Re*Move

The pitfalls of sustainability

Paper-city-exhibition-at-the-royal-academy-of-arts-01  Clifton suspension bridge
An image from The Paper City exhibition and Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of speaking at the Miniumum...or Maximum Cities event at the University of Cambridge, which was organised with Blueprint magazine and the Paper Cities exhibition, which moved up to the famous university town having been at the Royal Academy for the past few months.

Tim Abrahams has produced an excellent write-up of the event over on the Blueprint site, which I’d urge you to check out if you’re interested, because I think he raises a series of important points about where we find ourselves in relation to the sustainability debate.

For some time now, Re*Move has proposed an agenda where sustainability was the context rather than an end in itself, and like Tim, alarm bells rang in Cambridge, because we were left with a feeling that the only reason anyone is doing anything today is in an attempt to be “more sustainable”. When it comes to movement and transportation, this approach of sustainability first is clearly causing problems, because it seems to be preventing us from envisioning and demanding the future that we actually want to have, and instead pushing us towards something influenced primarily by guilt over past excess.

For example, a lot of transport debate in the UK today centres around whether or not we should be building a high speed rail line to the north of England. Anyone who suggests this is a daft idea is right now likely to labeled both unprogressive and anti-sustainability . Yet anyone who dares suggest a third runway at Heathrow is a good idea, is obviously hell bent on seeing the planet rapidly burn.

Yet the pitfalls of high-speed 2 are multifold. We can already get from Manchester to London in two hours, so should we really prioritise spending billions on reducing this by half? And while it’s automatically assumed that getting the train is better from a carbon perspective, throw real-world load factors into the bargin, and the reality is that a modern, full Airbus is comparative. Meanwhile, the car (which has apparently lost its number one spot to the airplane, in the planet mauling stakes) has improved so much in the past five years that if you’re driving two-up in a Golf diesel, you’ll definitely produce less carbon than going on the train. For me, the biggest issue with High Speed 2 is that an idea which is fundamentally two-hundred years old seems to be stopping us from pushing the boundaries of imagination about what we might do instead, that would be palpably better.

So some of my talk at Cambridge bemoaned this sense that we’d got stuck with a handful of transport formats, and that – with cars and trains at least, they were monocultural. We’ve sized everything to fit them, and one of the reasons we aren’t all riding round on things like Segways in cities, is that cities are fundamentally designed, and sized, for people to use cars. This might sound like I’m suggesting we simply have to keep using cars – as they are - to get around cities. I’m not, but what I’m pointing out is the need for a systems level approach. Will you enjoy trundling up the A40 in a Renault Twizy? Or would you be altogether more tempted by the idea of La Regie’s concept scooter/car cross if you could zip up and down one of Chris Hardwicke’s Velo-City cycle tubes on your way to the office?

Sustainability is the context we now work in. And we’ve little doubt (and are very happy with the notion) that in 5-10 years time, our cities will all be full of things like electric cars. Which will be great for local emissions, but highlights the problem with today's short-sighted sustainability focus, as it won’t do anything to stop us from spending half of our lives sat in traffic jams.

If we simply focus on sustainability as our end point, we’re likely just to end up with a mildly de-carbonised version of what we have now. And the likelihood is that we won’t even achieve that, because when people know they’re saving carbon, they psychologically feel (and often financially are) able to do more and just end up ‘reusing’ what they’ve saved.

Sustainability has created a psychology of fear, where we fear to dream of real improvement and hesitate to think big. What do we mean by improvement? Things which work more quickly or get us places faster, thus providing us with more free time or time with our families and friends. Things that are measurably more fun, or more exciting to ride in or drive than what we have today. Things which cost us less money to use, own or run. Better means thinking about how we link up travel – so we might spend more time in one place and combine trips – rather than rushing from one short hop flight destination to another. Better might mean finding a way to link leisure and business travel together.

