"On the whole, you find wealth more in use than in ownership."
- Aristotle. ca. 350 BC
This International Conference, the first of its kind, is bringing together leading thinkers and sharing transport practitioners from around Taiwan, Asia and the world, to examine the concept of shared transport (as opposed to individual ownership) from a multi-disciplinary perspective, with a strong international and Chinese-speaking contingent.
The concept of shared transport is at once old and new, formal and informal, but above all one that is growing very fast. Something important is clearly going on, and the Kaohsiung event will look at this carefully, in the hope of providing a broader strategic base for advancing not just the individual shared modes (e.g., car-share, bike-share, street-share, taxi-share, etc.), but of combining them to advance the sustainable transport agenda of our cities more broadly.
Are we at a turning point? Is sharing already starting to be a more broadly used and relevant social/economic pattern? Is there an over-arching concept which we can identify and put to work for people and the planet? And what do you need to look at and do to make your specific sharing project work?
These are some of the issues that we shall be examining with prominent invited guests from the fields of economics, politics, psychology, who will join transportation experts to discuss these trends.
Hosted in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's energetic second city, the event will take place during car free day celebrations, which conference guests will be encouraged to join.
The event will include presentations on leading projects related to transport sharing taking place globally.
Background: Sharing in the 21st century - Will it shape our cities?
After many decades of a single dominant city-shaping transportation pattern - i.e., for those who could afford it: owning and driving our own cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles, getting into taxis by ourselves, riding in streets that are designed for cars and not much else -- there is considerable evidence accumulating that we have already entered into a world of new mobility practices that are changing the transportation landscape in many ways. It has to do with sharing, as opposed to outright ownership. But strange to say, this trend seems to have escaped the attention of the policymakers in many of the institutions directly concerned.
However transport sharing is an important trend, one that is already starting to reshape at least parts of some of our cities. It is a movement at the leading edge of our most successful (and wealthiest and livable) cities -- not just a watered down or second-rate transport option for the poor. With this in view, we are setting out to examine not just the qualities (and limitations) of individual shared mobility modes, but also to put this in the broader context of why people share. And why they do not. And in the process to stretch our minds to consider what is needed to move toward a new environment in which people often share rather than necessarily only doing things on their own when it comes to moving around in our cities worldwide.
As a contribution to international understanding in this fast emerging but largely unexplored field, the city of Kaohsiung is organizing, together with an international team from the Chinese Institute of Transport (CIT), a three-day international conference and brainstorming session to take place from 16 - 19 September 2010, in which a number of people working at the leading edge of these matters will come together, first to examine together the general concept of sharing in the 21st century. And then, once this broader frame and understanding has been established, go on to consider how sharing as an organizational principle is working out in each of the individual mobility modes which are rapidly gaining force in cities around the world.
Below is our initial brainstorming list of the shared transport modes and cross-cutting vectors to be considered by the conference. (This list has been discussed, prioritized, pruned and consolidated as useful for the conference. See below.)
Streetsharing 2 (streets used by others for other (non-transport) reasons as well.)
Public space sharing
Work place sharing (neighborhood telework centers; virtual offices; co-workplace; hoteling)
Sharing SVS (small vehicle systems: DRT, shuttles, community buses, etc.)
Cost sharing
Time sharing
Successful integration of public transport within a shared transport city? Including bus and rail
Team sharing
Knowledge-sharing (including this conference)
The conference materials pack will contain extensive background on and leads to further information on each of these topic areas. To be made available before the meeting convenes.
This map will give you an idea of the first wave of interest in the coming Kaohsiung events, based on recent visits to the site. The heavy interest coming from Europe and North America is to be expected, as well as a groundswell of interest in the Asia Pacific area.
It makes it clear to us that we will need to find ways to bring in participants and spread these ideas in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet republics. In fact in many of these countries there is already a considerable amount of shared transport going on. The problem is that it is for the most part being ignored by planners and policy makers, or worse, suppressed without first being fully understood. In sustainable transport, the first rule is to work better with what we have.
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