Can anyone here explain this?

The Streets of Iran has been dormant since mid-summer, when it was first posted in order to see if we could create a thoughtful collaborative instrument for talking about transport in cities in Iran from a broad international perspective.  But even though it has not been fed with new information over this period, nonetheless a fairly steady parade of international visitors continue to drop in regularly, apparently to have a look. But a look at what? Who? Why?

Message from Kaohsiung

Einstein on your mind

In homage to Lee Schipper

Our long-time colleague and very dear friend Lee Shipper left us on Tuesday evening, warmly surrounded by family and loving friends. Since he meant so much to so many of us who have been involved in the uphill struggle for sustainability in all its forms and corners of our lives, I thought it would be appropriate to open up these pages over the next days, and possibly more than that, to a selection of pieces in which the author reflects on the ki … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

Tragedy of the Commons: The car as enclosure

Chris Bradshaw, Canadian planner and new mobility innovator, takes us on a quick peek into cars as "enclosures" of what should more rightly be the common domain in our cities. When we look at it this way, the concept of a "right to park" starts to look quite different. We are once again back to the concept of "worst practices" on the one hand, and on the other, our the understanding of space as public, private . . . or social. All of a sudden we … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

Car Crazy: Lee Schipper on the Perils of Asia’s Hyper-Motorization

Our old friend and long time colleague Lee Schipper is sitting in a hospital bed in Berkeley California today, and since your editor is stuck in Paris and can't visit him, we thought that while he gets his strength back we would  reach into our and others archives and publish a series of pieces to celebrate his deep knowledge of all that World Streets is about, his  excellent judgement and his world level communications skills. (And if you have s … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

Upcoming international events: Aug/Oct. 2011

This listing of coming international events through end-October is compiled by the GIZ Sustainable Urban Transport Project. Click here to go to their website for their latest newsletter: May – June 2011 30.08.2011 Washington D.C.,US: Safe & Sustainable Mobility for Older People Link: http://www.sutp.org/index.php?option=com_eventlist&Itemid=56&func=details&did=500&lang=en 11.09.2011 Durban, S.A.: Thredbo 12 Conference Link: ht … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

There are no women in the world who are shaping the sustainable transportation agenda? (Apparently)

I wonder if I am the only person in the world who gets upset at this: I am from time to time approached by groups and publications with in-progress lists identifying whom they see as the most influential people who are through their work and efforts shaping the sustainable transportation agenda, which they then ask me to comment, add to, etc. Now what is to me most striking about these lists is that on almost all occasions they invariably consist … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

On the road II: Drive Across America for Free

Look, it's summer and who knows where you are today.  But if at one point you happen to be there, and you want really to see and understand some important truths about the United States of America, there is nothing like forgetting about the plane and hitting the road. Stay off the Interstate and make your way across the country on local and state roads, stopping frequently in small towns along the way, not just to sleep and eat but to walk around … Read More

via Network Dispatches

Weekend leisure: The Bollywood Bicycle Boogie

Take a break. It's the weekend. Get your head out of that fat book and come with Navdeep Asija and me to the movies in India, the Bollywood Bicycle Boogie. The idea behind World Streets has from the beginning been to seek out and share universal lessons, from specific times and different places but which, with a bit of thought, can open up our eyes, ears and hearts to many things, including with a bit of luck to ourselves and our own limitations … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

Taming street-people: India’s grand civilizational project

“Ranchi is an amazing city. In my first 30 minutes there, two schoolchildren, one bike rider and a goat tried to kill themselves in front of my car.” Let’s hear what Karthik Rao-Cavale has to say about this in his blog India lives in her cities too! . A status message by a friend on Facebook has had me thinking for many weeks now. He wrote: Ranchi is an amazing city. In my first 30 minutes there, two schoolchildren, one bike rider and a goat tried to kill themselves in front of my car.”… Read More

via The Streets of India

Breathing the lovely morning air in Delhi traffic

GUEST POST.  "Anyone who has sat in traffic in an Indian city knows what it feels like to be blasted in the face by the exhaust of a neighboring vehicle.  Despite the potentially important health risks that may be involved with such encounters, relatively few studies have measured in-traffic air pollution in developing world cities, where the combination of congested traffic and high-emitting vehicle fleets make "in-your-face" exposures a feature … Read More

via The Streets of India

Volvo Sustainable Mobility award: Any bright ideas?

