative programs or events with universities, NGOs, consultancies and schools?

This we will have to do together. So now all that remains to be done is to get you actively involved as a reader, subscriber, contributor, supporter and working partner so that in 2011 we can together go from strength to strength. Get in touch so that we can swap ideas concerning how to go about it.

| 9, rue Gabillot 69003 Lyon. | T. +339 8326 9459 | M. +336 5088 0787
| editor@worldstreets.org | fekbritton@gmail.com | Skype: newmobility |

- – - > To obtain your copy of WTPP 18/1 click here.

EDITORIAL

- John Whitelegg, Editor

In March this year approximately 70 transport professionals and politicians met in Bremen for the final conference of the EU funded CARE project (Note 1).  Bremen was a very fitting location for a conference dedicated to sensible, practical, intelligent and creative approaches to delivering a transport system and a new approach to mobility that can meet the challenges and tasks associated with carbon reduction.

Bremen has a long history of careful and co-ordinated transport policy interventions that actually work. The Bremen approach is characterised by actually doing things rather than talking about the possibility of doing things and this deserves widespread acclaim.

When the history of automobility and transport policy is properly documented one of the key findings will be the discovery of an enormous chasm between rhetoric and reality. Britain (but the point could also be made about many other countries) is littered with pompous strategy documents, grandiose sustainability rhetoric and a delivery system that still churns out bypasses, motorway widening, new airports, high speed trains and poor quality walking, cycling and public transport systems.

After 30 years of discussion about transport problems in Lancaster (UK) this fine historic city has no park and ride, no tram, no integrated public transport system between rail and bus, no car share, no electronic information system at its bus station, no real time information system at bus stops, no alternatives fuelled buses, no lorry routeing and management system, no active demand management interventions (e.g. travel plans) poor quality walking and cycling facilities and a plan to build a bypass costing £120 million.

Bremen has set down clear markers and standards for increasing cycling levels, public transport use, innovative ticketing solutions, brilliant car share schemes, low emission zones and alternatively fuelled buses to reduce air pollution. The essence of a much needed EU transport policy would be to capture the Bremen virus, replicate it and install it in the DNA of every EU city with more than 100,000 residents.  Now that would be an interesting EU project!

Sadly all is not well in Bremen and there are elements of rogue DNA still in circulation. At the March conference we were told by Senator Dr Joachim Lohse that he intended to build a new motorway link to provide better connections to the port of Bremerhaven.  There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that building this motorway will generate large amounts of extra greenhouse gases and therefore contradict the whole point of the CARE project. Worse still it will disrupt the spatial structure of this attractive region of Germany and accelerate the very things that Professor Kenworthy (and others) argued against at the conference and produce suburbanisation, spatial dispersion and auto-dependent life styles (Note 2).

Building a new motorway in the Bremen region is a really good example of one of the central messages in EU transport policy which is 3 steps forward and 5 steps back. It would be a highly instructive exercise to calculate how many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO₂ have been saved by Bremen’s’ excellent transport policy interventions in a 10 year period and then compare this number with an estimate of how many hundreds and thousands of tonnes will be generated by the new motorway. In Lancaster (UK) the proposed  bypass  is 4.5 kms in length, with 4 lanes of traffic and  will generate an extra 20,000 tonnes of CO₂ pa and this calculation excludes secondary effects e.g. new housing, new warehouses, new developments along the route of the road which is scheduled to traverse open countryside that is currently protected green belt and undeveloped.

For the avoidance of doubt the Bremen motorway plan does not diminish the importance and excellence of the carbon reducing transport policies that have been put in place for over 20 years. These interventions are real and still important but they will now be cancelled out by good, old-fashioned road building.

The Bremen conference finished with a debate and a message that will be sent to the Rio plus 20 congress. This message captures the essence of what has to be done to bring transport thinking and doing into line with global challenges and deserves to be incorporated into all national government, regional administrations and EU commitments immediately. It is a charter for truly sustainable transport (Note 3)

Because of the large volume of submitted articles to this journal we are publishing the first two issues of 2012 at the same time and this editorial covers both issues.

The first two issues of World Transport Policy and Practice in 2012 take up the same challenge of defining, developing and accelerating the take up of truly sustainable transport. This is done in the article on cycling in Washington DC, on rural accessibility in Malawi, on rail freight, on mobility management in Denmark and on the true meaning of mobility and its links to urban form and structure in Germany.

In the article by Nick Williams the lack of intelligence around hospital planning and accessibility is painfully revealed. The case study is in Aberdeen in NE Scotland but the points made are applicable to any large traffic generation site in the developed world.  Interestingly the case study location is exactly the same as another huge blow against sustainable transport policies and objectives. The Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (Note 4) is a 40km + new road through open countryside which will accelerate all the negative tendencies identified by Kenworthy in his Bremen presentation and Holzapfel in this journal.

