Thinking on Equity/Transport: Todd Litman, Canada

We are inviting comments and background information on this our central concept behind this project, i.e., what is this thing we call transportation equity all about? We are looking for a variety of views and perspectives on our topic and not some kind of warm and glass-eyed unanimity.   If we cannot handle contradictions and fuzziness, then we are not about to make headway with this one. This first note comes in from Todd Litman executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Victoria Canada.

Gauging the socio-economic impacts of future urban transport initiatives

As we set out on the first of the city programs organized in this pioneering Equity/Transport series, the Helsinki project that gets underway on 1 March, it  is useful to bear in mind that to fully understand the concept of equity as a major driver of policy in the sector requires that we move well beyond the more traditional techniques of investment and impact analysis such as cost-benefit analysis. The authors take direct aim at this issue when they state: “The classical cost-benefit analysis, then, needs to be replaced by a socio-economic impact assessment methodology (SEIA) to get a measure of expected benefits and costs to different groups.”  So without further ado let’s turn to see what the authors have to share with us on this important topic.

Message from Kaohsiung

Einstein on your mind

If Apple had invented the bicycle . . .

Whatever could anything as abstruse as innovation, intellectual property (IP), patent protection and wall-to-wall lawyers have to do with down to earth issues like equity and transportation? Or for that matter, bicycles? Let’s have a look at what the Dutch economist and journalist Mathijs Bouman has to tell us about why you can ride any old bike you care to today. (And why you might not be able to, tomorrow.) Moral of the story: Plenty of choice is the key to an equity-based transportation system.

The Invisible Cyclist: Transportation Justice

The transportation justice movement calls into question government subsidies of transportation forms that tend to benefit largely white and affluent urban and suburban commuters and advocates for better transit options and safer streets for poor people and people of color. This population of cyclists is largely uncounted, unrecognized, and unrepresented. Put simply, these are the invisible cyclists. In many cases, invisible cyclists are the constituents of transportation justice organizations, but only insofar as they are poor people of color. As cyclists, they remain invisible.

Equity/Transport: View from the slums of Nairobi

We present this here as one of a series of postings which are intended to serve as food for thought and broader background on our topic as lived and seen from different angles and environments around the world, as we move ahead on the key cooperative program in Helsinki.

Equity-based Educational Reform in Finland

In the Helsinki stage of our on-going Equity/Transport program and process, it is particularly important that we have and share a clear understanding of the manner in which the equity-base reform process has transformed Finland’s schools over the last decades from middling to world level (See OECD PISA results for verification). To this end we are gathering and presenting here a selection of reports and articles that help us in this respect. The following report was prepared by Mrs. Lorraine Frassinelli Ell in 2006, and while six years have intervened since she completed it, the paper still provides a strong synopsis and outsider view of the Finnish experience from someone working internationally in the field of educational measurement.

Equity-Based Transportation Planning, Policy and Practice: First Helsinki project announcement

This week we initiate work on the first stages of preparatory organization in
support of an “open conversation” looking into the pros and cons, the possibilities and eventual impossibilities,  of creating an equity-based transportation system at the level of a city and the surrounding region.  This first pioneering project, in which we hope will become a series of leading world city projects building on this first example, is being carried out under the leadership of  the Helsinki Department of City Planning and Transportation, and is running over the period mi-February through mid-April.

Progress report and work plan for 2012 – For comment and finalization

After years of struggling with what seemed each time like promising concepts to inspire and orient public policy and private practices – words such as sustainable, green , smart, healthy, active, low-carbon or what have you transport or mobility — we have peeked outside the box and been inspired by the upsetting events of Arab Spring, Occupy and behind them the paralyzing and oh so unsustainable influences of massive income differences, North and South, East and West, to see if we can come up with the key to a truly sustainable transport policy. Which brought us to the concept equity. (Not quite equality, mind you, but more on that as the project advances.)

Network Media. (Do we know what we are doing?)

If that’s a question, then the answer is a resounding . . . kind of. The truth is that we are not embarrassed to say that when it comes to the new network media we are entirely improvising. On the net today there are no straight lines: everything changes so fast that what may look pretty good at one point may suddenly become absolutely  vital to our operations — or, at the other end of the spectrum,  deceive, or worse yet even offer some dangers. It is, in a phrase, a real existential drama, but since we are trying to communicate on a world wide scale, we really have no  chance but to try to take all these bits and pieces in hand and do with them the best we can.  E pur si muove!

Weekend musing: Lewis Mumford on the city in 1963. (Le plus ça change)

This is not the first time anyone addressed these themes.  In the City in History, a classic text of urban design. Mumford urged in 1963 that technology achieves a balance with nature and hoped for a rediscovery of urban principles that emphasised humanity’s organic relationship to its environment. Forty-five years on, the film clips look incredibly old and the message delivered in a rather morbid and factious manner (to quote Jane Jacobs), with a slightly ‘Outer Limits’ or ‘Twilight Zone’ ambience. Yet some of the key ideas promoted by Mumford have increasing resonance with the sustainability and green agenda of the early 21st century. In the increasingly praxis orientated and commodified world of urban design, whether anyone is listening or not is another matter.