The Briefs

This program consists of four main components available to subscribers:

The Briefs: Quarterly briefing papers prepared by expert international teams on selected low-cost high-impact New Mobility topics that have proven themselves on the street.
Support/Advisory Services: A process of information, interaction and implementation support for subscribers, which has its intention to work with you and support the Briefs one by one, to assist in their implementation in your town or city.
Accelerated Learning Sessions: Each Brief is being supported by an accelerated learning session/conference with special conditions for participation available to subscribers.
Supporting Technical Volumes: Extensive supporting documentation, background, diverse commentary, critical observations and substantial reference volumes in support of each Brief.

The Briefs - in brief

The Briefs have been created to inform and support informed decisions on their selected mobility topic by mayors, city managers, Councils and local government, their staff and key policy makers, and groups and concerned citizens within their city who care about sustainability and integrity of their transportation system - the people who hold the key to bringing on sustainable transport in cities - with . . .

A set of useful tools and thinking exercises which can help those who care enough in your city to turn the very general concept of "sustainable transport" into specific on-street reality

Presented in a highly readable format that gets to the point quickly - each Brief can be scanned for relevance in a few concentrated minutes and read in entirety in one hour.

Supported in each case by extensive reference volumes which bring together in a single document key materials, references, leads and expert commentaries, including by members of respective Editorial Panels.

Compiled and verified by leading world-wide practitioners and thinkers in each selected specialty area. (The International Advisory Council and the Editorial Panels for each volume.)

Gives the local leaders and their staffs the information they need to make more informed decisions -- with the key support material and implementation guidelines needed to promote their own proposals.

Saves countless days and months of research efforts on topics that are in general poorly understood from a practical policy perspective.

Saves them and them constituents much money and time by helping avoid costly errors others have committed

Provides structured reinforcement and key reference information for environmental, user, and other groups in the city who are already engaged in the restructuring process.

Presents and supports a process of interaction, consensus building and implementation at the local level which makes these far more than just twenty more passive pages that will end up on someone's bookshelves.

And all for less than it costs to send one staff person to a one day conference out of town. Or one winter tire for one of your city buses.

Click here for more background on the Briefs.

Implementing the Briefs

The Briefs themselves, as print documents, are at best only a starting point. They are intended to introduce less known concepts and to facilitate informed decisions -- but once a city or team decides to take the recommendations further, a process of planning, consultation and implementation needs to be engaged. That is where the advisory and support services of the program are intended to come in to play.

Transportation arrangements in cities are, to coin a phrase, heavily systemic. This means that out there on the streets lots of things touch each other and interact in many complex ways. Nothing happens in isolation. Which of course means that when it is time to plan and implement change in any one part, the totality of the system also needs to be kept in focus.

This means that making a success of these measures, even specifically targeted individual measures, requires a carefully coordinated mix of time-phased 'carrots and sticks', all of which geared to making more efficient use of the existing transport infrastructure of the city. At the leading edge in Europe and elsewhere we have seen that many of these measures are well known and well executed. But not all of them.

It is the combination of packages of new measures, new ways of applying and coordinating known ones, and the creation of an overall and consistent coordinating framework with strong and extensive public commitment and corresponding technical competence that lies at the heart of this approach

Subscriber services/support

The following services are available to current subscribers only:

Update Services: The areas that the Briefs investigate and report on are all under active development, often in many places around the world. For this reason, subscri8bers will receive updated versions of the reports when significant changes or additions are made. (This is an on-going program and our working format facilitates these updates.)

Private New Mobility Advisory Forum: Subscribers are given access to this reserved forum which has been set up to serve as an announcement and message center, discussion area, place to ask questions of the group, private library and key links - and in short serve as the main group communications turntable for both subscribers and all the active contributors to the Briefs, including the various editorial panels and the International Advisory Council.

Supporting Technical Volumes: Extensive supporting documentation, background, diverse commentary, critical observations and substantial reference volumes in support of each Brief.

Hotline Support: Subscribers have access to the New Mobility Hotline support services to ask questions, discuss specific issues of special interest or to exchange ideas on implementation strategies in their city, specific projects or actions which they may be considering, and otherwise to seek counsel and whatever insights and leads that we can provide from here.

Plan/project reviews: As subscribers begin to organize a specific measure for local testing or application, they are invited to submit their draft plans for confidential review and commentary.

