Author: lsong

On June 24, 2019, Diane Davis participated in a panel conversation about the cost of re-humanizing streets with political officials from Fortaleza, Minneapolis, and Bogotá at MOBILIZE Fortaleza.

On this panel, mayors and city officials from these cities discussed the challenges of building political will and gaining consensus, and the power of civic pride in changing minds.

Mayor Roberto Claudio explained how winning the STA gave Fortaleza encouragement for the work it was doing but also pushed the city to do more to prepare for the MOBILIZE Summit.

Lisa Bender, Minneapolis City Council President pointed out:

“When I received push back for “open streets,” I stuck with my beliefs even when they were deemed radical. I accompanied my bold vision with incremental change, which was the key. The open streets did not change people’s mode share but it did open their imaginations to see what their streets could be”

MOBILIZE is the annual sustainable transport summit of the Institute for Transportation and Development (ITDP), which brings together urban transport and development practitioners alongside world-class researchers to celebrate best practices and accelerate implementation of sustainable transport projects.

Over May 1 – 2, 2019, the TUT-POL team partnered with VREF, GIZ, and SLOCAT to host “Transforming Urban Transport and Governance in African Cities,” an international workshop for African transport leaders and practitioners affiliated with the Transforming Urban Mobility Initiative. Workshop participants included researchers, transport experts in policy and practice, and members of the donor community.

Over the two days, participants considered existing research on the political and governance dimensions of urban transport changes and successes on the continent.

This included preliminary findings drawn from exploratory research for TUT-POL’s pilot project Transforming Urban Transport in Sub-Saharan Africa (TUT-SSA), funded by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF), in collaboration with GIZ. This project focused on a small sample of cities in Sub-Saharan Africa to better understand urban transport interventions in the region, along with the institutions and actors responsible for their implementation. The research highlighted questions of governance, institutions and political economy, believed to play a critical albeit understudied role in advancing urban transport and shaping urban development more broadly.

Participants additionally undertook discussions about the opportunities and challenges for transformative urban transport and mobility in African cities, combining the perspectives and experiences of transport experts, researchers, and development practitioners. The result was a robust and invigorating discussion.

On February 12 and 13, 2019, TUT-POL Director Diane Davis spoke with London-based transport practitioners, elected officials, and urbanists about the role of political strategies and tactics in transforming urban transport.

She presented at “Political Strategies and Tactics for Transformative Urban Change,” a public lecture and debate at the London School of Economics, which contrasted experiences with urban tactics linked to social urbanism and transport policy cutting across a range of innovative cities including Medellin, Mexico City, Vienna and Stockholm. As attention in urban development is shifting from the ‘what’ of interventions and desired outcomes to the ‘how’ of facilitating urban change, this event explored contemporary experiences in urban policy and design tactics. It acknowledged that tactical questions such as appropriate timing, communicating key benefits, navigating stakeholders and making use of demonstration projects and experimentation have become a key area of urban leadership and governance innovation.

Professor Davis also participated in “Disruptive Technology and Future Challenges to Mobility and Street Life,” at London City Hall, which brought leading urban mobility experts to consider a series of pivotal policy questions for London, including:

• What is the fastest path for delivering on the Mayor’s goal of insuring 80% of trips on active, shared or public modes?

• How will technology develop equity and environmental sustainability in London?

• How will new mobility impact on other urban policy priorities in London?

On September 30-October 1, 2018, TUT-POL hosted a book launch and an international symposium focused on Political Leadership and the Transformation of Transportation in Vienna, Austria.

The purpose was to share the findings drawn from a four-year research project funded by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations, in which the project focused on eight cities around the world and how they sought to advance sustainable transportation goals. Those cities include Paris, Stockholm, Vienna, Seoul, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Participants included the authors of the study, members of the external advisory board, and invitees from case cities as well as major political leaders, sustainability experts, and transport specialists.

The aim, in addition to celebrating the publication of the edited volume, “Transforming Urban Transport” (Oxford University Press, 2018), was to collectively discuss the most looming challenges in the field of transport with special attention paid to politics and leadership.

On April 17th, TUT-POL co-hosted the screening of “Rush Hour” by Luciana Kaplan at Harvard.

The feature documentary is about the odyssey involved in commuting to and from work in three large contemporary cities: Los Angeles, Istanbul and Mexico City. Rush Hour is an intimate approach to the personal stories of three commuters who spend hours of their lives going from home to work and back, reflection a common reality shared by billions of people. What is the impact of these lost hours on their relationships an their quality of life? What really direves them to make this journey every day? What does this say about our cities and our way of living them? This is not inherent of a specific area of the world, neither it has to do with gender or class, but rather it is a global issue that has to do with the way we have developed and conceived our largest cities.

Following the film screening, TUT-POL Project Director, Diane Davis moderated a panel including the film director, Luciana Kaplan, and the founder of Jetty and TUT-POL alumnus Onesimo Flores Dewey.

In 2013, cities across Brazil erupted in riots over something perhaps unexpected: bus fares. Sparked by a $0,20R hike in bus fare in São Paulo and instigated by previous demonstrations by the civil organization Movimento Passe Livre (often translated as the “Free Rider Movement”), paulistanos took to the streets and demanded changes to the transportation system (among other more nebulous concerns). An estimated 110,000 participants took part in demonstrations in São Paulo on June 20th, 2013.

In a perhaps surprising move, given Brazil’s political reputation in the rest of the world, São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad responded by stabilizing fares, adding 300km of segregated bus lanes, and improving transparency of public data. The conversation around transport sparked conversations around other public services, and became an anchoring point for numerous grassroots organizations wishing to further social change.

