Innovation

Access without ownership: Mobility as a service

A transport engineer in Helsinki is pioneering the real-world implementation of on-demand mobility services.  [A 24-Year-Old Transport Engineer Is About To Free Her City From Car Ownership.]

Sonja Heikkilä wants to create a sustainable mobility service ecosystem where Helsinki citizens can configure mobility services from a wide range of providers – public, private and shared – via smartphone apps.  In the future, users may be able to purchase monthly mobility plans that are tailored to their activity patterns and needs,  much like current mobile phone voice + data plans.

Helsinki is demonstrating that you can have access without ownership.  The average automobile is stationary and parked for 95% of its existence – a tremendously inefficient use of a valuable mobility resource.  Ownership also leads to overuse and binge mobility.

Social media, location-based services (LBS) and smart cities can help facilitate transportation polycultures that are not only more efficient but more effective and sustainable.  We must use these technologies to cultivate mobility services and collaborative mobility rather than the fight the futile battle of easing congestion through expanding roads and highways.  It has never worked, and it never will.

 

Good Ideas Columbus

This afternoon is an event I have been anticipating for quite some time: the Good Ideas Columbus Happy Hour at Seventh Son Brewery.  Transit Columbus, a local, not-for-profit community-based planning organization is sponsoring this event: it is the culmination of a months-long process involving six design teams with six ideas for transforming transportation in Columbus.  Each team has a community leader (such as Mayor Michael Coleman), but consists of citizens who volunteered their time and energy to make Columbus more livable and sustainable.

Other Transit Columbus events have produced creative solutions to transportation problems in Columbus, such as the Design Your Transit event this past Autumn.  We should see some good, perhaps great, ideas tonight as well.  As a relatively recent transplant (re-plant?), I must say that I am very impressed with what I see in Columbus.  There is a great urban fabric to work with, a committed leadership, and great grass-roots energy.  People love the Cbus and believe in its future.

As their Facebook page says, “Trains, bikes, pedestrians, food and beer.”  How can you go wrong?  See you this afternoon at Seventh Son Brewery (1101 North 4th St).

Walkability – its not only good for your health and the environment

Dense,  walkable city neighborhoods – they’re not only  good for your health and the environment, they are also good for the economy!

Richard Florida in The Atlantic Cities discusses his new study for the Martin Prosperity Institute suggesting that walkable neighborhoods that have become the new hubs of America’s tech scene. [The Urban Shift in the U.S. Start-Up Economy, in One Chart]

Florida reports that several trends are behind this shift to cities by start-ups:

Firms want access to talent, and talented people like to cluster in dense urban areas with thick labor markets, abundant amenities and services, and a vibrant social life. Density is also much more efficient for young companies who want to rent cheap office space and offer employees access to the amenities like gyms, restaurants, and coffee shops that they’d have to provide for themselves on a suburban campus. And these companies can now thrive in smaller urban spaces, as much of tech is increasingly focused on software, apps, and social media, which do not require large campuses.

There are downsides  – witness the tension in increasingly unaffordable cities such as San Francisco.