Private or Group Review Sessions: We can also organize group conferences or review sessions via either telephone tie-ins, Skype group sessions, or several kinds of videoconferencing links. In each case, we need to get together to set out an agenda identify the participants, and set a convenient time, and make sure that everyone has in hand all that they need to participate efficiently and easily. For first information on the various kinds of links possible, click the Contacts link here.

Accelerated Learning Sessions: Arrangements are under way for the organization of presentation/conferences for selected Briefs. The first of these is slated for 29-31 March, with sessions in support of the Carsharing Strategies for Cities, and the Road/Congestoin Charging Briefs. (Further information on these first sessions is available here. Likewise as plans for other sessions are finalized, this information will be posted here and shared with all subscribers.

More on the Briefs

Published quarterly, the Briefs are purpose-designed to inform, motivate and support mayors, aldermen, city managers, Councils, local government and decision makers on the lookout for new ideas and approaches to transform their cities. And just behind this first line, as a source of world-level information and leads for their planners, support staff, local consultants, transport and environment agencies and the main concerned public interests groups, stakeholders and agencies in their city.
- Each issue tackles a pattern-breaking New Mobility measure, project, program, or action of high current interest - one that, while not in the traditional transport repertory, is today working and showing solid results on the street. And in a city not altogether unlike yours.
- Each Brief focuses on a single near term policy, project, or action that can be identified, prepared and brought on line in your city -- and then demonstrate significant results within a period of months -- and certainly within a two-three year time horizon.
- The job of the Brief is to winnow down the thousands of publications, reports, and conflicting views on each topic to a readable policy guide that can be absorbed in a single hour.
- The main source of content and authority starts from the New Mobility Agenda and its international focus programs, extensions, and the several thousand individuals and groups around the world who regularly check in and contribute to the discussions and exchanges in the various fora and networks.
- Each Brief is overseen from beginning to end by a specialized Editorial Panel, brining together some of the leaders in the field, practitioners and expert observers representing a range of city types, countries and points of view - and thus ensuring the authority of the final report.
- A Brief does not argue for its targeted approach -- rather it develops a considered, independent expert view of the topic in an informed and entirely neutral way. It also, in a closing section entitled Better, Faster Cheaper, has a look at ways in which some of the critical objectives that the city may have that underlie the desire to give this particular approach a try, might otherwise be achieved.
Planning and implementation: The Brief is intended to be serve as a working tool for a local working group or Task Force representing different competences and portfolios (transport environment, local economy, etc.) and charged to scan these measure and report back succinctly to the mayor, Council or other local decision center to give their views on its eventual suitability for their city or community. (The subscription invites each city to print as many copies of each Brief as they need for these internal working purposes.)
- By working with the local Task Forces and reporting directly to city leaders and decision makers, we are endeavoring to supply at very low cost and high efficiency an alternate set of ideas, background materials and support, beyond those which are presently being put forward by most purely transport experts and hierarchies. The Briefs, in a phrase, expand your available toolset, and not least inviting al concerned to think in entirely different ways about both problems and solutions.
- A critical feature of each Brief is not only to clarify how a given policy, measure or tool can be organized for success in itself -- but also (and this is critical) to clarify what is needed from the city and the various concerned agencies to ensure full success, taking into account that none of these actions can be properly prepared and implemented in isolation. The system is, well, . . . systemic.
Volume contents: Each twenty-page Brief covers its topic succinctly reporting the leading practices and results to date world wide (including problems and solutions where they have been found), and features . . .
- The Mayor's Page (In two parts: a three minute video report to the mayor, supported by a parallel two-page written Executive Summary with recommendations and cautions)
- State-of-the-art overview: World-wide, in three concise pages
- Guest Editors/Moderators, with in-depth operational experience and usually a recognized leadership position in the field
- Critical commentary by an invited Op Ed contributor - who will be reporting mainly on the downside or potential difficulties or traps
- Concise bibliography identifying most important and useful print and web sources
- Contact information on leading sources of expertise, etc.
- Better, Faster, Cheaper (See above)
- Final click-to annex with synopsis of review commentaries from the Panel that point up the wealth and diversity of views and work on the topic from various parts of the world.
Reference Volumes: Each Brief is supported by a substantial reference volume of further background information, materials and expert commentaries and cautions, which are keyed to the main sections of the Brief for easy reference. In some cases these volumes may run to several hundred pages, which may seem like a lot but bear in mind that for each Brief there are thousands of references and points of view out there that must somehow be brought together for informed decision purposes.
Hot Line Support: The Briefs are supported by a professional Hot Line which provide an opportunity for the Task Forces, city leaders and their staffs to seek further counsel and background on each issue.
Accelerated Learning presentation/conferences are planned for each Brief, with the first two already scheduled for 29-31 March 2007, covering the Carshare Strategies for Cities and Bicycle Strategies Briefs. More detail will be available on these and others by end-October.
Vol. 1, No. 1, Winter 2008. Carsharing: Strategies for cities
- Work plan and supporting materials
- Editoiral panel for Vol. 1, No. 1
Subscription: €450.00/US $495.00 year.
Introductory offer to 31 October 2007: €350/$395 - includes copy of Contested Streets DVD and one year of Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice.