Finally a brief comment on the exchanges in recent issues between Paul Mees, Jeff Kenworthy and Peter Newman. The editor of this journal has the highest regard for all these inspirational transport authors and commentators.  Readers will be aware that recent articles have revealed fundamental disagreements between two sides of a debate about density and its links with the definition, promotion and delivery of sustainable transport policy objectives. The disagreement is still there but we will not be carrying any more material on this subject. As editors are often quoted as saying “this correspondence is now closed”.

If readers are interested in the details of how urban density is measured and how this is used in international comparisons of city transport they should contact Paul Mees who has produced a detailed critique and for the sake of balance they should also contact Jeff Kenworthy and Peter Newman but from now on this must be done outwith (a very nice Scottish word) the scope of World Transport Policy and Practice.

John Whitelegg, Editor

# # #

Note 1. CARE (Carbon Responsible Transport Strategies in the North Sea Area)
http://www.care-north.eu/

Note 2.  Professor Kenworthy’s presentation was titled “Urban transport from a global perspective” and is available from the conference web site http://www.care-north.eu/care-north-final-conference/programme/wednesday-21-march/wednesday-21-march

Note 3. The CARE-North message to Rio plus 20 http://www.care-north.eu/sites/default/files/Message_to_RIO+20.pdf

Note 4. http://www.awpr.co.uk/

# # #

Contents

Editorial Introduction

Abstracts & Keywords

Some Remarks about Mobility
- Professor Helmut Holzapfel

Identifying villages with multiple dimensions of access deprivation: The case of Chikwawa District in rural Malawi
- W.S. Kuotcha, N.S. Ferguson, M. de Langen, G.K. Kululanga, A.M. Grimason

Scotland takes a backward step in access to hospitals
- Nick Williams

Mobility Management in Denmark: New wind in the sails
- Clement N. Guasco

- – – > To obtain your copy of WTPP 18/1 click here.

* For a more complete introduction to World Transport click here.

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About the editor:

 Managing Director of Eco-Logica, John Whitelegg is Visiting Professor of Sustainable Transport at Liverpool John Moores University, Professor of Sustainable Development at the Stockholm Environment Institute, and founder and editor of the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice. Research interests encompass transport and the environment, definition of sustainable transport systems and a sustainable built environment, development of transport in third world cities focusing on the relationships between sustainability and human health, implementation of environmental strategies within manufacturing and service industry and development of environmental management standards. He has published widely on these topics. John is active in the Green party of England and Wales and is the national spokesperson on sustainable development.

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Cultivating Genius

By Jonah Lehrer

In the most recent issue of Wired, I have a short essay on “ages of excess genius,” which are those sudden flourishings of talent that recur throughout history. Themes in the piece are drawn from Imagine, which concludes by looking at Elizabethan England, a period full of writerly talent. (There was Shakespeare, of course, but also Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Milton, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Fletcher, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Kyd, Philip Sidney, Thomas Nashe, John Donne and Francis Bacon. All these writers lived in the same city at the same time. Pretty amazing.) In essence, I argue that, although Shakespeare was for all time, he could only have existed in his time: his genius was unleashed by his age.

Most economic growth has a very simple source: new ideas. It is our creativity that generates wealth. So how can we increase the pace of innovation? Is it possible to inspire more Picassos and Steve Jobses?

The answer to that question is hidden in history books. Several years ago, statistician David Banks wrote a short paper on what he called the problem of excess genius: It turns out that human geniuses aren’t scattered randomly across time and space. Instead, they tend to arrive in tight clusters. (As Banks put it, talent “clots inhomogeneously.”)

In his paper, Banks cites the example of Athens between 440 and 380 BC. He writes that the ancient city was home to an astonishing number of geniuses, including Plato, Socrates, Thucydides, Herodotus, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes. These thinkers essentially invented Western civilization, and yet they all lived in the same place at the same time.

Or look at Florence, Italy, between 1440 and 1490. In a mere half century, a city of fewer than 70,000 people gave rise to a staggering number of immortal artists, like Michelangelo, da Vinci, Ghiberti, Botticelli, and Donatello.

What causes such outpourings of creativity? Banks quickly dismissed the usual historical explanations, such as the importance of peace and prosperity. (In Plato’s day, Athens was engaged in a vicious war with Sparta.) The academic paper ends on a somber note, with Banks concluding that the phenomenon of pockets of genius remains a mystery.

