Imagine that instead of a COVID pandemic we had a fertility pandemic. Women lost their ability to conceive, or men became infertile. You can choose your own dystopia here. The result is the same. This generation of children is humanity’s last. How do you feel about that? Most feel immediately drained or even, devastated. Children, …
The connections between speed and safety risk are clear cut. Driving at speed increases the time and distance it takes a vehicle to slow down – increasing the risk of a collision. Driving at speed increases the force of impact and so the likelihood of injury. Driving at speed reduces the cone of vision of …
To put the real children – with their lived experiences and their playful ways of being in the world – at the front of discussions about road safety is going to take a move away from traditional ways of doing engineering. When we do the accounting of safety in ways other than counting in numbers, …
It happened again this week. A colleague expressing disbelief at the lack of discussion in transport planning in South Africa about social justice issues. “Isn’t is obvious,” they said, “that in a country like South Africa the needs of the person on foot must be put first?” I find myself, again, explaining how transport planning …
The only reason I am not completely intimidated by transport economists is because I have been inside the belly of the beast. My first job was as a transport modeller, the people who feed information to transport economists. Then I worked doing cost-benefit analyses, the bread and butter of a transport economist’s work. I tell …
We sat in a formal board-room table overlooking central Cape Town just before Christmas of 2012. We were a small, enthusiastic bunch of street geeks (some of whom went on to set up Open Streets Cape Town) listening intently as each took turns to answer the question: “so, what do you want?” I scribbled a …
Funders and corporates are accountable to shareholders and voters. Why should anyone, or any thing, offer funds for something which cannot be measured? Especially in a South African context where the needs are so many and the resources so limited? Into this mix…conversations about what is necessary in this country? Will “development”, either economic or …
“…everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted” Read More »
The models and visuals of the 2017 exhibition of the Foreshore were equally entrancing. They allowed the visitor to get a full sense of the scale and grandeur of the proposals. Visitors could move, as if in an airplane, through the air above the city and see the future visions below. Donna Haraway calls this …