There are a few videos in this post

Good day my good friend.

In a slight change of routine, I’m actually writing this on the morning on which I am sending it. Mainly because I spent most of yesterday, including the evening, writing project proposals and I lost track of time until it was 11pm. So today’s newsletter may be even less lucid than usual. To the news.

James

What is a place, anyway?

I love the term place-based approach. It’s one of those terms that conveys a deep and friendly meaning, and has a purity to it. It’s also completely meaningless and has been adapted so widely any meaning it did have has been lost. The latest example is of this being applied to ports in Australia. In a way, and I cannot believe this was said in a scientific journal, that allows ports to apply a bi-focal place-based strategic approach [that] forms the critical conduit for ports’ strategic involvement in regional development. Someone get them to organise a strategy workshop where they can run ideas up the flagpole.

In all seriousness now, the term has been used in everything from transport and land use planning to food security. As well as payments for ecosystem approaches, apparently. Can’t we just be a little less fast and loose with our terminology? Define it, keep it simple, and make it accessible. We don’t want any more Mobility-as-a-Service’s on our hands, do we?

Mythbusting, transport style

What caused the deaths of streetcars in America? It was the automotive companies, right? Buying up all the streetcar systems and running them into the ground so that their fancy automobiles. I mean, if Christopher Lloyd said it, then it must be true, right (see the video below)? Well, sorry Doc, but that’s wrong.

Or should I say its a bit more complicated than that. Having been prompted to look into this by a Reddit post, the real story is as much one of poor management, stupidly low fares, greedy owners, and traffic as it is about evil General Motors. Which actually makes the whole story of the demise much more interesting than shady deals behind closed doors. Maybe there are a few myths that we can debunk, because the truth is much more interesting?

Random things

These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope they do just that.

• The Surreal Round-Shaped Community Gardens Of Copenhagen (Wonderful Engineering)

• The hidden life of a lorry driver: long hours, fear of robberies – and living for the weekend (The Guardian)

• Open Everything (The Atlantic)

• The Anatomy of Technology Regulation (Project Syndicate)

• As Automakers Add Technology to Cars, Software Bugs Follow (The New York Times)

Something interesting

A silly video about a deadly transport problem containing a genius invention that solved it. Of course I was going to love it.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Check out the weirdly interesting visualisations on farm sizes across the world. Which has a pretty big impact on our food supply.