Annoucement: The Volvo Sustainable Mobility award supports all groups, organizations, institutes and individuals who are working towards creating ‘innovative solutions’ in the broad area of supporting sustainable transport in cities. The objective is to highlight the need to develop effective urban transport & mobility system to address the needs of rapidly growing cities. The last date for registering entries is August 30th 2011. The last da … Read More

via The Streets of India

“Worst Practices”. Los Angeles on the rocks

It’s a fine thing of course to know about “best practices” in our troubled sector, and there are quite a number of programs and sources in various corners of the world that are busy assembling these and making them available in various databases. That is excellent. But we decided that World Streets can make a useful contribution if we take all this from the other end — and launch a series of collaborative “worst practice” (or possibly just “bad … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

“Worst Practices”: Regulations that prohibit shared taxis anywhere on the planet

“Regulations that prohibit shared taxis are an example of worst practice.” – Ann Hackett In eleven short words Ann Hackett has put her finger on one of the most egregious “Worst Practices” in our field. And, as it happens, one that we know enough about to easily resolve. Quick reminder from Wikipedia: A share taxi is a mode of transport that falls between taxis and conventional buses. These informal vehicles for hire are found throughout the world … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

India Streets: We must be doing something right.

Here is something that is rather interesting about India Streets. While for various reasons there have been very little orignal content coming in from our Indian colleagues in the last months, the fact is that the journal is nonetheless quite heavily visited each day. And where do those readers come from? India Streets: We must be doing something right.  (Now all we have to do is do more and better of it.  That is where you get involved. And you … Read More

via The Streets of India

Move over climate change: air pollution is the new issue in town

The UK’s air quality and pollution has climbed back up the environmental agenda after years of inactivity. Here are some possible reasons why. (From today’s Guardian ) Click here for article in full – http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jul/13/air-pollution-uk-activism Editor’s note: About the UK certainly, but I think this piece has its place here and provides one more useful reminder that “climate”, as vitally important as it may be … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

Toward a new paradigm for transport in cities: Let’s see what Carlos Pardo has to say

The Stuttgart conference of Cities for Mobility this year represented an important step forward in the construction of a well-defined agenda for new mobility that up until the present time has been sadly lacking. But what we have managed to develop over the last two decades is a certain number of basic principles spanning many different areas and kinds of operational situations, but somehow until now we have failed to put them all together into a … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

Cities for Mobility World Congress 3-6 July 2011. “Urban Mobility and the Social Space Challenge”

For those of you  interested in the topics under discussion in this year's  Fifth Annual  Cities for Mobility Congress  that just concluded in  Stuttgart, World Streets is pleased to offer a selection of the working papers and discussions which we think will be of most interest to our readers. The theme this year was "urban mobility and social space", an angle, a way of viewing  the sector which we believe opens up s … Read More

via World Streets: A New Mobility Agenda

Best transport research database we have ever seen. (via World Streets: The New Mobility Agenda)

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 co … Read More

via World Streets: The New Mobility Agenda

Going down? Newman and Kenworthy on Peak Car Use

This is an important article. It  appears simultaneously in the Summer of 2011 edition of our sister publication, the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice. With a view to ensuring its broadest international readership we are posting it here with pleasure, and with permission of the authors. We do this with particular interest on the grounds that their central thesis — that is, our faster than one might have expected evolving attitudes toward car ownership and use — is one that is central to the preoccupations of World Streets and all our associated programs. Continue reading on World Streets ->

SOI: The Official Launch!

Today is the first official day here at the Streets of Iran! We now have a framework to go on with and we got some ideas for our next steps. Our top priority at the moment is to run the website in Persian alongside English. Our goal is to bring in Persian translation of the articles little by little and hopefully in 6-8 months we will have the website fully operational in both languages. This will of course happen faster if we get more help from Persian speakers both inside and outside of Iran.