e2 Transport

The whole series of e2 is well worth viewing. The series brings a wealth of information about real initiatives that are being developed and implemented world wide in order to make environmentally sensible decisions. The Transport episodes introduced me to new ideas that have real value in today's fragile world. I highly recommend any of the series to people who are looking to be informed about all aspects of how mankind affects the environment and what methods of sensible design, manufacturing and utilization are possible and are being carried out.

This documentary is a great overview of transportation and energy systems that we use today and hopefully tomorrow. It is a great educational tool.

The future is here, and we all need to be informed! This entire series is fascinating and well-done.

The e² series episode on the Paris Vélib system is extremely upbeat about the prospect of integrating bicycle traffic with cars and pedestrians. When the show first aired in 2008, the cheap bike rental system was less than two years old. Now Vélib is well-established, but there are still problems, which the show downplays or ignores.They say nothing about the vandalism that leaves many of the bikes destroyed or in need of extensive repair. They do feature a floating repair shop, but leave the impression that the repairs are mostly for routine maintenance. Today's New York Times Green Blog observed that it is not unusual to find every bike unusable at any given Vélib station.According to this e² episode, the worst thing is that people like to ride the bikes downhill, but few ride them back uphill, making it necessary to haul bikes uphill with a tractor so that the bikes are well-distributed throughout the city. Meanwhile the bicycle stations are turning into trendy meeting places for Parisians and tourists, according to the Paris officials interviewed.JC Decaux, an outdoor advertising company, underwrites the Vélib project in exchange for permission to scatter more than 1,600 billboards all over Paris. There are no interviews with Parisians who think that the ads are an eyesore.Still, finding new ways to make it easy and cheap to get from one place to another is important, as is replacing transport that makes the city unpleasant (belching buses, gridlocked city centers). Check out the London: The Price of Traffic episode for a more even-handed look at how a big city is tackling the traffic problem. Car traffic in central London has been reduced by charging a congestion fee. Pedestrians and bicyclists love the increased space the reduction in car congestion has made possible, but the interview with the cranky cab driver reveals that not everyone is a fan.

These are all really interesting projects and well worth hearing about. After four or five episodes, though, I found that I was listening to man after man after man after man. Nearly all middle-aged, middle-class. Nearly all white. All well-educated in similar ways. Nearly all brimming with biases about how people live and want to live. And while I recognize that this series was made several years ago, there's just no excuse for this sort of thing anymore.The NYC low-income housing project -- perhaps because of NYC's own processes, or because of Rose's -- got a good earful from prospective residents, and heard an entirely different set of concerns than the residents had...and promptly translated them into a professional middle-class sensibilty. Here's a lady who's terrified that her kid will die of an asthma attack, wants to know about air quality, so their solutions are...nope, not HVAC, duct cleaning, interior air quality, nearby highway air-intake filtration. Instead? An organic market on the ground floor, a gym and a health clinic.I was thinking afterwards about those residents, about how you live when you're poor and there are poor old people with no one most of the time, and poor families, mostly single-mother families. And I was thinking about The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, another housing doc, and how one of the residents remembered the sense of community and playing records so the whole hall could hear, opening up the windows for a dance party. I thought: these mothers need a courtyard, but close together, and not a skyscraper. They need to be able to wave to each other and pass things over window to window, shout to please come over and watch the kids for a minute. To have the kids playing down below so all the mothers can look out the window and see what's happening, not rooftop gardens in eco-sensitive planters. And they need this because they can't function without each other's help. They're poor, that's how it works. They can't afford to think only about their apartments and the gardening class schedule.The architects in this series aren't thinking about these things because it hasn't been their job to bring children up, and if they've ever been poor it hasn't been for many decades. They're thinking about what the other architects are thinking about. So it's a very interesting series, for sure. But it's also a very powerful argument for why every field needs strong diversity and a habit of looking around every gathering and saying, "who are we missing?"

I really enjoy learning how different cities are coping growth and how that growth is affecting the planet. This series is a few years old, 2008, but it still somewhat timely in 2013

PBS comes up with some pretty good shows but the series on Transport was brilliant. I wish students in efficiency, design and engineering all watch these as they grow in the process of embracing best practices and looking for new ones of their own.

A short video about the shared bike system in Paris, the Velib, encouraging Parisians to use them and public transit. I am doing the same thing lately, in Charleston, SC and in Charlotte, NC. I try to take public transit when I can, minimizing the use of the car. It opens another world for me as an artist, and involves me in a whole new community of fellow citizens. It is wise for earth. Watch this!