But better also means new. New ideas, new products, services and concepts. In essence, we need to dream, and be allowed to think big. If we think of the figures who created some of our totems of mobility – people like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Andre Citroen, Frank Whittle – we still admire and count on the inventions and contributions they made for our mobility backbone today. On Re*Move, we try to highlight and showcase the work of people we hope or think might become modern day IKBs or Whittles. But there are precious few of them around. I’d go as far to argue that the contributions and inventions made by these famous figures, would never have happened had they been around today, working in this world constrained by the fear of sustainability. We are not simply going to solve the predicament we are in by attempting cut, after cut, after cut. We are going to have to dream, and dream big.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 1st December 2009

December 01, 2009 in About us, Analysis, Aviation, Cities, Events and debates, Politics, Renault, Segway, Sustainability, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Futurama

589px-Street_intersection_Futarama.jpg

I was speaking yesterday at Burning Rubber, a LowCarbonSouthWest event.

Southwest England is Britain's first official UK "low carbon development zone". The region has an amazing technology legacy - think Roman Baths, Georgian Cities, Brunel, SS Great Britain, Concorde. It's got great coastline, a strong surf culture, hilly, beautiful cities and green icons like The Eden Project. It's also the part of Britain most closely linked to the idea of the permanent traveller - the South West is Britain's leading hippie region. If it had good, flexible flows of investment capital and more inward and outward migration I'd almost call it Britain's California.

I argued to the audience that while the car industry is working out how to replace combustion engines with electric motors and batteries, it's worth asking whether in twenty or thirty years' time it's what we'll need. Are they simply servicing a declining market, while something else altogether different happens outside the window? Rather than being about electric powertrains, could the real answers be related to something else - how we live and work?

The dangers of designing for a false future

The writer Hamish McRae once told me (in the Hole in the Wall pub in Waterloo) that "the future of how we move is entirely connected to the future of how we work", and his thought has shaped my thinking ever since. Those British and French engineers built Concorde for politicans concerned with national prestige and jobs, and for airlines who where, in the early 1960s (Concorde was launched in November 1962), in the middle of a jet-age boom fuelled by postwar technology and wealth. This had seen tremendous wartime advances in aircraft design and propulsion take us on an incredible performance curve from 1940 through 1960. For context, remember that Concorde was only launched four years after the first transatlantic jet services were launched in 1958 between London and New York. It seemed reasonable back then to believe that speed would dominate as business people would want to be in London for a meeting in the morning and then an evening reception in New York.

Of course, aviation's development curve took on a different path. Instead of getting ever faster flights for an elite, minority "jet set", the 1973 oil shock and the flight of creative engineering talent in the early 70s from mechanical to information technology meant supersonic became a step too far. The reality of work and leisure took over and the world embraced flights for the masses. In the 1960s, airliners replaced ocean liners and airports supplanted seaports (Britain effectively moved its main passenger ports from Southampton and Liverpool to Heathrow) and subsonic airliners went on to redefine flows of migration and underpin and expand globalisation through the '70s, '80s and '90s. Boeing, while getting government funds to develop an SST, cannily developed the 747 as an insurance policy. Pioneers like Juan Trippe (who led Pan Am and is why we have the 747) eventually moved over and people like Freddie Laker and then Herb Kelleher, Richard Branson, Stelios and Michael O'Leary created today's air travel reality. Today we have incredibly low cost flights for the masses supporting migration, everyday business travel and leisure (unfortunately all still powered by 1960s-era engine designs).

Norman Belle Geddes and the 1939 New York Expo

I remind you of the above for context - about how technologies and visions developed in one era often only really create massive change in another one - and how some distract and others define what comes next. Which brings me back to cars, home and work. Today, the majority of people outside the centre of cities live a lifestyle that was first showcased at Futurama, the General Motors' pavilion at the 1939 New York Expo. Americans (and everyone else) were dazzled by designer Norman Belle Geddes's vision that people would live in communities linked to highways, using their own fantastic vehicles to flow smoothly and comfortably from one place to another. We would finally face the death of distance.

