From THE SECRETS OF THE WORLDS HAPPIEST CITIES. ... In 1969, a consortium of European industrial interests charged a young American economist, Eric Britton, with figuring out how people would move through cities in the future. Cities should strive to embrace complexity, not only in transportation systems but in human experience, says Britton, who is still working in that field and lives in Paris. He advises cities and corporations to abandon old mobility, a system rigidly organised entirely around one way of moving, and embrace new mobility, a future in which we would all be free to move in the greatest variety of ways. We all know old mobility, Britton said. Its you sitting in your car, stuck in traffic. Its you driving around for hours, searching for a parking spot. Old mobility is also the 55-year-old woman with a bad leg, waiting in the rain for a bus that she cant be certain will come. New mobility, on the other hand, is freedom distilled. Velib rental bicycles in Paris A row of Velib rental bicycles are parked at the rue de La Harpe in Paris. Dozens of cities have now dabbled in shared bike programmes, including London, Montreal, Melbourne and New York Photograph: Horacio Villalobos/EPA To demonstrate how radically urban systems can build freedom in motion, Britton led me down from his office, out on to Rue Joseph Bara. We paused by a row of sturdy-looking bicycles. Britton swept his wallet above a metallic post and pulled one free from its berth. Et voilà! Freedom! he said, grinning. Since the Paris bike scheme, Vélib, was introduced, it has utterly changed the face of mobility. This phenomenon seems to repeat wherever cities see a spike in cycling: the more people bike, the safer the streets become for cyclists, partly because drivers adopt more cautious habits when they expect cyclists on the road. There is safety in numbers. . . . By spending resources and designing cities in a way that values everyones experience, we can make cities that help us all get stronger, more resilient, more connected, more active and more free. We just have to decide who our cities are for. And we have to believe that they can change. theguardian/society/2013/nov/01/secrets-worlds-happiest-cities-commute-property-prices
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 17:17:36 +0000
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