Good day my good friend.

What is it with local council’s getting caught out in dealing with trees? Seems like Plymouth has fallen for the trick of doing something / anything to something that is treasured. At this stage, I think shooting Bambi would probably be more popular than touching trees. Do so at your own risk.

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

James

Maintaining a good thing

In many circumstances that is transport planners find ourselves in, we come from a position of fighting from behind. Seeking to reduce emissions when they are increasing. Seeking modal shift in a context when cars are dominant. Whilst we may take lessons from places like Copenhagen, these are the exception and not the rule. So, how do we look to maintain a good thing?

This Cities article explores this idea in the context of walking in African cities. Whilst far from an ideal environment, walking is popular in many cities. But this shows the challenges with maintaining this position when a good thing is taken for granted. Ensuring that policies maintain the status quo, having the correct knowledge to affect change, and redefining what is a successful mobility system is necessary in such an environment. So when you have a good thing, you find out that the problems are just different.

Planners are our pals

Having spent the last 3 weeks preparing 3 planning responses and a planning appeal written submission, the humble land use planner is not exactly my best friends at the moment. But the reality is they should be our BFFs. Their work plans future development patterns in terms of location and quantum. So when they say anything about future development, we should listen.

The experience of this in Norway is just a case in point. There, planners can act as a mediator between different stakeholders to enable the best type of developments to take place. But this went beyond the practical and technical, and went into discussions about the types of places we want to see. See? Good eggs in all!

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.

• Does London’s strong jobs growth mean we shouldn’t worry about it’s flat lining productivity? (Centre for Cities)

• The Time to Prevent Shortfalls in Critical Materials Is Now (RAND)

• Revealed: The potential coastal sites for Cornwall’s new desalination plants (New Civil Engineer)

• Can drought insurance reduce Ethiopian pastoralists’ exposure to conflict? (Economics That Really Matters)

• Apocalyptic Pseudoarchaeology (Skeptical Inquirer)

Something interesting

This is a defence of brutalist architecture (in this case in Sheffield). And I too like it.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Bill Gates has published some very interesting thoughts on AI. Whether you agree with him or not, they are certainly worthy of consideration.

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