Lots of people and businesses loved Futurama. It helped the car industry find a way forward from a Fordist world of slightly dull, standardised mass-made cars, and it influenced the entire world's concept of what urban development should be. The economics of vehicle manufacturing could scale to meet it, property developers loved it, and it suited employers who could access a bigger workforce pool, all addicted (often through debt on car and house finance) to perpetuate the lifestyle. Yet the reality of the cost and blight of the resulting highway infrastructure, congestion, high energy costs, pollution, and the enduring draw of dense, sociable old pre-1940s cities undermined Futurama in fundamental ways.

So in 2009, 70 years on, with General Motors just bankrupt and great tracts of suburban America covered in unwanted repossessed, stripped out McMansions, are we facing the end of Futurama as a blueprint? Has it literally stopped being sustainable?

Hamish McRae's wife is Frances Cairncross. She wrote a book in 1997 called "The Death of Distance". Written 12 years ago, that's as good a place as any to start working out what comes next. It explores how the communications revolution - the internet and mobile phones - will change our understanding of, and response to, distance.

And perhaps the ultimate irony here? Norman Belle Geddes, architect of Futurama, was the father of Barbara Belle Geddes. Some of you will remember that Barbara played Miss Ellie, the epicentre of the Ewing family, in the 1980s TV series Dallas. The one all about the excesses and lure of '80s capitalism, and the power of American oil.

It's ok. My head hurts too.

Mark Charmer is founder and managing director of The Movement Design Bureau. Images: Futurama exhibition. Source - Wikimedia Commons Update. I added Southampton as a key passenger port. Northern bias, overcome. 19/1/10

October 03, 2009 in Analysis, Aviation, Cities, Design, Exhibitions, Ford, GM, Sustainability, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meeting Carrie Nolan, one of the faces behind @thehenryford

Joe and I have decamped this week quite a lot to the cafe in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, because the wifi's so much faster than the Dearborn Inn, where we've been staying. We first visited the museum in December, when we interviewed the all-knowing Bob Casey, curator of transportation. Bob had great insights into the historical problems of matching demand to supply in the mass-production auto industry.

Proving the power of Twitter to get people together, we tweeted we were here and yesterday were soon joined by Carrie Nolan, a PR manager from the museum, who came to say hi and tell us how things are going.

See our short discussion with her below.

The Henry Ford Museum is a must for anyone interested in the social and technical history of how we move, mass produced vehicles, the story of the American railroad and its aviation history. One of my favourite exhibitions is its story of the transition of aviation from a dangerous sport to a credible, safe form of transport. The area had one of the world's first proper airports, and its first airport hotel, the aforementioned Dearborn Inn, which opened in 1931.

Follow Carrie through @cmnolan10 or the whole team via @thehenryford on Twitter.

Posted by Mark Charmer and filmed at The Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan on 20 April 2009.

April 21, 2009 in Adverts, Airlines, Auto, Aviation, Design, Exhibitions, Planes, Twitter | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Airbus A380 - a game changer at last?

Qantas A380 advert

In my predictions for 2009, I speculated this would be the year that the new Airbus A380 superjumbo becomes a selling point differentiator for airlines. Judging by this billboard advertisment (above) that's currently looming over the concourse at London's Waterloo station, it appears to be happening rather quickly.

What I think is fascinating about this is the direction in which it has the potential to take air travel. From the early years of flight - when air travel was an exotic, romantic experience - air travel has turned into something to be endured, rather than enjoyed.

