Some may argue this, be that as it may, but if you ask World Streets for our advice for a great place to go to start your research into and understanding of carsharing from its semiformal origins in the years immediately after the second world war up to today, we would say go right to the international bibliography which has been organized by our Canadian friends and outstanding carshare innovators Communauto.
- - > Click here to find your way.
From the beginning in the late eighties the New Mobility Agenda was conceived as a sharing, communications and didactic tool zeroing in on our chosen topic from a number of angles, and over the last five years World Streets has continued in this tradition. The following working paper comes from the Sustran archives, and dates back to the opening days of 2007. Even today years later it still is useful if for nothing else as a checklist and reminder of what one concerned citizen felt was worth knowing about as we make important policy decisions in our sector.
World Streets is more than a collaborative blog with a very specific focus; it also offers an extensive site and collection of working materials, references and tools in support of our collective push to more sustainable cities. At this point several thousand articles, tools, images, and other media are assembled in the family of World Streets sustainability toolkit.
But if it is to be useful as an open library and toolset, we need to be able to offer ways to sort through all this digital chaos, so that you can have a chance to find the kind of information or support you are looking for. Fortunately, in combination with WordPress and Google we are able to offer you a collection of useful search tools, as follows:
Why consider joining one or more of these focus groups on Facebook? Well, because for better of worse social media are here to stay, and warts and all Facebook definitely has its uses -- as we are showing with these fora. So put aside your reservations and at least check in and have a look for yourself. (And if you don't want to sign in as an identifiable human being, this is no problem. Sign in as your dog (even if you don't have one) and no one will be the wiser for it.)
Information + Choice + Feedback:
The basic idea is familiar: i.e., putting that smart phone in our pocket to work to help us calibrate and understand a range of inter-connected variables related to our mobility choices. An app to handle not one but two sets of related challenges: personal and environmental.
These slipped in over the transom in the last days, and while some of you will be well on top of all three let me take the risk and share them with those who may not have spotted them for your weekend reading, listening and musing pleasure .
What are, say, the five questions concerning transport and equity (and Helsinki) that you would like to have me ask in your behalf in Helsinki starting tomorrow in our first Stakeholder/Peer Group Dialogues? Maybe easiest if you might give me your list via eric.britton@ecoplan.org
This collaborative project takes the form of an "open conversation" looking into 
the pros and cons, the possibilities, barriers and perhaps eventual impossibilities, of creating an equity-based transportation system at the level of a city and its surrounding region. This first pioneering project, in what 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 taking place over the period mid-February through mid-April 2912. (You will find further working papers and supporting media sources in the second half of this introduction.)
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.
This open project from EPOMM -- the European Platform on Mobility Management -- is an absolutely brilliant idea. It does not require much explanation to get started; you can be off and going if you simply to click here and dig into their Google map. That said, a few words of introduction may not be altogether without their use to help you take full advantage of their good work.
An iPad is not a PC, for a number of reasons. Always on, always near, always 
open, it provides the user with an entirely different and far more personal 21st century interface with the Internet and its extensions. So for this reason we decided to give a bit of attention to seeing how it might be useful to retrofit World Streets so that it provides a friendlier and more creative source for those deciding to come in via iPad or similar tablet technology. We shall look into this more analytically in the coming weeks; however for this weekend day let us simply invite you to point your iPad to us and tell us what you think.
When we post an article in World Streets, as we do on most weekday mornings, we are always extremely careful about our selection of topic and the manner in which 
we present it for our busy readers. But once the day's feature has its hours of front page glory and takes its place in our ever-expanding database, which at this point consists of more than a thousand original pieces by more than a hundred no less original collaborators worldwide, it often comes as a surprise to us which postings turn out to get most attention from our readers. Which article is going to have several thousands of readers, and which just a trickle? Fortunately, life in the twenty-first century being what it is, we are able to track readership and are now able to share with you this listing of the "top twenty" articles consulted here over 2011. To me this listing is nothing if not surprising, but let me get out of the way here so you can go at it yourself.
As they put it in Economics 101 what you find here under this double-barrelled name functions both as a flow and as a stock. The "flow" component is basically the articles that appear here each week day on average, plus the abundant collection of related social media and discussion fora which variously stream in to and out of the flow.
The "stock" is a considerable base of resources which have been collected here through the extensive international work of the New Mobility Agenda in our assigned field over more than a decade. In the present website you will see them listed for the most part in your left-hand column, and since they are both extensive and useful it seems like a useful idea to explain it briefly. Let's take it from the top.
The overflowing inbox this morning brought a reminder of a tool to which in this age of info-overload we had not given much thought of late - the expanded and honed TRID database. This is not just a good database and handy resource -- it is an EXCELLENT tool for planners, policy makers, academics, and quite possibly you. If you are not already using it, at the very least check out the quick presentation here. We shall shortly publish a more complete critical introduction to this excellent transportation research resource. In the meantime, here is a quick intro and key to putting it to work.
These ‘new’ tools are amazing and in this case, were produced very quickly. However as with most innovations (?), the consequences are often more interesting. What has happened of course is that it has become obvious that despite the state and local government knowing the risk of flood in these flooded areas is very high (in geological terms, just look at the landscape), the fact the history only extends a little over 100 years of reliable evidence in western scientific terms, means that relying on the assessed risk is very unreliable.
Going into our third year of publication, World Streets thus far offers to our readers close to one thousand easily retrievable original articles and twice as many illustrative graphics on a broad range of tools, measures and topics that relate in some useful way to the up-hill push to sustainable transport policy and practice in and around cities, worldwide. But until now we have not published a single article on OpenStreetMap. This is a significant oversight of an important tool which we would now like to remedy.
We have often said that new mobility is a strategy which is ultimately made up of a very large number of often very small things that together make a difference. And so it is just in this spirit that we ha
ve decided to launch a new series in which you are invited to participate. It is the 2011 World Streets Bright Awards, celebrating "great small convivial ideas that are easy on the pocket and can be multiplied by thousands and make a difference". It's simple and works like this.
In today from Gordon Price and Price Tags:
Gladys We sends along a link to a remarkable set of dynamic before-and-after shots of the floods in Brisbane posted by ABC News, Australia's broadcaster. These aerials were taken in flyovers on January 13 and January 14 - and then matched up exactly. When loaded, you can use your mouse to hover over each photo, and move the line back and forth to view the devastation caused by flooding.
… Click for full article from Price Tags and aerial maps from ABC News and Nearmap.com
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