The Briefs: How we fit in

The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Our activities and competences here at the Agenda are quite different from those of most of our more established international colleagues and working partners, who in all cases have much broader ranges of competences, challenges and interests, and more often than not stressing longer term thinking and solutions. Their work is very important. What we bring to the table with the Agenda by contrast is a very specific short term program with a single focus: very sharp CO2 and traffic etc. reductions within a target period of two to three years or less. And that's it! That's all we do.

As you will see if you click to Leading Groups link you will see more than one hundred groups and programs thus far identified as actively engaged in this or at least related areas world wide: each in their own way, in their chosen own target area, with their own time focus, with their own tools and goals. And, if they are lucky, with resources to do the job. In which case it's a fair question to ask: why should we as an informal world citizen consortium with no assigned institutional mandate dare to think about adding with our own efforts to all that? Might it not be preferable for us just to get out of the way let all these other people simply get on with the business at hand? Hmm.

Certainly no one thing is unique about what you will find here, other perhaps than the fact that like Sir Isaiah's diligent hedgehog we know only one thing: the need for dramatic, effective, short-term, no-excuses action in our chosen target area of transport and sustainability in cities. Against this backdrop here are the defining factors that in our view combine to make the Briefs a bit different from the rest, and quite possibly a good partner for you and your colleagues.

Single focus: a) Traffic in cities, (b) congestion, CO2 or other indicators of systemic dysfunctionality, (c) very sharp targeted decreases (20%?) in publicly targeted indicators, and all of that (d) to be achieved in a very short period of time. That's it!
Geographic coverage: Program coverage is world wide (but can only work if it takes on one city at a time). This is above all a city project, a city decision, a city action. It does not depend on international treaties, other levels of government to foot the bill; it works within the city, its existing asset base, quality of leadership and degree of public support. In that city!
Open targeting: Once you get your working group and plans in order in your city, you then take up the challenge, do your homework and when you are fully ready set the targets that are going to do the job in your city. And then you either succeed or you fail. And all that firmly in the public eye. (No place to hide.)
Big House/Open Doors: Invites enormous diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, geographies and competences, reaching way beyond the 'normal' transport or even environment groups, enriches the perspectives. Both for the Kyoto program overall and at the level of each city.
Strong female leadership and participation. In large part motivated by dissatisfaction with traditional male dominance and the values that appear to go with it.
Car-like mobility: This may surprise, but quite frankly we do not see democratic pluralistic societies agreeing to accept large downgrading of their mobility arrangements. Which gives us our target: as good or better conditions of transit with the new modes than they are getting our of their cars under present arrangements. (More on this below.)
International peer support network: The personal engagements, combined with the very high quality and great variety of backgrounds of the distinguished individuals who have agreed to support the International Advisory Council. Members have both an international support role, and also are helping to create "clusters" to support discussions and initiatives in their own city.
Working partnerships: Organized from outset as an open international partnership project, working links are being set up (a) with international and national groups with broader sustainability agendas, and (b) at level of individual cities informal working groups are being created to lay the base for their local projects and programs.
Comfort Zones (and lack thereof): Many programs and almost all committees seek to achieve "Comfort Zones" in which all interests present of lurking in the background come to a general agreement as to priorities, what needs to be done, how to do it, etc. Kyoto Cities seeks quite the reverse: a large number of competing ideas and points of view, plenty of room for internal contradictions and conflicts, and a good and continuing dose of cognitive dissonance as a means for accommodating all this necessary variety.
Supporting context of intensive technology-based IP networking: The state of the art, practical, user friendly The Bridge holds the underlying key to brining the pieces of the puzzle together and thereby making the whole thing work.
Culture change: This project is above all about governance, democracy and citizenry in the 21st century. In its own way it proposes and tests a new model. Once one of these projects has been carried out and the results assessed, your city will never look again in quite the same way at their transport, environment or other problems of governance and quality of life. Bringing up the interesting question: what next?