I once heard the late, great Paul MacCready (designer of the Gossamer Albatross) lament “if only modern automobiles had been refined and developed to be as light and efficient as aeroplanes have, perhaps the automobile industry wouldn't be in such trouble” –  but what this in turn means, is that the vehicles we travel on (or in), in the air - are largely indistinguishable from one another. As MacCready alludes, that's because modern aeroplane design walks a fine line in balancing efficiency, carrying capacity and cost - and the long, thin tube sitting on a central wing box seems to have won out as the design pattern of choice... Airlines therefore don't advertise, or differentiate on the types of aircraft they fly - they appeal with cheap fares, better entertainments systems and the allusion to superior service.

Gossamer Albatross Paul MacCready's Gossamer Albatross a model of aviation efficiency... but a world away from modern day machines.

Compare this to the auto industry, conversely - where the minor detail differentiation of cars from competitor to competitor is the subject of millions - no makes that billions - of dollars of advertising money, not to mention design and development funds. Thus, I'd speculate that while 99 out of 100 people will be able to tell you what make and model of car they drive, 99 out of 100 people won’t be able to tell you what the last type of plane they flew on was - nor, I'd suggest, would they care.

Yet the Airbus A380 - superjumbo, whalejet, or double-decker plane (whatever you want to call it) - seems to have firmly entered the public conscience - such was the troubled nature of its birth, and the awe-inspiring size of this 'machine', and sense of disbelief that exists, that mankind has managed to engineers such a vast craft, capable of such a graceful ascension from earth to sky.

Qantas A380

Judging by last weekend’s article in The Sunday Times, not only are the airlines (Qantas, Singapore and Emirates offer UK-based A380 departures) differentiating themselves from the competition by advertising that they fly the A380 - but the plane's following is allowing them to charge a tidy price premium for travel on it. In an article entitled “The search for the best A380” the paper reports that Emirates - for instance - flies four times a day from London Heathrow to Dubai, and while on its Boeing 777s you can make that trip for as little as £305 in economy, if you want to fly on an A380, the price starts at £530.

Emirates A380 shower Singapore first class suite  Emirates A380s have showers on board, while Singapore's first class suites have double beds

Is it worth the difference? Well, probably not - particularly in economy. As the Qantas advert illustrates, the big gains this plane allows the airlines (showers, bar areas, individual first class cabins with double beds) are reserved for Business and First class passengers. The question is, at what point will the A380 become so ubiquitous that they can now longer get away with charging a premium? And with Boeing's groundbreaking 787 Dreamliner not far away now, can new planes like these reverse the miserabilism and hatred currently exhibited by both public and media alike, towards the whole notion of flying? In the UK, at least, our wider priorities seem to suggest that's unlikely, but ultimately, planes like the A380 could be the best hope that exists of creating a new 'golden age' of air travel. 

...and finally, on the subject of current air travel experiences - if you want a laugh, you must read this. It's possible the funniest complaint letter, ever. (via Dennis Howlett on twitter)

Related reading:

  • Welcome to 2009... a brave new world?
  • British Airways takes the plunge

Images: Qantas advertising billboard - Joseph Simpson; Gossamer Albatross - catface3 on flickr; Qantas A380 - Joits on flickr; Emirates A380 shower - Ammar Abd Rabbo on flickr; Singapore first class suite - Singapore Airlines

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 27th Januray 2009

January 27, 2009 in A380, Adverts, Airlines, Analysis, Aviation, Media insight, Technology, Travel | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Welcome to 2009... a brave new world?

Looking back at the past year, and seeing what you predicted for it right back at its start is always a fun game. If you want a chuckle, check here for what I was thinking about this time last year. Back to the here and now, what about 2009? It feels very brave-new-world out there, with the effects of the credit crunch, auto bailout and the imminent inauguration of Pres. Elect Obama all making themselves felt. So here’s some ideas on what might, or might not happen in the next 12 months – and some things we’ll be tracking along the way…