And yet it’s not a total mystery: We can begin to make sense of the “clotting” of creative talent. The secret, it turns out, is the presence of particular meta-ideas, which support the spread of other ideas. First proposed by economist Paul Romer, meta-ideas include concepts like the patent system, public libraries, and universal education. Furthermore, by looking at what various ages of excess genius had in common, it’s possible to come up with a creativity blueprint for the 21st century.

The first pattern that becomes clear is the benefit of human mixing. It’s no accident that past talent clusters were all commercial trading centers, which allowed a wide diversity of people to share ideas. (Urbanization makes this mixing easier.) The same logic still applies: Research indicates that in the overall population, a 1 percent increase in the number of immigrants with college degrees leads to a 9 to 18 percent rise in patent production. Open immigration policies are a feature, not a bug.

Another recurring theme is the importance of education. All of these flourishing cultures pioneered new forms of teaching and learning. Medieval Florence saw the rise of the apprentice-master model, which let young artists learn from veteran experts. Elizabethan England made a concerted effort to educate its middle-class males, which is how William Shakespeare—the son of a glover who couldn’t sign his name—ended up getting free Latin lessons. We need to emulate these ingenious eras and encourage rampant experimentation in the education sector, whether it’s taking the Khan Academy mainstream or expanding vocational training. As T. S. Eliot once remarked, the great ages did not contain more talent. They wasted less.

The last meta-idea involves the development of institutions that encourage risk-taking. Shakespeare was lucky to have royal support for his odd tragedies, while Renaissance Florence benefited from the willingness of the Medicis to support new artistic forms, such as the use of perspective in painting. Many of these ventures failed—Shakespeare wrote several bad plays—but tolerating such failure is the only way to get a Hamlet.

This might seem like an impossibly ambitious agenda. It’s not. Bill James, the pioneer of Moneyball-style statistical baseball analysis, points out that modern America is already very good at generating geniuses. The problem is that the geniuses we’ve created are athletes. As James says, this is largely because we treat athletes differently. We encourage them when they’re young, chauffeuring our kids to practice and tournaments. We also have mechanisms for cultivating athletic talent at every step in the process, from Little League to the Majors. Lastly, professional teams are willing to take risks, betting big bucks on draft picks who never pan out. Because of these successful meta-ideas, even a small city like Topeka, Kansas—roughly the same size as Elizabethan London, James points out—can produce an athletic genius every few years.

We’ve never needed geniuses more than we do now. The good news is that we can learn from the creative secrets of the past, from those outlier societies that produced Shakespeare and Plato and Michelangelo. And then we should look in the mirror. The excess is not an accident.

# # #

About the author:

I’m a Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of Imagine, How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist. I graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. I’ve written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Nature,Outside and many other publications. I’m also a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a frequent contributor to WNYC’s Radiolab.

# # #

 1.  FIVE.SENTENC.ES

A personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less. It’s that simple. (Easy to say, but to my mind it is the thought not the exact arithmetic all the time that counts. again. You will find it at http://five.sentenc.es/.)

 2.  AGE OF DISTRACTION:

Someone kindly sent me this as a screen saver. I have had to look at it when booting up for a number of days to start to take it really to heart. You  can see me trying hard over there bottom right.

* Click drawing for full size graphic

3.  ONE MINUTE MOZART51 seconds actually which you can find at http://youtu.be/jYLr_uqfcLs.  (Anyone hear Scarlatti in the first measures?)

From the early Spring snows of Helsinki, may you have a warm and focused weekend.

Eric Britton

PS. And while you’re at it, think about equity as a metric for a great and creative society. There is really something there. I promise.

A collaborative investigation of an unusual concept in Helsinki Finland

- Eric Britton, New Mobility Agenda, Paris

Let me start by presenting a few opening thoughts on what we mean by an equity-based transport system, and then move on to some information explaining how this project is intended to unfold, along with a few final words on how you can follow it and possibly even get involved.

1. What is an Equity-based transport system ?

We understand that in the transport sector this is not a well known concept, at least in the positive sense we are trying to develop here, so we are making every effort to clarify. I was discussing this project the other day with a bright young woman from the Emirates who is on an MBA program here, who smiled at me indulgently as I asked her views and said: ‘Don’t you understand Eric, life is not fair”. That gives us, I would say, a good point of departure.

The first step in this process just getting underway is to see if we can create a common understanding of our topic  – bearing in mind the fact that in most cities in the world, probably all of them to be perfectly frank and accurate, our transportation arrangements are not equitable, indeed far from it. There are winners and losers from the present mobility arrangements, worse here, perhaps a bit better there.

