Berlin is considering something pretty radical. A grass roots movement called Volksentscheid Berlin Autofrei, or the People’s Decision for Auto-Free Berlin, is trying to turn the entire core of the city into a car-free zone. (There would be some exceptions and so we should maybe call it primarily car free.)
The area in question is everything inside of the city's circular S-Bahn train line (pictured above), which would make it the largest car-free zone or mostly car-free zone in the world. It's larger than Manhattan and it's about the size of London's zones 1 and 2, to help give you a sense of the scale.
So far the group has collected about 50,000 supportive signatures and, according to Fast Company, the Senate of Berlin is set to make a decision on the proposal next month. I have no idea how much community and/or political momentum this actually has, but I love how bold of an idea this is.
Is it too bold?
Again, it is perhaps useful to flip the question and use Seth Godin's status-quo-bias-checker model when thinking about this. If the center of Berlin was already car free and a community group had just come forward with a plan to now allow vehicles, how do you think you'd feel? I could see that being contentious.
Do you think Berlin should do it?
Image: City of Berlin via Fast Company
So slime mold, which is a fungus-like single-celled organism, has a tendency to build highly optimized networks across its food sources. In other words, if you scattered a bunch of food on a surface and then dropped in some slime mold, it would naturally create an interconnected web of linked veins across this surface. And this web would be based on the shortest and most efficient paths of travel between the various food sources.
I am mentioning this odd factoid because ten years ago researchers in Tokyo used this naturally occurring phenomenon for the purposes of trying to improve transportation planning. What they did was map out greater Tokyo. They then placed oat flakes (i.e. food) in spots that correspond to the various cities and urban centers that surround the city. Alongside this, they blocked off the areas where transportation networks do not typically run, such as through mountains and into the water. They then dropped in some slime mold, wet the surface, and watched it grow.
Chrysler announced last week that it will become an all-electric vehicle company by 2028. This is a pretty big deal and, as I understand it, a first for the legacy US automakers. At this point, it now feels difficult to argue that this shift isn't going to happen. Though I remember lots of people in the past asserting that the masses would never ever switch over to electric.
I guess that's the status quo bias at work. Because if you flip the script and assume that the status quo is already electric (that is, we all come home after work, plug in our cars, and charge them up at low rates), it would be pretty hard to argue for a switch to gasoline-powered cars. Here, try this new thing. It'll cost you more to fill up and you get to pollute the environment more. But hey, it sounds cool when you do a cold start.
Do we have Tesla to thank for exposing this?
Berlin is considering something pretty radical. A grass roots movement called Volksentscheid Berlin Autofrei, or the People’s Decision for Auto-Free Berlin, is trying to turn the entire core of the city into a car-free zone. (There would be some exceptions and so we should maybe call it primarily car free.)
The area in question is everything inside of the city's circular S-Bahn train line (pictured above), which would make it the largest car-free zone or mostly car-free zone in the world. It's larger than Manhattan and it's about the size of London's zones 1 and 2, to help give you a sense of the scale.
So far the group has collected about 50,000 supportive signatures and, according to Fast Company, the Senate of Berlin is set to make a decision on the proposal next month. I have no idea how much community and/or political momentum this actually has, but I love how bold of an idea this is.
Is it too bold?
Again, it is perhaps useful to flip the question and use Seth Godin's status-quo-bias-checker model when thinking about this. If the center of Berlin was already car free and a community group had just come forward with a plan to now allow vehicles, how do you think you'd feel? I could see that being contentious.
Do you think Berlin should do it?
Image: City of Berlin via Fast Company
So slime mold, which is a fungus-like single-celled organism, has a tendency to build highly optimized networks across its food sources. In other words, if you scattered a bunch of food on a surface and then dropped in some slime mold, it would naturally create an interconnected web of linked veins across this surface. And this web would be based on the shortest and most efficient paths of travel between the various food sources.
I am mentioning this odd factoid because ten years ago researchers in Tokyo used this naturally occurring phenomenon for the purposes of trying to improve transportation planning. What they did was map out greater Tokyo. They then placed oat flakes (i.e. food) in spots that correspond to the various cities and urban centers that surround the city. Alongside this, they blocked off the areas where transportation networks do not typically run, such as through mountains and into the water. They then dropped in some slime mold, wet the surface, and watched it grow.