Autos

Much of the auto industry had a terrible 2008. And while most are predicting things will get worse in 2009, I’m watching for things to pick up. People pretty much stopped buying cars at the end of ’08, but people don’t just change the habits of a lifetime, so I believe we’ll start to see an element of 'pent-up-demand' take effect. Suddenly, after two months of nothing, there's a rash of 58 plate (new cars registered from September 08) all over south-east England. And with schemes such as Hyundai's, designed to give customers peace of mind that if they buy a car on credit and then lose their jobs, that there is a way out, I think customers will be buying again before ’09 is out…

SAAB 9-XWe could see SAAB bite the dust in '09 - a shame, Anthony Lo's team look ripe to turn things around, styling wise

SAAB may not be so lucky though. Word is that GM can’t find a buyer for the brand, but despite the Swedish Government saying they’ll step in to help, SAAB’s days may be numbered. We sincerely hope this doesn't happen - SAAB is a truly great brand, with currently unrealised potential - my hunch says, that given just a little longer, Anthony Lo's design team might turn it around.

Watch for a brand that you’ve heard of before, but not for decades seen emblazoned on the front of a car as a brand in its own right – Pininfarina – make waves with their ‘B0’ electric car, developed in collaboration with French group, come battery maker, Bollore. If it looks as good as the concept in Paris, it’ll be a winner with consumers in Europe who are cost conscious and still up for eco-flavoured cars. Fingers crossed Pinifarina innovative on the selling and recharging network side of things…flogging them from the back of a Fiat dealership just won’t cut it folks.

Pininfarina B0 grillePininfarina B0 Pininfarina B0 could be a big hit in 2009; was certainly a star of the Paris autoshow

Although Hybrid sales are currently falling off a cliff in the US, European buyers still seem keen on effective auto efficiency. America’s appetite for Hybrids appears on the wane thanks mainly to cheap oil prices – but there are predictions that won’t last forever, either. Watch for a second-wave of hybrid mania, spurred by a new Prius (in Detroit this weekend), and two possibly even cleverer new hybrids in the form of Honda’s new (bargain?) Insight and Ford's hyper-efficient Fusion hybrid.

Aviation

Three carriers now fly the Airbus A380 superjumbo in and out of Heathrow, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. With Air France, Lufthansa and others due to get their first double-decker planes this year, the A380 will be a key selling point differentiator… Do you want to spend 20 hours in the back of a 20 year old 747, or in a brand new, uber-quiet, Marc Newson-designed interior, with on-demand entertainment, snack bar and extra legroom?

A380 quantas screen grab T5 Qantas are making the A380 a big sell in the UK and Aus now, Heathrow improved in 2008 with Terminal 5

Speaking of Heathrow, watch for the proposed third runway to finally hit the buffers this year, as Labour MPs vote against their own party, due to sustainability concerns. Much is being made of a potential high speed rail-link to both northern England and continental Europe, instead. Watch to see how that develops as an alternative.

Boeing will finally get the 787 Dreamiliner airborne this year, not that it will go into commercial service until 2010. But the big question is whether they can surpass 1000 order for the plane (currently at 900).

Mobility

Watch for a rise in on-demand rental systems for vehicles, and for the rise to prominence of the mobility service provider. While Better Place project stole the headline in 2008 for their proposed electric car charging networks, others will come to the fore this year, as smart phone and 3G broadband penetration grows, and the number of people able to quickly and cheaply access information on the move increases.

Zipcar adZipcar hasn't made a profit yet, but such services could come into their own in 2009

The drying up of VC money with recessions has doubtless not done a lot to help this future transport sector, and the fact that Zipcar still hasn’t turned a profit might mean things don't look rosy – but one senses that companies such as this, along with Dan Sturges’s Intrago – are due their moment in the sun. Consumers fearing the big money vehicle purchases, and increasingly questioning the running costs of private cars, might find this year the ideal time to try out renting transportation on demand, particularly in developed cities... Or they might just find all sorts of random things to try out on new rental site eronto.

