I really don’t like owning a car

Good day my good friend.

It’s been one of those “this is why I don’t like cars” couple of days. Needless to say that I’ve wasted two days, and am currently £500 down without the problem being fixed. To take my mind off things, here are the links curated for you.

James

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The idea that young people don’t drive anymore is an idea that needs to die, quickly

This was very much inspired by a Twitter thread by Dr Alexa Delbosc who points out a lazy assumption in how we see the future – that young people are not driving anymore. Its an assumption that must die if we are to make sound strategy, and quickly. A cursory glance at the evidence presented shows that its variable and nuanced at best.

For example, young adults in England have become less multi-modal over time. Places like Switzerland and the Netherlands have seen more young people getting driving licences over time, though the general trend across most countries is fewer having licences. Young people who use the internet are also more likely to have a driving licence than those who use the internet less. Always, always check your assumptions.

Are urban or rural areas more resilient to shock?

A few people from where I grew up in Devon will give an extremely robust answer to that. But this article in the Daily Yonder about delays in the US Postal Service got me to thinking: when there is disruption, is it better to be rural or urban? The seminal works on this question by Cutter et al put the key difference succintly:

Resilience in urban areas is primarily driven by economic capital, whereas community capital is the most important driver of disaster resilience in rural areas.

Additionally, in rural areas there is a clear demarkation in terms of resilience by access to the internet – simply if you can, then you reap the benefits significantly more than those without access. But there is suprisingly little technical research into the matter outside of general accessibility analysis. This looks like a field where qualitative research, and thus subjectivity, has tended to dominate policy making.

Why can’t people teleport?

It’s probably the one technology that would put most of you readers out of a job. So why have we not gone full Star Trek yet, and asked Scottie / Chief O’Brien1 to beam us up? This great article in Wired goes into detail into why it has not been done. In summary, notwithstanding the huge technical challenges in making it happen, even if we did pull it off (and that looks pretty much impossible) we would simply be creating copies of ourselves as opposed to true teleportation.

Physicist Asher Perez put it perfectly when asked if teleportation is possible: “No, not the body, just the soul.” Simply, what we have so far achieved is quantum teleportation of microscopic matter. We are a long way from teleporting onto a starship travelling at light speed, but a lot of theoretical work is being undertaken. Perhaps at the end of my career we could start to scenario plan teleporting cargo.

Random things

The usual random things from around the webs, just for you:

• Delhi goverment stops subsidy for electric cars, to focus on two-wheelers (Hindustan Times)

• ‘Limited’ funding for road projects in planning phase during first years of NDP (Irish Times)

• Still no finishing date for £19bn Crossrail (Transport Network)

• Informal urbanism in the state of uncertainty: forms of informality and urban health emergencies (Urban Design International)

• 12 photos of stunning weather events from the Royal Meteorological Society (Science Focus)

Interesting things

Not an embedded image today, but a link to a visual story in Reuters about how an American city is facing its history of segregation after pulling down a freeway. Its worth your time going through.

If you do nothing else today, do this

Chrisp Street Community Cycles in London are running a fundraiser so that they can keep providing free cycle training to vulnerable communities, as well as cycle equipment and storage. This sort of community-focussed initiative are the sorts of things we should be supporting to tackle issues of social exclusion, achieving net zero, and getting more people on bikes. You should back it. Every little donation helps.