Ceci pourrait deviner dans les mois à venir un support Internet utile pour un "dialogue public" plus vaste et plus innovateur en matière du transport, de l'environnement, et des nouvelles architectures d'innovation et d'action citoyenne pour le vingt-et-unième siècle.
Pour le moment, le seul objectif est d'offrir un petit outillage électronique à fin de faciliter un échange d'information et des idées sur le sujet de la voiture partagée et de son développement éventuel en France.
Est-ce que vous avez des idées, des rapports, des tuyaux qui peuvent être utiles pour les autres? Contactez le La Poste (postier@ecoplan.org) pour que nous puissions les transmettre sur le site pour tout le monde à consulter et utiliser. C'est un travail d'équipe. Exactement comme le transport nouveau!
Our first step under this new cooperative program will start be looking at two specific, less familiar non-traditional concepts that were originally identified in a presentation to the Minster de l'Environnement in Paris on 1 October under the title, "The Impenetrable Hexagon": (i) a strategic plan for organizing a national Car Free Day (but along rather more structured and ambitious lines than that eventually adopted two years later by the Ministry), and (ii) a proposal to examine collectively and eventually implement one or more pilot projects based on Car Sharing. (You will note that in addition to the materials and comments that are eventually accumulated under this French language program, there are parallel Web sites and programs, which can be directly accessed from the menu just to your left).
Both these concepts, together with another dozen "associative propositions to break the air pollution impasse in France" were set out in a document that was presented to the Ministry in 1997 under the title "Air Alerte", which can conveniently accessed in both French and English languages editions in this site. The Air Alerte proposal, which was eventually not taken up by the Ministry, suggested that aggressive use should be made of the Web and other similar electronics means for increasing the level of public participation and inputs in all stages of the planning, discussion and implementation processes. The present effort which opens with this Web site, will now attempt to put that same basic thinking to work, some three years later.
The purpose of this multi-level communications facility -- of which the present WWW site is but one component -- is to provide a means for developing and gaining support for innovative transportation concepts in France that use new technology and new organizational techniques in order to help us move toward more sustainable transportation systems and a more sustainable France more generally.
The world is in dire need of new ways of doing things, and, as is well known, one of the areas of human activity that has the greatest negative environmental impacts is precisely the transport sector. For this reason, new approaches which can help make our transport systems more sustainable, and thereby enhancing the life quality of those who use and are impacted by them, take on very great importance.
The thesis of this informal cooperative effort is a belief that "new electronics" can, if used with energy and ingenuity, help uncover concepts and ideas which otherwise risk to take more time than is absolutely necessary to take their place in our towns, cities and countryside and to make their full contribution to sustainability. It is not, the evidence firmly shows, that these better ways of doing things will not eventually make their way into our communities -- it is just that unless we are vigilant and energetic they will require a number of years to do so: years that are perhaps not necessary.
With this in view, the first area of innovation that will be taken up under this unfunded cooperative program will that of carsharing -- a concept which is beginning to show its potential in a number of countries but where, for various reasons, France has continued to lag. Moreover, one of the goals of the carsharing component of this Transport Nouveau effort will be to focus attention on the first trial programs that have recently gotten underway in France, and which in our view are worthy of more attention and thoughtful discussion and consideration.
It has often be said of France that the Hexagon is generally impenetrable to ideas that come from outside --even when they may be very good ideas. To the extent that this is true, there are probably several reasons that explain this state of affairs. One barrier is certainly language: as much as anything else because transportation for most places is an inherently local affair which is decided by the people who live and work there. Often their foreign language capabilities are such that reports and studies that may be available in other languages are not easy or convenient to access and fully understand. In addition, and somewhat ironically, the fact is that the level of transportation competence in France is in general quite high. Moreover, by dint of our institutions and traditions, most ideas tend to come from inside and not from abroad. Often this works out quite nicely. But not always.
With this in view, one of the objectives of this Web site and its other communications aids is to provide a convenient means to inform others about the more interesting things that are presently being done in France to move toward more sustainable transport. In this way, these technologies give us a means for more and better "cross-learning" with colleagues in other countries and continents.
This World Wide Web site is supported by the following sub-systems and tools which will in due course be fully explained here:
We are hopeful that by using these channels of communications to bring in more individuals, groups and points of view into the discussions and development process, that both the number and the quality of the new systems and innovations will be improved, and that the resulting recommendations and accomplishments will be viewed by all not as rigid definitive solutions, but as steps in the right direction, which much themselves be continuously monitored, evaluated and fine tuned in order to attain their full sustainability potential .
(The initital materials in support of this site are, for several resons, being drafted in English and as such are being shared only with a group of close collaborators who have indicated that this is acceptable as a private first step. That said, we are going to need help in translating these basic framing pages, as well as in improving them. Are you willing to help us with this? Please let us know. )
Un début modeste
Project ContextPour le moment et jusqu'à tel temps qu'une version française adéquate est disponible, une traduction automatique crue peut être eu en cliquant ICI, ou ou bien vous pouvez produire une traduction en cliquant le bouton "Traduction" à votre gauche et en plaçant dans la boîte qui paraît l'URL de cette page. Vous êtes prié d'être très indulgent. Merci.
This World Wide Web site has been developed in an attempt to encourage and support an unofficial, far-reaching, continuing brainstorming effort in the form of an open public forum for identifying, discussion, and eventually, one would hope, supporting and implementing a wide range of new transportation concepts and approaches that can help us to build a more sustainable transportation system in France. The basic idea behind this enterprise is the belief that there are in France many smart, energetic and responsible people and groups who have good ideas and resources, and that they need to be given a chance to enter into the policy debate and implementation process at the level of the neighborhood, the city, the region and the country as a whole. It presumes that as yet there are not enough good mechanisms for getting this job done, so that this one effort may serve s a small step in the right direction.
Sustainable Transportation & the New Electronics
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Mise à jour le 20 juin 1999
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