Support for this theory comes in the form of the first Auto-maker backed car share/mirco rental scheme, in Ulm. Mercedes has been notable by its absence from the auto-meltdown headlines, and experimenting with an idea such as car2go, which instead of leaving unsold cars in fields, puts them on the street for customers to use on a by-the-hour basis, seems like a potentially smart move. Rumours of Merc being in bed with Tesla – despite the San Carlos company’s up-and-down 2008, is probably pretty smart too.

Speaking of which, have you heard that one of the customers on the waiting list for a Tesla Roadster is purported to be one Porsche A.G? Apparently the company that has just swallowed VW was non-too impressed with the performance of a prototype electric 911 (e-RUF) developed by RUF, and has decided to take a closer look at the Tesla themselves. Obviously, this doesn’t mean Porsche are about to produce an electric car, probably far from it, but it’s an interesting development from one of the most powerful, influential and profitable car companies in the world. So we’ll be watching that space too…

Finally, city-based vehicle networks should get a further boost (in publicity, if nothing else) from Paris’s ‘autolib’ system, which will be the most advanced micro-rental system for cars yet seen. Could it do for the genre what the city’s ‘Velib’ bike sharing network did for city bike rental, now on the agenda in cities around the world – including New York?

Fuel

Some analysts now believe oil is underpriced, and in recent weeks, its fall in price seems to have leveled off. Watch for it to rise again in 2009, and for one of Obama’s first ‘unpopular’ decision to be the introduction of a higher gas tax levy – we recommend reading Darryl Siry's and Autopia's well-argued pieces to understand why this matters.

Networks + Technology

Twitter – the online micro-blooging site, which gripped us throughout 2008, will go (if it hasn’t already gone), mainstream. Witness it being tipped as one of the sites to watch for 2009 by all and sundry in the press, at present. But as more people join, the ‘fail whale’ already seems to be returning, and the big question could be whether twitter ends up going the way of facebook – dominated by irritating people you thought you’d left behind at high school..! Our hope, and suspicion, is not. Incidentally, if you’d like to follow us, we're @JoeSimpson and @Charmermark, or click through the widgets to the right.

Tweetdeck Tweetdeck has helped make Twitter a powerful, manageable tool for me

Geo-tagging is one of the things we’ll be exploring in much greater depth in 2009. While many have been utilising the feature for some time (it is the addition of geographical location data to media such as photos), we haven't really utilised its potential and usefulness yet, so we’ll be getting to grips with it, and make the most of it throughout 2009.

Cities and locality

As the recession bites in the UK, cherished high-street names such as Woolworths, have disappeared. So does this mean an increasingly homogenised world, with high-streets full of Tesco locals, and little else?

Woolworths closing The start of 2009 saw the end of British high street favourite, Woolworths

We hope not, and have long talked about the different undercurrents and trends in each city, which we believe are critically important and of increasing influence in the field of design. With the help of our extended network, and as we move around the world in 2009, we’ll be doing more deep-dive, trend-based research in certain cities. Ultimately, we think there’s value in monitoring and trying to understand how small, subtle changes are affecting large cities around the world, and what trends are emerging where.

And above all…

Without wishing to sound twee, above all we want to critically engage you, our readers, with what we’re doing throughout 2009. Rather than mere broadcasting (which is admittedly what this feels like...) We’ll be focusing heavily on areas like video, and social media tools, to try and have a multi-way conversation – between those we meet who are shaping the future of how we move around, ourselves, and hopefully you, as the reader. We want to know what you think, and what you want to know. So we hope you’ll jump in whenever you like. Suggestions, criticisms, thoughts and ideas all welcome. Comment on the blogs, DM tweet me here, or mail me here.

Welcome to the brave new world, and happy new year!

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 8th January 2009

Images - Joseph Simpson and Mark Charmer on Flickr

Disclosure: Ford is sponsoring our Design Research Work throughout 2009. Joseph Simpson leads research on automotive and city-related topics at The Movement Design Bureau. He is also an associate at Car Design Research, a contributor to CarDesignNews.com and a visiting lecture in Vehicle Design at London's Royal College of Art.

