As part of our participation in the EcoMobility World Congress in Changwon, South Korea over the next 4 days, sociecity will be putting out a series of short reports, interviews.
Saturday, October 22 (morning)
Many hundreds of delegates are here from all over the world are here this weekend, however there is a — maybe not so curious — lack of presence from the United States, where I am one of only 8 participants.
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Imagine: it’s 2050, and there are throngs of people too obese to walk, moving around the city in personal hover crafts. Statistically if we were to continue our current habits, this scene — reminiscent of the animated film Wall-E –gives us a view of the future that might not be too far off.
Bay Area Gets Blasted by Philippe Crist for Limited Public and Bike Transit (photo: P.M. Lydon | sociecity)
But if the group of global leaders, doers, and thinkers here at the EcoMobility World Conference in Changwon, South Korea have anything to do with it, our future will be a complete 180-degree about face from this. And based on the progress already made in cities such as Changwon, Bogota (Coloumbia), and Boulder (USA), it’s starting to look as if this may be the case.
This morning was bicycle-centric, and the first round of introductory speakers talked about implementations of city-wide bicycle sharing, comprehensive road-separated bicycle routes, and days where only bicycle and pedestrian traffic is allowed on city streets. They were not speaking in the future tense, either, these are programs currently happening in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