In all places, better and worse, there is a basic dominant pattern. Let’s call it if not a paradigm at least an inevitable result of the dominant paradigm now firmly in place.  A paradigm that is so deeply engraved as part of the received wisdom, that it is all but invisible. But the results are there for all to see.

Thus as a result of this invisible  paradigm women in virtually every city in the world are by and large less well served than men. Non-drivers less well than drivers. The elderly and frail less than the active and healthy. Children less well than adults,. The poor far less well than the rich. The unemployed less well than those with jobs. Those of us who cannot really (that “really” is an important word that we shall also be looking into) afford to own and operate cars as opposed to those who can. And if you care to think about it a bit, you can surely complete this list as well as I.

In a word, in most cities on this gasping planet for the great majority of all people the present transportation arrangements are inequitable. The dominant (a) all-car (b) no-choice transportation arrangements of the 20^th century are not doing the job for the transportation majority. They are grotesquely unfair; they are also highly inefficient and unaffordably uneconomic.

So what if we were to turn the situation around and take as a starting point for public policy and investments in the sector not so much the twentieth century values of speed (ever faster), distance (ever farther) and indifference (ever more) but 21st-century values of equity , social justice and deep democracy?  And that of course is what this project is all about.

This project which i s taking place under the supervision of the city of Helsinki is in the two months ahead engaging an open public exploration of the concept of equity-based transportation systems in Helsinki. The project method keys on the participation of a small team who will meet with a good cross-section of groups and interests in various parts of Helsinki, and discuss with them both in general and very specifically such things as: what is already going on in their sector to create more equitable mobility arrangements; what are the worst cases; what are the ongoing plans and goals; and what would be needed from city or national government, or other sources eventually, in order to achieve some significant steps toward a more equitable transportation system.

One of the key pillars behind this program is a belief that, properly engaged, the move to equity-based transportation can lead to greater efficiency and economy both for specific groups and individuals, and also for the city and its region as a whole. That it is to say that it is going to be a step up, not a step down!

If we redraw the system to make it better for women of all ages and life condition, it will be better for men as well. Better for the frail and elderly, then better for the rest as well.  Better and safer for children, then better and safer for all. Better for the poor, then well, belive it or not, better for the rich as well. Etc.

At the end of the day, once you understand and accept the basic principle of equity a huge number of other good things follow. And you have only to look in one place to see if you have it — and that is on the streets of your city. If the mayor, all public servants, and the top economic 20% of your community travel by the same means as the other 80%, you have an equitable system. If not, not!  It’s that simple.

2. Project Highlights

1. 15 to 29 February. Laying the foundation. Development of program plan, team organization, initial contact suggestions, events, schedules, and basic supporting documentation and organisational/logistical support for Stakeholder Focus Sessions, Master Classes and media.

2. 1 to 14 March. In-place preparations and testing. Initial outreach program and finalization of Finnish documentation. Development and communication of basic documentation and interview and meeting arrangements with a broad cross-section of individuals, groups and programs working in sector. (Click here to get an idea of the organisations to be contacted for the project.)

3. 15 to 27 March. Stakeholder Workshops. Presentations, discussions, interviews, site visits and conversations with key groups and interests in the greater Helsinki area to be carried out. (Workshops also lay the ground work for Stakeholder presentations in the Master Classes.) Media presentations, interviews, continuing contacts with even wider range of key interest groups, as well as review sessions with teams responsible for organizing the ongoing programs generating the Helsinki Master Plan, Metropolitan Area Transport System Plan and the Program for Promoting Cycling in Helsinki.

4. 21 to 23 March. Invitational three-day Master Class. Held in the auditorium of the Department of City Planning and Transportation, with the formal presentations and public discussions running from 09:00 to 11:30 each day, followed up by continuing private discussions and exchanges with the team over the remainder of those days. Session 1: People: Equity and Transport. Session 2. Systems: Delivering equitable transport. 3. Strategies: at project and overall systemic levels.

5. 27 March, 10:00. Public presentation and discussion to be organized in the auditorium of the Department of City Planning, both to report on mission findings, and seek further information and views to be included in the final report and recommendations.

6. 29 March to 13 April. Report drafting, internal review with limited distribution for comment to external reviewers. Report finalization and submittal on 13 April.

3.International advisory panel.

We are in the process of creating an informal international panel of friends and colleagues around the world who might be interested in following this process closely, and perhaps also to make their views known from time to time. To help round out your information on this, the following section provides some one-click links to sources that you may find of use in this respect.

Working Papers and supporting media

In this section we are attempting to organize in on place the main postings and working materials being developed in support of the 2012 Helsinki project. A good place for you to start to get your orientation will be with the first two working papers that follow here just below.