Chrysler announced last week that it will become an all-electric vehicle company by 2028. This is a pretty big deal and, as I understand it, a first for the legacy US automakers. At this point, it now feels difficult to argue that this shift isn't going to happen. Though I remember lots of people in the past asserting that the masses would never ever switch over to electric.
I guess that's the status quo bias at work. Because if you flip the script and assume that the status quo is already electric (that is, we all come home after work, plug in our cars, and charge them up at low rates), it would be pretty hard to argue for a switch to gasoline-powered cars. Here, try this new thing. It'll cost you more to fill up and you get to pollute the environment more. But hey, it sounds cool when you do a cold start.
Do we have Tesla to thank for exposing this?
What they found was that the resulting network was remarkably similar to Tokyo's actual rail network. The slime mold had found the most efficient routes, eliminated redundancies, and generally discovered the optimal way in which to connect its food sources. And if you think about it, this is basically what transit networks are supposed to do. They should connect clusters of people in the most efficient way possible.
It has been a decade since this slime mold transportation discovery was first publicized, and it would seem that it hasn't really caught on as an invaluable planning tool. So I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that we should take out a map of every major city in the world, plot its population centers, drop down some oat flakes, and then let slime mold tell us all the ways in which we are screwing up and over-politicizing our transportation planning efforts.
Thank you to Angus Knowles for making me aware of this study. Angus writes an occasional newsletter about cities and housing, over here.
Image: LiveScience
Here's some further evidence from the Exponential View.
In the UK last month (December 2021), 41% of new car registrations were electric or some kind of plug-in electric hybrid. That is up from 29% for the same period in 2020 (see above). Pure EVs also make up about 2/3 of these registrations and look to be picking up momentum. That's certainly what I would expect to see when we revisit these numbers next year. The century of gasoline vehicles is coming to an end and it's going to happen well inside of this decade.
When I was buying a new car back in 2018, I wanted to buy an electric vehicle. I don't have a charging station in my parking garage, but I would have gotten one. The problem is that I couldn't find the kind of car that I wanted in an electric version. And the ones that were available were pretty expensive. That has changed and is no longer the case. If I were buying today, it would certainly be an EV. The car would also have to change colors at the push of a button.
But, of course, the other element of change here is autonomy. And if/when that arrives, it will be far more disruptive than this shift to electric.
What they found was that the resulting network was remarkably similar to Tokyo's actual rail network. The slime mold had found the most efficient routes, eliminated redundancies, and generally discovered the optimal way in which to connect its food sources. And if you think about it, this is basically what transit networks are supposed to do. They should connect clusters of people in the most efficient way possible.
It has been a decade since this slime mold transportation discovery was first publicized, and it would seem that it hasn't really caught on as an invaluable planning tool. So I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that we should take out a map of every major city in the world, plot its population centers, drop down some oat flakes, and then let slime mold tell us all the ways in which we are screwing up and over-politicizing our transportation planning efforts.
Thank you to Angus Knowles for making me aware of this study. Angus writes an occasional newsletter about cities and housing, over here.
Image: LiveScience
Here's some further evidence from the Exponential View.
In the UK last month (December 2021), 41% of new car registrations were electric or some kind of plug-in electric hybrid. That is up from 29% for the same period in 2020 (see above). Pure EVs also make up about 2/3 of these registrations and look to be picking up momentum. That's certainly what I would expect to see when we revisit these numbers next year. The century of gasoline vehicles is coming to an end and it's going to happen well inside of this decade.
When I was buying a new car back in 2018, I wanted to buy an electric vehicle. I don't have a charging station in my parking garage, but I would have gotten one. The problem is that I couldn't find the kind of car that I wanted in an electric version. And the ones that were available were pretty expensive. That has changed and is no longer the case. If I were buying today, it would certainly be an EV. The car would also have to change colors at the push of a button.
But, of course, the other element of change here is autonomy. And if/when that arrives, it will be far more disruptive than this shift to electric.
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog