Good day my good friend.

I am not doing this as a means of promoting the event, I swear. But I have seen some of the ideas that are going into the content of Mobility Camp this year. And my word, I am excited about it. There is still a tonne of work to do, but it is looking good.

If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.

You should also join a lot of like-minded people at Mobility Camp in Bristol in September. Tickets are on sale now.

James

We need smarter cities, not smart cities. But how to define smarter?

On the face of it, this article in the MIT Technology Review is one that is hard to disagree with. Like many articles, it says something obvious like we shouldn’t just focus on tech, and that we need to look at things holistically. But this is easy to write, and an easy critique to make. Coming up with solutions to define what is a smarter city and how to deliver it is far more complicated and messy.

Co-production using technology is often talked about, but is just one aspect. Framing it around social justice? Again, easy to do. Sustainability is a given as well. But it needs action to define what a smarter city is in a meaningful way. Defining what a smarter city isn’t is not enough. If we cannot define it, we cannot hope to understand whether or not we are achieving it. And if we don’t know what the end goal looks like, then we have no hope of achieving it. Do better.

There is a need to explore the mental health impacts of bike crashes

Can you remember the last time you were in a bike crash? I can. I was 15 years old at the time when I got clipped by a passing motorist and ended up under a parked car. I didn’t get on the bike again for 6 months despite only having minor injuries.

This great study explores the mental health implications of cycle crashes. Simply put, the mental health impacts are incredibly complex, far more so than we give credit for. For instance, non-crashed cyclists display far more mental distress compared to those who have crashed. This is a great (though flawed through self-selection bias) initial exploratory study.

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 that you enjoy them.

• Biden’s Campaign for “Digital Democracy” Is Really a Giveaway to Big Tech (Jacobin)

• Human cost of China’s zero-Covid policy measured in stress, anxiety (South China Morning Post)

• The end of globalization has been greatly exaggerated (Quartz)

• Working-Class Subway Stations Driving MTA’s Ridership Recovery (The City)

• A Guy Got Drunk Enough to Lose An Entire City’s Personal Data (Gizmodo)

Something interesting

If you have never been to the USA, you have no idea of the beauty of the TV commercial for the local car dealership. They are wonderful. Add to that John Oliver, and…just enjoy it.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Read this meta-analysis of the monitoring and evaluation of local major transport projects. Its an utter demolition job, showing quite how poor we are at monitoring and evaluating. We must, must, must do better.