1. Initial project announcement (20 February)
2. Outreach for success: Key actors and partners (28 January)
3. Main events and project schedule (6 March)
4. Master Class organization (working draft) (6 March)
5. Notes on the organisation of the Focus Workshops (8 March)
6. Who are the non-car majority and how do we serve them best
7. Editorial: On the plane to Helsinki (14 March 2012)
8. What is equity (and what is it not. Late night thoughts)
   
9. Future of the automobile in the city
10. Key role of the ITC interface
11. A note on civil society and the social brain as an untapped resource
12. What would an Equity-Based Transport system for Helsinki look like? – and what would be the best way to get there?

It can be anticipated that this list of topics will bounce around a certain amount over the coming weeks, but here you have at least our starting place. in the event, information on future working papers will be posted on the site.

# # #

Further information/Sources:

• Website: An informal website has been set up at http://networkdispatches.wordpress.com/. Intended to provide a central depository of documents and comments, and in particular to help international readers of World Streets and others to follow and learn from Helsinki project .
• Outreach: Inventory of groups, organizations to be contracted. Click here
• Facebook page to support the project at http://www.facebook.com/EquityTransport.
• Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/EquityT
• Project library: A small collection of useful documentation can be found here
• Equity photo album: A collection of illustrative photographs can be found here
• Equity/Transport videos : A collection of videos looking at the issues from a wide variety of perspectives can be found here

1. Certainly not the same thing (quite) as equality. And it is important to keep this distinction in mind.

2. In a nutshell something like: equal life chances regardless of identity

3. Equity is based on the idea of moral equality

4. A shared understanding of the social commitment to provide all citizens with a basic and fair minimum of income/goods/services

5. Equity deals with accommodating and meeting the specific needs of specific individuals

6. Intergenerational equity, equality and fairness in relationships between people in different generations

7. In another common usage of the word (financial) equity is also the value of an ownership interest in property. ( This aspect needs to be further explored in our context., because indeed it is important to ensure that citizens own, have a significant share in their city or country. Thus helping to sure that they see themselves as active parts of the solution.)

8. Here are some synonyms that come to mind: Fairness, social justice, decency, morality , nobility ??, Integrity , honesty, disinterestedness, neutrality, rectitude , impartiality , compensatory . . .

9. When it comes to economic aspects, equity looks at the distribution of capital, goods and access to services throughout an economy and is often measured using tools such as the Gini index. (It is commonly used as a measure of inequality of income or wealth. A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality where all values are the same i.e., where everyone has an exactly equal income. At the other end of the equity spectrum, a Gini coefficient of one indicates maximal inequality among values, i.e., where only one person takes all the income. )

10. Income differentials are growing in almost every country in the world today, Scandinavia and Finland included. This is a fact and a trend, and if we point to it here the goal is imply to be sure that we are identifying the landscape within which this project intends to work its way out.

11. Low levels of equity are associated with life chances based on inherited wealth, social exclusion and the resulting poor access to basic services and intergenerational poverty resulting in a negative effect on growth, financial instability, crime and increasing political instability

12. High levels of inequity – when combined with awareness of the differentials – itself a function of some combination of physical proximity of all parties, and/ or hotter communication between those who are aggrieved by the present arrangements – can lead on one side to anger, on the other to guilt.

13. This can lead to conflict, both open and more or less subterranean. More or less violent. More or less revolutionary .

14. All humans have a need to be respected and to have self-esteem and self-respect. ( Yes, no, I don’t know)

15. In a society of equity all of the basic needs of everyone are ensured at a level of what is seen there are decency and justice.

16. A traditional list of immediate “basic needs” is food (including water), shelter, and clothing. This list is also often expanded to include sanitation, education, and healthcare.

17. What about the right to work — i.e., to have access to sufficient income to provide for these basic needs, plus, and this is almost as important, an identity as an active part of equity and the economy.

18. Does transportation, access, belong on this list?

19. And if so what are the characteristics of equitable transportation?

And finally (for now) . . .

20. A historical criticism of equity ( in the law ) as it developed was that it had no fixed rules of its own,

This is an interesting and I believe useful way for me to close out these late night thoughts on equity and our project. Namely that there will never e be hard and fast universal rules that define this concept and way of organizing ourselves in society. For that we have to turn to culture and identity.

Now on to equity-based transportation in Helsinki and Finland.

Eric Britton
Helsinki. 17 March 2012

# # #

A few disturbing thoughts before we turn out the lights:

With the world’s population now well past the seven billion mark, this means that if life were truly  fair, equitable if you will, my and your fair share of the world’s resources will be on the order of  1.4285714285714285714285714285714 e-10.  Now that’s a very very small number. And one which represents a challenge that is far beyond the potential of my brain at least to come to grips with it in our present context.

