Eric Britton, Earth Car Free Day

Eric Britton is an international consultant, author, and founder of The Commons, a Paris-based nonprofit organization cosponsoring Earth Car Free Day.

The great team that is shaping this first-ever Earth Car Free Day is a striking contrast to at least one long-established historical pattern. But before I reveal to you why this is the case, let me give you a few words of historical background.

Over the years (and decades), I have been a party to, let me see, something like 400 or 500 meetings or small "decision conferences," which all have had the the common objective of providing a perspective about policy or business decisions involving cities or their transportation systems. Let's reflect briefly on the latter -- those get-togethers that, in one way or another, took risks to influence the shape and operations of the transportation sector.

It's a funny thing, but almost all of these meetings had one thing in common: There were almost never any women in the room. There were exceptions, of course, but those women were above all, just that -- the rare exceptions. In addition, when women were involved at all, there was in many cases a heavy air of tokenism. House woman, if you will. Any women there were strictly in secondary slots, and certainly were not there to shake up things. (At one international meeting, a very senior woman was called on at one point to attend to, as the heavy chair put it, "some housekeeping matters," at which point I hollered, "You can't say that!" The assembly just smiled, happy in the knowledge that in a few hours I would be out of their lives).

As the 1990s wore on, we began to see more women get involved in transportation decision-making, but guess what (and here is where I am sure to get into trouble) -- they were by and large not there to bell the cat. They voted with the solid majority almost every time when it really counted.

The result of this story of unbalanced gender participation is what I am embarrassed to call "the American city transportation model." And what exactly is that? A transportation system that is almost entirely based on the notion that the best way for people to get around is to buy a car, hop into it, and go anywhere they damn well please. This is the "American Way of Life," which, according to certain of our great minds, not only needs to be defended at whatever cost "here," but also needs to be exported to every corner of this grateful planet.

Why can't a woman be more like a man? Henry Higgins, can you hear me?

Truth be told, the car-based model has been showing its age in city after city (regardless of what's happening on various resource and emissions issues created by those 700 million motor vehicles at its core). Over the last 10 years, the leading edge of transportation policy has backed away from the automobile approach, and gradually is creating a new mental architecture that values new ways of going about all this.

Increasingly, we are seeing two things that we never really had in the past. The first, and the lesser of the two, is the emergence of a new generation of female planners, activists, and policy-makers who are beginning to make their voices heard. Think of them, if you will, as the "Daughters of Jane" (referring to Jane Jacobs, the woman who in 1961 showed an all-male profession a new way to think about cities in her justifiably famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Knowing Mrs. Jacobs as well as I do, I am certain that this would please her, and there is not one female transportation activist I know who would not be battle-proud to bear that label).

The second development over this same period of time has been a gradual buildup of a new and highly effective movement of men, yes, males, with some of the same great values and ideas that women have brought to the table: neighborliness, a clear mind, an ability to listen, an understanding that cities and societies need to be nurtured and not just engineered, and knowledge that good things take time.

The 20th century paradigm of transportation decision-making has come to a screeching and not regrettable halt (excuse the pun!). Leaders with a new set of values have taken over, and they tend to be even more technically competent than those who preceded them. This new mentality has firmly set its sights on priorities beyond the mobility options of the healthy, working, (and at least symbolically male) population. The priorities are now the "rest" of society: those who are too old to drive, those who cannot afford to drive, those with physical or psychological limitations as drivers or even passengers, and those who simply prefer not to drive. And the list goes on.

There are at least three interesting things about this new constituency: The first is that they have indeed been unfairly served by our present car-based systems. The second is that, if you do the math, you will see that these are not marginal groups that can be fobbed off; in many places, they comprise a majority in many places. And the third and last thing is that we now have the means to do something for this constituency.

What brings all of this to mind on a late Paris evening in a splendid spring rain? Well, there's the fact that our Earth Car Free Day crew has a strong (and I mean strong) female majority at the helm (I just work here). Moreover, as new people, groups, and projects show up in our world database every few hours (check it out at www.carfreeday.com), at least every other person that shows up with an idea, a project, or a good question just happens to be female.

We are finally using our whole brain. Thank you, Jane.