By 2025 more than two-thirds of the planet will live in city regions. The implications of this transformation for urban transportation — and for business — are the impetus for an international conclave and public panel June 11-12 at the Rackham School of Graduate Studies.
“The challenge is that the most commonly pursued solutions don’t fully address urban transportation’s increasingly complex human, physical, and political context,” says Susan Zielinski, managing director of Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transformation (SMART), the event’s host.
“For example, alternative fuels alone, while focused on environmental concerns, do not address the land-use, health, water-quality, infrastructure supply or safety implications of strictly auto-based approaches. And pricing alone as a disincentive to car use without providing affordable and practical options only adds to the economic burdens of the working poor and elders on fixed incomes.”
The June 11 public panel “New Mobility Means Business” will profile 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.
SMART, a project of the Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society, is working in partnership with Ford Motor Co., an emerging leader in the New Mobility industry.
“Ford is doing some really interesting things,” says Sue Cischke, senior vice president of Ford Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering, and keynote speaker at the conference. “How are we going to move people around? There are more people in cities now than live in rural areas, so they’re all coming into cities and they can’t afford personal transportation. How are we going to move these people?”
Panelists representing Ford, Royal Dutch Shell (both conclave sponsors), Cisco Systems, Cherokee, GoLoco and Mapunity India will address the question: How does New Mobility/sustainable transportation mean business for you, and how do you envision the future of the New Mobility industry globally?
President Mary Sue Coleman will welcome conference participants.
The good news, Zielinski says, is that innovative approaches to urban transportation are emerging worldwide. “We’re evolving beyond the quest for silver bullet solutions and technical fixes,” she says, “towards more multi-faceted, connected, customized, practical, affordable and systems-based solutions. This opens up entirely new solution spaces and related business and employment opportunities that form the foundation of a vital New Mobility industry.”
For more information, go to um-smart.org.