Let’s see now, at something like 5.5 million people. Finland’s population is well less than one tenth of one percent of the world total.  And Helsinki’s population of course an even smaller fraction of this planet crushing total.

Under these circumstances, what could we possibly expect of this small out of the way Nordic city of modest, hard working, well educated people whose sole resource at the end of the day is their energy, moral strength and brainpower.

That’s the bad news. And the good news is that they, like any country or city, just might be able to provide a viable example though their actions and achievements showing that equity is in fact a winning strategy that just might  serve to encourage others to do the same.

Thus the success of their top of the class equity-based education system reform is bringing hundreds of delegations from countries and institutions around the world to Finland study their example and in many cases to try to adopt and adapt what they see in one part  of the world in which equity is leading not to mediocrity but to excellence.

At the end of the day all any of us can do is to try to give a good example. We certainly cannot afford to sit around in the hope that “world government” will somehow one day figure out how to mandate it. So let’s see what  happens if people in Finland decide to create an equity-based transport system.

Stay tuned to Helsinki.

So here I am just about to get on the plane for Helsinki where I shall be working and meeting over the next two weeks with a couple of hundred people, almost all Finns, in individual meetings and group and plenary sessions as you can find spelled out elsewhere on this site – and through all of that to talk together about equity and transport, private actions and public policy.

Over the last two months of preparatory work with my Finnish colleagues on this, while at the same time working in parallel with our international networks to test these ideas and extend the knowledge base, I have come up with a list of questions which I am about to stuff into my pocket — and when I land in the Nordic capital doing my best to ask and then listen to what they have to say. At the end of all this, some time in mid-April, I shall try to fashion what I have heard and learned into a relatively short strategic report with observations, reflections, findings and perhaps eventually some recommendations.

Here is the short list of the questions I am bringing to Helsinki:

1. What is equity (and what is not-equity)?

2. How does this concept work in the Finnish language? Are there significant differences of which we should be aware? (I am hopeful that my Finnish colleagues will write this u so that w can add it to he site.)

3. Is mobility/access a “basic need’, a human right of citizens in an active democracy.

4. Does the extraordinary Finnish equity-based education system give us a leg-up when it comes to the proposed push to equity-based transport?

5. What is not-Equity in transport? Examples from Helsinki?

6. What is Equity-Based Transport? Examples from Helsinki?

7. Is there a non-car majority in Helsinki?  Who are they, what are their needs and how can we serve them best?

8. Is “Public Transport” (i.e. for the most part scheduled fixed-route services) the answer for Helsinki’s 21st century patterns  and needs?

9. What is the future of the automobile in Helsinki, and Finland more generally?

10. What does a”better than car” mobility package look like?

11. What about the role of the ITC interface? Is this going to be critical? Or an option?

12. Should equity/transport strategies have an eye to job creation and lifetime learning?

13. Do Social Media tools make a difference? How?

14. Are the forces for change/improvement working together in Helsinki? Or are they mainly working on their separate specific agendas and coming up with priorities and demands of their own?

15. A discussions of civil society and the “social brain” as an untapped resource (lighting the synapses)

16. What would an Equity-Based Transport system for Helsinki look like? – and what would be the best way to get there?  Will it cost a lot? Will it be disruptive  and divisive? Will it take a lot of time to start to get there?

PS. Are we talking about a major paradigm change? And if so, what is wrong with the one we already have?

Hidden agenda

As I look at all this on my way to the airport, what strikes me is that this is one of those instances in which the questions are perhaps more important than the answers. And indeed I figure that it is my role here, not to come up with cocky answers to each of these, so much as to encourage the asking and subsequent discussions of all that touches on equity and transport for the city and beyond.

Eric Britton

Paris, 14 March 2012

# # #

Other voices:

Twenty four hours ago, I contacted a short list of my international colleagues who I know have deep expertise in these matters and asked them if they could come up with a short list, I suggested five, of questions that they would like to hear about in this context. They are, I would say, every bit as valid as the ones that I have chosen based on my own experience and perspective.

Let’s have a look at what they have to say:

# # #

From Elizabeth Deakin
Professor of City and Regional Planning
University of California, Berkeley

1. There is always the question of intergenerational equity vs. equity for the people out there today and how to serve both interests.

2. Cars are making the lives of some better, but they are making the lives of many others worse. Discussions of internalizing externalities seem to get very little traction. What can we do to make full cost pricing a way to move forward? Or if this is Quixotic, what other options are more likely to succeed?

