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Upcoming SMART Events (SAVE THE DATE!) |
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SMART news |
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About SMART |
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Dear Friend of SMART:Welcome to Issue #6 of SMART’s e-NEWS briefs. Our big focus for this issue is our upcoming panel and meeting, but we’ll also catch you up on some of the latest SMART news. To learn more about SMART’s mission and activities and how to get involved, please go to ABOUT SMART. And we’d like to hear from you. Please send your comments, questions, related research, favorite innovations, case studies, and collaboration ideas to Susan Zielinski, Managing Director of SMART at susanz@umich.edu. For past issues of SMART e-NEWS, go to:
Issue 1
Case study briefsNo case study briefs this issue. We’re saving up for the panel and the workshop!
SMART newsSMART’s new and improved website – visit http://um-smart.orgSMART has revamped its web presence with a new look and new content, in time for the New Mobility Panel and meeting. Many thanks to Katya Seligman, Krista Gullo, and Raye Holden for invaluable development work, and to SMART members for conceptual and editing contributions. Special thanks to web designer Deborah Gibson for the elegant new look and architecture. Though it’s just a beginning – we have hopes to populate it with more content and more interactivity over time. But for now please have a visit and let us know what you think: http://um-smart.org. If you’re interested in helping out with any aspect of the website, please contact Susan Zielinski at susanz@isr.umich.edu. SMART eventsNew Mobility Means Business: A Panel on Emerging Markets in Sustainable Urban Transportation
Wednesday June 11, 2008, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Rackham School of Graduate Studies
Hosted by SMART / CARSS, University of Michigan
With thanks to our generous Sponsors: E-News readers / SMART Learning Community: Please circulate this posting to any relevant email lists. We want to make sure to get the word out far and wide to a growing SMART community.
Welcome: Mary Sue Coleman, President of the University of Michigan Background: By 2020 over two thirds of the planet will be living in city regions. This has profound implications for how we think about and implement transportation in a world of accelerating globalization, congestion, climate change, demographic shifts (including aging populations), and economic disparity. The good news is that innovation is flourishing around the world. It is evolving beyond the quest for silver bullet solutions and technical fixes towards more multi-faceted, connected, customized, practical, affordable, and systems-based solutions, opening up entirely new solution spaces and related business and employment opportunities. “New Mobility Means Business” will take a journey into the near and not so near future, profiling how new services, products, transport modes, energy sources, technologies, and designs are converging to provide urban transportation portfolios that work for people, the planet, and the economy. The panel is part of a two-day workshop hosted by SMART / CARSS at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It will bring together scholars, business leaders, entrepreneurs, transportation professionals, and public officials from around the world to share knowledge and experience, to support collaborative research, and to build a business and innovation network with the aim of accelerating sustainable urban transportation implementation in cities around the world.
New Mobility: The Emerging Transportation Economy – “New Mobility: The Emerging Transportation Economy” is a small international meeting bringing researchers together with business leaders, entrepreneurs, practitioners and policy-makers to: • share conceptual frameworks and foundations related to New Mobility and the emerging New Mobility economy. • share new knowledge and experience in piloting and implementing innovative, integrative ways to bring sustainable urban mobility and accessibility to urban regions around the world. • explore emerging markets, business innovation and employment opportunities, new private sector roles, and other economic factors related to sustainable transportation in the context of accelerating urbanization, globalization, climate change, demographic shifts (including aging populations), and economic disparity. • formalize a collaborative research network to study and support New Mobility implementation. • establish a collaborative industry network (a collaboratory, or “link tank”) to support and accelerate private sector innovation and business development related to New Mobility. The meeting aims to build on the invaluable wisdom and experience of participants, of sustainable transportation work to date, and on SMART’s ongoing work to understand and support development of sustainable, systems-based solutions to mobility and accessibility in global urban regions. A limited number of spaces is being made available to members of SMART’s learning community and e-News readers. If you are interested in attending this working session, please contact Chris Krenz (krenzc@umich.edu) before June 2 and we will respond with a formal invitation and registration information as space allows. New Developments on the Accessibility IndexAs reported in previous e-News issues, SMART member Dr. Jonathan Levine has been working with a group of researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland to develop a comparative Accessibility Index for cities across the U.S. Much progress has been made, and support has been awarded to increase the number of cities from 12 to 30. In addition to support from the EPA, the UMICH Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute (GESI), and more recently the Federal Highway Administration, we have just been apprised of additional support from MCASTL at the University of Michigan. This will enable the group to do demographic analysis of accessibility with particular emphasis on assessing what kinds of places support high levels of accessibility for teenagers and old folks. M-CASTL is the Michigan Center for Advancing Safe Transportation Throughout the Lifespan (see http://www.umtri.umich.edu/content/MCASTLbrochureReadView.pdf) News of the study seems to be getting around and is garnering, so far, quite positive reviews. Jonathan Levine just recently attended an EPA conference where he presented a talk on the study and he has just gotten back from presenting in Rotterdam. Next on his schedule is Iceland, where he’ll present in conjunction with a University of Michigan studio project, and then a keynote at Transport Chicago (http://www.transportchicago.org/). To round out the tour, he will make a presentation back at home in Ann Arbor at the SMART meeting on June 12. For more information on the study, visit the research section of the new SMART website. Publishing HonoursNew Mobility Hubs and SMART Cited in NAE Study on Engineering’s Grand Challenges for the 21st Century The National Academy of Engineering has identified 14 grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century of which “Restore and Improve Urban Infrastructure” is one. Here is an excerpt: … How can you improve transportation systems? Other major infrastructure issues involve transportation. Streets and highways will remain critical transportation conduits, so their maintenance and improvement will remain an important challenge. But the greater challenge will be engineering integrated transportation systems, making individual vehicle travel, mass transit, bicycling, and walking all as easy and efficient as possible. An increasingly important question is the need to provide better access to transportation for the elderly and disabled. Cities around the world have begun developing integrated approaches, by establishing transportation hubs, for instance, where various transportation elements — rail, bus, taxi, walking and bicycle paths, parking lots — all conveniently meet. In Hong Kong, several transportation services are linked in a system that allows a single smart card to be used to pay for all the services, including gas and parking.” … References American Society of Civil Engineers. 2005. Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=203 Bill Wenk. 2007. Green Infrastructure BMPs for Treating Urban Storm Runoff: Multiple-Benefit Approaches,” Water World (July 2007). Zielinski, S. 2006. New Mobility: The Next Generation of Sustainable Urban Transportation,” The Bridge 36 (Winter 2006), pp. 33-38.
For more information on the Grand Challenges, visit: SMART Submission Prompts Invitation to Present in Chennai, India SMART recently collaborated to submit an article to the MIT Hidden Successes Competition http://web.mit.edu/hidden-successes/. While the article did not win the grand prize, it received honourable mention in the form of an invitation to present the findings to business leaders in Chennai. Authors include: Ashwin Mahesh (Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore), Susan Zielinski (University of Michigan SMART/ CARSS), Moira Zellner (University of Illinois at Chicago), M.N. Reddi (Bangalore Traffic Police, Deepak Mehrotra (Mobility Business, Bharti Airtel). December 2007. Watch future e-News issues for a link to the final article on SMART’s website. SMART project updatesIn partnership and with support from the Ford Motor Company and a growing partnership representing business, government, and NGO’s, SMART is making great progress on its projects in India, South Africa, and now in selected US cities. Hub Network pilots are underway in Chennai, Bangalore, and Cape Town, and new projects are in sight. For more information on SMART projects, visit the projects section of the new SMART website. Seeking an HTML savvy volunteerWe are working on a web-based support to share and disseminate sustainable transportation innovation amongst our SMART Learning Community (and beyond). If you are interested in helping out with this project and are familiar with HTML, please contact Sue Zielinski susanz@isr.umich.edu as soon as possible! SMART at LargeSMART continues to grow its Learning Community with thanks to the National Science Foundation HSD program. One of SMART’s major recent Learning Community activities is the New Mobility Panel and meeting. For more information on the SMART Learning Community, and how to get involved, visit the SMART website.
About SMARTSMART (Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transformation) is an inter-disciplinary project of CARSS (Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society *) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It focuses on sustainable transportation and accessibility in city regions of the world. This is both timely and relevant as the global challenge of urban mobility becomes rapidly more vexing and complex. The accelerating pace of urbanization, population growth, globalization, and demographic shifts is leading increasingly to transportation systems that threaten climate, environment, biodiversity, energy security, social equity, productivity, and urban competitiveness. Yet the vital role of mobility and accessibility to meeting our daily personal and business needs cannot be denied. SMART takes a unique systems approach to understanding and transforming the future of urban mobility and accessibility. Moving beyond the technical fix alone, it "connects the dots," bringing together the various disciplines and sectors, the players, the theoretical approaches and the practical applications required to tackle urban transportation’s growing complexity, sophistication, impacts, and opportunities. Through collaborative, trans-disciplinary, multi-sectoral research, through on-the ground projects, and through academic programs, SMART concentrates in four main research and action areas: • Systems-based analysis and solution-building • Accessibility-based planning and policy making • Sustainability – environmental, social, and economic • New Mobility markets – identifying and developing new markets and business models for integrated urban transportation SMART’s innovative, integrative, applied approach carves a unique niche for whole systems solution-building that works to address the mobility and accessibility challenges of the 21st century. SMART brings together the efforts of a wide range of academic and industrial partners: the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning (TCAUP), the Ross School of Business, the School of Natural Resources & Environment (SNRE), the Institute for Social Research (ISR), the department of Applied Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering (and Wu Manufacturing Research Center), the Ford School of Public Policy, the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP), the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), the school of Literature Science & the Arts (LS & A), and the Ford Motor Company, and others. * CARSS was established in January, 2003 to extend and strengthen the intellectual and methodological foundations of social and behavioral science, and the degree to which that science is applied to addressing society’s most pressing problems and abiding dilemmas (http://www.isr.umich.edu/carss/).
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