It’s time for action
The time to move towards carfree cities has come. We must depart from cities that neglect us towards cities that belong to us. Step by step moving onto the right direction. We need to collectively realise that in order to have a better future we need not to build more roads, but to transform our mindsets. It’s time to move on.
The Towards Carfree Cities Conference is a gathering that brings people from all over the world, who come along to share ideas, work and examples of what they have been developing in their countries to make our cities a better place to live in. It’s an annual event and it takes place for the second occasion in Latin America. It’s supported and created by the World Carfree Network through local organizations -in this case Ciudad Para Todos and GDL en Bici. .
Program:
Talks, lectures, projects, workshops and cultural events for a week (*simultaneous translation will be provided).
Some of our guest speakers,
Roxana Kreimer, Argentina
In her book La tiarnía del automóvil, los costos humanos del progreso tecnológico (anarres, 2006), exemplifies and is a part of extensive work focused on reflecting about human condition and its surroundings. This philosopher with a PhD in social sciences from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, in Argentina, has been a pioneer in philosophic consulting and orientation to the grade that in 2004 she was invited to the Universidad de Sevilla (Spain) to inaugurate the first Ibero-American Congress on this subject.
Eric Britton, EUA
He is a North American politician and activist for sustainability that has lived and worked in Paris, France since 1969. As main coordinator of The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative, and its diverse networks, he is well known for promoting integrated public transportation and shared automobiles and bicycles. He is the creator of the World Day without cars that is celebrated in several cities around the world on September 22nd every year.
Andrew Wheeldon, Southafrica
reducir la pobreza está en tus pedales (Reducing poverty is in your pedals), could be the slogan of a campaing that this Australian and administrative director of Red de Empoderamiento Ciclista (Cyclist Empowerment Network), an organism that promotes the use of bicycles in South Africa as a low cost and allied transportation system in reducing gases and greenhouse effect, as well as an agent to better health though exercise. He has two university degrees in organizational and sporting management.
Chris Carlsson, EUA
He is one of the creators of the critical Mass– a bike ride that revindicates users as part of traffic– in San Francisco, California, in the early nineties. His texts make evident the urgency to change paradigms in everyday life to replace socioeconomic systems: in his most recent book Nowtopia (AK Press, 2008) he explores free software, urban holiculture and the use of bicycles, among others, as peace entities that emancipate from capitalism.
Noah Budnick, EUA
is Deputy Director at Transportation Alternatives (T.A.), New York City’s advocate for bicycling, walking and public transportation. He provides strategic guidance and planning for T.A.’s campaigns to improve and increase healthy, city-friendly transportation. He manages T.A.’s daily operations, working with their two dozen staff members to craft organizing, political and media strategies. Noah strives to educate and build support among diverse coalitions of community groups and businesses for changes to New York’s streets and public space. Noah is also the chair of the board of directors of the Alliance for Biking & Walking, the national coalition of state and local bicycle and pedestrian advocacy groups and a board member of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative.
Antonio Lucio Gil, España
Degree in Law from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1987). Member of the Assembly of Madrid, in business for 10 years, during this time attached to the Environment Committee. He took over as Director General of Environmental Promotion and Discipline of the Community of Madrid between 2001 and 2003. He led the Department of Environment of the Olympic bid “Madrid 2012″ from December 2003 until July 2005. He currently serves as Director General of the Mobility Foundation, promoted by the Madrid City Council, Director of environmentally sustainable magazine (September 2006) and Member of the Environment Committee of the Spanish Olympic Committee.
PLANKA colective
In Stockholm, Gothenburg, Ostergotland and Helsinki commuters are taking the initiative in the public transportation. Buses, trams, commuter trains and subways are necessary for us to get around in society. We cannot choose to walk 5 kilometers if it does not suit us to pay the fare. The public transportation should be like the sidewalk – paid by all, free to walk on. It would be as absurd to charge for it, as charging for public transportation.
The tenth edition of the conference will take place in Guadalajara, Mexico, in September 2011, and is entitled “Building Carfree Cities for the People, by the People”. Guadalajara shows a pattern of development common to many cities across the world, particularly in the global South: a rapid increase in car use in the context of accelerated urban expansion, limited urban planning, privatisation of public space, unconsolidated local democracies and deficient land management. This will be the second occasion that a TCC conference has taken place in Latin America (TCC VI took place in Bogota in 2004).
As well as an emphasis on liberating cities from cars so that people can once again be at the centre of their communities, the conference aims to empower civil society to campaign for policy reform. One of the main objectives is the sharing of experiences between people across the globe who have mobilised in their own communities in favour of ways of living which are environmentally sound, democratic, and that put forward alternatives to the consumer lifestyle which is leading us towards an energy and environmental crisis.
Tema: 