3. Would free bikes for everyone be a step forward? (can you ride a bike in a burka?)

4. Where are the children in this discussion?

5. Where are the many adults who have mobility limitations, physical or economic? (where am I in 20 35 years = I plan to stay active till I drop, but what if that is increasingly difficult? Do I have to sit by the window and knit or tat or something equally implausible?)

6. Could we reclaim most streets for people and make the cars stay in their place, on separate guideways that do not intrude on places for people?

7. How do we manage freight and urban goods delivery in a less obnoxious way?

# # #

Rory McMullan
New Mobility China
Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province, China.
Skype: roryer +86 13924708082

1. Cost – how can we make transport cost the same percentage of everyone’s income? making public transport free? Subsidies?

2. Time? How can we equalize the travel time budget? (I would love a three bed with a garden near to my job in London zone 1 but instead I need to live miles out).

3. Accessibility for all. Disabled, old, young, men, women.

4. Equality of impact – e.g. Brixton in the UK has amongst the highest pollution, traffic incidents involving sub-16 year olds, lowest incomes and lowest car ownership in London.

5. What role does sharing play?

# # #

Andrew Murray Wheeldon
Bicycling Empowerment Network (BEN); http://www.benbikes.org.za
Cape Town South Africa

1. To what degree does the city/region/province cater in respect of mobility for the lowest income households?

2. What is the bicycle ownership stats for the various income groups?

3. What percentage of the population use bicycles, and can we measure the trip purpose – is it mobility, leisure, sport?

4. What percentage of the population has access to affordable, reliable, convenient public transport/

5. Which of the population groups has the greatest access to the city and/or education, employment and health opportunities and why? Can we measure this?

6. Can this region be described as one in which those most at risk (economically, socially, education, health, etc.) Have an equal opportunity in respect of mobility to address these ills?

# # #
Marcus Wigan
Professor of Transport Systems, Transport Research Institute,
Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland

1. What are the categories through which ‘equity’ is defined?
2. What is defined as ‘equitable accessibility’, given that 25% of >65 years olds simply can’t walk more than 400m (the benchmark for younger people’s definition of ‘access’ to public transport
3. What coverage of access to toilets on transit is addressed? pregnant women and elder men need this as a key accessibility and equity factor
4. To what extent is ;equity of transport access to key resource (post office, bank, doctor, hospital, government offices) covered or addressed?
5. What tradeoffs between safety, access, cost etc etc are covered to ensure equity of access and use by all different modes including powered two wheelers and electric on and off road mobility solutions?
Hate to answer any of these myself Eric!

# # #

Jonathan Morris, World Citizen
La Colle Sur Loup, France

1. what are the arguments against gov’t spending on equity in transport?
2. Where does it stand in the list of priorities?

# # #

David Levinger
Mobility Education Foundation
Washington, DC

How can we increase equity in transport if we don’t place a priority on educating people about how the multimodal system operates?

# # #

Anzir Boodoo, PhD student
The Institute for Transport Studies
The University of Leeds UK

1. Does planning for transport consider ALL groups in society (young/old, male/female, singles/families, able/disabled, working/unemployed/shift workers)?

2. Do pedestrians (including those who cannot walk, or use other mobility aids) get considered first, ahead of motorised traffic?

3. Are all travel modes integrated? Is it easy to swap between foot, cycle, bus, tram, train and car?

4. Is it possible to get to all places easily on foot or cycle, and all places reasonably by public transport?

5. Is the network of public transport services, footways and cycle ways easy to understand and navigate, even for people with cognitive impairments (e.g. Learning Disabilities, dyslexia) and sensory impairments (e.g. blindness, deafness)

# # #

Enrico Bonfatti
Editor, Nuuva Mobilita
Bergamo, Italy

1. Public Transport: we use to consider car as the unfairest mean of transport by far. Nonetheless there are many equity issues involved in other means of transport. Public transport could be unfair as well: how, for instance, does a new HSR affect the lives of those not having access to it but whose houses, villages and towns are crossed by the line?

2 And how much priority must we give to HSR development and how much to improving regional trains serving commuters living in the towns’ surroundings if, how is often the case (and in Italy it is), there are not enough funds to support both of them?

# # #

Leena Silfverberg
Head of Unit
Helsinki City Planning Department, Transport
Kansakoulukatu 1 A FI-00099 City of Helsinki

1. Who is (are) the most dominating or powerful actors in the sector from your point of view.

2. And in opposite, whose status most needs improving?

3. How does this inequity show? Is the situation changing, to which direction?

4. And (of course): What has to be done to make it better?

# # #

It would also be good if you could also pop in your signature block (name, position, institution, city, etc.) so that we can properly acknowledge your ideas. You will see how this plays out in the crowdsource sections on the  site here. Thanks if this works for you. And keep your eye on Equity.