This report, which emerged as part of the preliminary research for the TUT case study cities, explores the connection between mobility and transportation. Based on interviews with academics and civil servants, as well as primary ethnographic research, it finds that the movement in Brazil in 2013-2014 was not just about a small fare increase; it was about accountability in local government and citizens’ right to access the city.

 

 

On March 19th, TUT-POL co-sponsored the debate, “Will Shared, Electric and Automated Vehicles Deteriorate or Ameliorate Pedestrian Qualities of Streets?”

The event was part of the debate series, “The Cities and Technology,” which  invites speakers at the nexus of city design and technology to discuss products, tools and technologies that are impacting cities.

Panelists for this event include: Seleta Reynolds, General Manager, Los Angeles Department of Transportation and President, National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), Robin Chase, Co-founder and former CEO, Zipcar and Founder and former CEO of Buzzcar, and Diane Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard GSD.

The debate was moderated by Andres Sevtsuk, Assistant Professor of Planning and Director of City Form Lab.

On March 19th, 2018, Claudio Sopranzetti presented his anthropological work on Bangkok motorcycle taxi drivers and their role in urban politics at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Sopranzetti is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford. He received his PhD in anthropology from Harvard University in 2013. He is the author of Owners of the Map: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility and Politics in Bangkok (2017, University of California Press) and Red Journeys: Inside the Thai Red Shirts (2012, University of Washington Press). He is currently working on Awakened, an anthropological graphic novel on Thai politics.

On March 10th, 2018, TUT-POL Senior Research Associate Lily Song spoke with the Creative Reaction Lab’s Community Design Apprentices about the role of politics in advancing equitable mobility and access in St. Louis, Missouri as part of the Spring 2018 program. “Mobility for All By All.”

Creative Reaction Lab was founded in response to the unrest in Ferguson, MO (August 2014) in the form of a 24-hour design challenge. From the first lab focused on racial inequality and police brutality, all five pitched projects were activated throughout the St. Louis region:  Cards Against Brutality, Connected for Justice, Look Beyond Your Fear Guerilla Art Warfare, Vibe Switch Campaign, and The Red Table Project. These projects ranged from public art efforts to educational programs.

“Mobility For All By All” is their latest 10 week program in which Black and Latinx local college and university students, known as Community Design Apprentices, co-design ideas and approaches to improving local transit with community residents of the Kingshighway and/or Fairground neighborhoods of St. Louis.

TUT-POL Senior Research Associate, Lily Song, participated in a panel at the Urban Environmental Justice Conference at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on February 24th, 2018.

Hosted by the Harvard Chan Environmental Justice Student Organization, Healthy Places GSD, and Harvard GSAS Action Coalition, with help from HKS Health Policy PIC, the conference aimed to promote collaborative work towards solving complicated environmental injustice issues by engaging different perspectives.

The event began with a keynote address given by Mustafa Ali, former Senior Advisor for Environmental Justice and Community Revitalization at the EPA and current Senior Vice President of Climate, Environmental Justice, and Community Revitalization for the Hip Hop Caucus.

As part of the morning session about public space and access in cities, Lily presented, “Equitable Mobility and Access: From Urban Sustainability to Environmental Justice.” Her presentation partly drew from the case of Vienna, Austria, where the city undertook integrative transport and land use planning that resulted in equitable access among the city’s residents of varying income groups to housing options well serviced by transit and other urban amenities.

On October 27, 2017,  TUT-POL Director Diane Davis led a panel discussion among design, planning, technology, and economic experts about the Future of Cities during Harvard’s Worldwide Week. 

Panelists included:

• Diane Davis, Chair, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design
• John Fernandez, Professor, MIT; Urban Metabolism Group, African Urban Metabolism Network
• Christian Irmisch, Principal, Siemens AG, Mobility Division
• Stefan Knupfer, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company; Leader, Sustainability Resource Productivity Practice
• Efosa Ojomo, Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation
• Harriet Tregoning, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Planning and Development, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

The discussion explored:

What will the city of the future look like? How will contemporary urbanization challenges establish the groundwork for the next generation of innovations? Who will spearhead the investments and institutional arrangements needed to address such issues as sprawl, climate change, socio-spatial inequality, and rapid technological change?

Drawing on experience from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the U.S., panelists shared their views on how best to address the fact that more than 70% of the world’s population is projected to be living in cities by the year 2050 (with close to 90% of the increase coming from Asia and Africa). Debate revolved around the impacts of intensified urban growth on the basic political, economic, and social arrangements that have come to define cities, as well as on the role of new technologies and infrastructures in modifying urban footprints and quality of life.

Read more about event here.

 

 

On September 27, 2017, the TUT-POL team presented in a seminar entitled, “Getting There: Transportation Vision to Transformative Reality,” hosted by Boston University’s Initiative on Cities.

Former Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Graham Wilson, a professor at Boston University, co-founded the Initiative on Cities four years ago in an attempt to bring together academics and government officials to talk about topics important to the city.

Katharine Lusk, the executive director of the Initiative on Cities, said the group wanted to learn more about how cities around the country are overhauling their transportation systems. She pointed to Go Boston 2030, an initiative that plans to make transportation improvements in equity, climate responsiveness and economic opportunity in Boston.

TUT-POL Senior Research Associate Lily Song presented project findings on the political strategies and tactics used to advance transportation change policies across TUT-POL case studies. She also interrogated the notion of “transforming” urban transport, examining ranging case outcomes (from one-off policy successes to institutionalization of sustainability mandates in transport and land use planning regimes) as well as potential gentrification and displacement effects of transportation infrastructure investments.