Note: This page is in process and is to be updated and the process advances and new groups and agencies join in.

Key Groups in Toronto and beyond

Toronto in a city with a long tradition not only of virtually all of the traffic and pollution problems that haunt virtually every large city in North America, but also and most fortunately an exceptionally strong tradition of citizen concern and local action programs in a wide variety of areas. New Mobility Week is building on this exceptionally broad base, and indeed one of its most important goals is to prove a broader context and increased visibility within which these citizens and groups can make even greater contributions to the many problem-solving actions and measures than now need to be engaged.

In the inner menu to your left, you will find working links to a number of websites that between them start to identify much of this rich institutional and activist terrain. There is no doubt that these people and groups are critical components of the solution process that New Mobility Week 2004 is attempting to set in motion.

Note: This list is very much in process. We count on you to help us complete it. We all thank you in advance for taking the trouble to do this.

postmaster@ecoplan.org

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Citizen participation (That means you!)

This project is based on considerable more than the usual "citizen participation", with its often more passive and a bit late-in-the-process overtones. We see it in fact as an active partnership involving no less than four major groups of players:

1. The public sector, as traditionally defined
2. The private sector, again as traditionally defined
3. The volunteer or community sector, but this time thrust into (or at least invited to take) a far more active role not only in asking questions and shaping the debate around the issues, the trade-offs and the solution process, but this time around to get actively involved in the reconfiguration of the mobility system of the city and its region. Full partnership, as it were.
4. The individual concerned citizen -- in a word, you.

This last, direct citizen involvement, is something that is often mumbled for and sometimes even targeted, but experience has shown that it is not easy to obtain. In all too many cases in fact, truth to tell, administrators have little taste for this kind of wide open, active interaction (since in most of the defining core issues they have already decided what is it they want to do). As a sop they will at time offer public meeting in which presentations are made and discussion invited, a multiple choice questionnaire that is almost always based on a dicing of the issues and choices such that the most important underlying issues and choices are passed over in favor of expressions of views if (a) is perhaps better than (b). But none of this usually gets into the guts of the matter and the real choices.

This time around we are aiming to try hard to see if we can really excite and then factor in significant citizen views and preferences in a way that has the power of shaping many part of the process which we hope will next be engaged. To this end, we invite you to turn now to the Your Participation section which follows.

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Organizers and Contact Points

For further information, or better yet to pitch in and join us, contact:

Eric Britton, International Coordinator, New Mobility Agenda, Paris, France
T. +331 4326 1323, E. postmaster@ecoplan.org

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Last updated on 12 September 2004