Eric Britton

PS. When I sent this out first this morning to test the water to a handful of friends with deep expertise in the field of sustainable transport policy and practice in different parts of the world, an interesting and I think meaningful thing occurred. Every one of those who responded was not able to stop with five salient points as suggested. To a man/woman they all offered up six. Now THAT is already a message.

In January 2012, Finnish educator and author Pasi Sahlberg visited Stanford University to discuss his recent book, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?, and participate in a conference on the U.S. and Finnish education systems. After the lecture, he sat down with us to talk about the policies and practices behind the so-called “Finnish miracle” and the central role of equity in Finland’s school reform.

(Source: Scope – Stanford Center for opportunity Policy in Education – http://edpolicy.stanford.edu/multimedia/video/563

Editor’s note:

This is a fine presentation in ten short minutes accomplished with great modesty and clarity. Finland’s dazzling educational reforms and the central role of creativity, modesty and equity from the very beginning have served as a major inspiration for the present project.  We know that we all have a great deal to learn from their pioneering experience, and perhaps even more from the human values that they somehow figured out and put at the center of their reforms.

Which leaves us with the following big question.  Namely, how can we best build on this  approach and accomplishment in other areas of society? And specifically when it comes to mobility in our daily lives, Equitable Mobility?

My guess that we are just getting started with this new vector. and that equity will in fairly short time make itself known as the 21st century version of The Wealth of Nations.  Equity is likely to become the critical metric of values and reforms at virtually all levels of society and the economy.

Stay tuned.

A few stops later a group of white men boarded the bus and had trouble finding available seats together. The bus driver announced “Niggers move back”. Parks, a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and tired of the abuses she had suffered daily on the city buses, decided she needed to make a statement and refused to give up her seat.

The bus driver stopped the bus, called the police and Rosa Parks was taken to jail. Mrs. Parks was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11 segregation law of the Montgomery City code, even though she technically had not taken up a white-only seat—she had been in a colored section.

The beginning of a journey far longer and far more important than many at the time would ever have guessed. And here in 2012, and almost anywhere in the world, we still have, miles to go before we sleep.

# # #

This video is one of a series that appear in the http://www.youtube.com/user/transportationequity YouTube site of the Transportation Equity Network – TEN – a project of the Gamaliel Foundation, a faith-based organization with regional affiliates around the United States and 350+ member organizations.

For details go to http://www.transportationequity.org.  Additional background is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Equity_Network.

A particular  concern of this program is in providing improved conditions of transport to work and to school, above all for minority groups, poorer people and the unemployed.

# # #

This video is one of a series that appear in the http://www.youtube.com/user/transportationequity YouTube site of the Transportation Equity Network – TEN – a project of the Gamaliel Foundation, a faith-based organization with regional affiliates around the United States and 350+ member organizations. For details go to http://www.transportationequity.org.

Additional background is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Equity_Network.

A particular  concern of this program is in providing improved conditions of transport to work, school, health and social services, above all for minority groups, poorer people and the unemployed.

Most of those being interviewed are very angry with their government, and not optimistic that their call will be heard.

# # #

This video is one of a series that appear in the http://www.youtube.com/user/transportationequity YouTube site of the Transportation Equity Network – TEN – a project of the Gamaliel Foundation, a faith-based organization with regional affiliates around the United States and 350+ member organizations. For details go to http://www.transportationequity.org.

Additional background is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Equity_Network.

A particular  concern of this program is in providing improved conditions of transport to work, school, health and social services, above all for minority groups, poorer people and the unemployed.

Most of those being interviewed are very angry with their government, and not optimistic that their call will be heard.

# # #

This video is one of a series that appear in the http://www.youtube.com/user/transportationequity YouTube site of the Transportation Equity Network – TEN – a project of the Gamaliel Foundation, a faith-based organization with regional affiliates around the United States and 350+ member organizations. For details go to http://www.transportationequity.org.

Additional background is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Equity_Network.

A particular  concern of this program is in providing improved conditions of transport to work, school, health and social services, above all for minority groups, poorer people and the unemployed.

Most of those being interviewed are very angry with their government, and not optimistic that their call will be heard.

# # #

This video is one of a series that appear in the http://www.youtube.com/user/transportationequity YouTube site of the Transportation Equity Network – TEN – a project of the Gamaliel Foundation, a faith-based organization with regional affiliates around the United States and 350+ member organizations. For details go to http://www.transportationequity.org.

Additional background is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Equity_Network.

A particular  concern of this program is in providing improved conditions of transport to work, school, health and social services, above all for minority groups, poorer people and the unemployed.

Most of those being interviewed are very angry with their government, and not optimistic that their call will be heard.

# # #