January 09, 2009 in About us, Analysis, Auto, Aviation, Cities, Current Affairs, Products & Services, Sustainability, Travel, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Happy Birthday Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic wing tip and snow fields

Richard Branson's most famous brand, Virgin Atlantic Airlines is 25 years old this year. And to celebrate and promote itself, Virgin have just launched a cracking new ad campaign here in the UK, complete with the tag line "25 years - still red hot".

The ad harks back 25 years to 1984, when hair was big, braces were in, and mobile phones needed their own suitcase. While Virgin has in recent years been trying to promote itself as a more upmarket, cool, sophisticated airline, this advert gets right back to heart of the brand's values - fun, cheeky and a little bit sexy. Weather that's true of the actual flying experience is another matter, but it's nice to see someone trying to put the fun back into flying in a quintessentially British way!

Worth it just for the Frankie Goes To Hollywood soundtrack (!), you can see the ad by clicking below.

Virgin Atlantic ad Screengrab

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 06th January 2009

Photos: Virgin Wingtip over snow fields - Joseph Simpson; Advert Screengrab from Virgin Altantic Website

January 06, 2009 in Aviation, Current Affairs, Products & Services, Television, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

From the Cunard RMS "Scythia" to an Air Canada 777

IMG_1381.JPG

In one of those moments that seems quite accidental but surely isn't, I'm about to mirror the two great journeys of my grandfather's life.

This morning I leave London for Toronto, as Joe and I begin documenting Ford's reinvention, spending time in Detroit in the process. A week today, after a return trip, I leave for two weeks in India.

In the 1950s my grandad, George, travelled from Liverpool to Canada on the RMS Scythia. I've got his equivalent to the in-flight magazine framed in my dining room (which I snapped at 5am this morning). His plan was to get work there and then return for the family, at which point they'd emigrate to Canada. He got the job, with Canadian Pacific in Toronto and came back to fetch my grandmother and my dad, but they never did return. They liked Liverpool too much.

Anyway George, I'm back.

Mark Charmer is CEO of The Movement Design Bureau

November 29, 2008 in Aviation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Bright Blue Future?

Cameron2
Conservative Party leader - David Cameron in Birmingham last week

Last week’s fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham gave us a potential glimpse of the future. The Conservatives – or ‘Tories’ are being touted by some as a shoe-in to form the next Government, so “What next for Urban Transport” was a real opportunity for the new ‘listening’ Conservatives to articulate their ideas on a policy area that currently leaves a lot to be desired.

While issues like Heathrow’s third runway, a high-speed train link between northern England and London, and whether road-user charging should get the go ahead all deserve attention, dishearteningly, no one here seemed intent to move the arguments forward on any of these subjects, and – as might be expected with politicians – there was little ‘out of the box’, future-positive thinking.

The Shadow Transport Secretary, Theresa Villiers, had earlier provided a jump-start for the event by announcing the Conservatives would scrap plans for a third runway at Heathrow if elected, and instead build a high-speed rail link. On the panel, David Frost - Director General of the British Chamber of Commerce, warned that this approach risked de-throning London as the Business capital of Europe. But Steven Norris (of Transport for London and LDA) rejected this out of hand – citing that of 400,000 air-traffic movements a year at Heathrow, around a quarter were connected with British and European short-haul flights, which could be displaced onto rail.

img_6184

What next for London Heathrow? The Conservative Party don't want to see more runways built.

However, no one appeared to have studied what was actually the best, cleanest way of getting from (for instance) London to Manchester. James Governor reported via Twitter, that he’d recently met skepticism on the idea that rail was necessarily lower carbon than cars or planes. Yet when I put this idea to the panel it seemed to completely stump them. Surely, I suggested, by way of a prompt, what the issue highlighted is that long-lead time, ‘grand projets’ risk becoming irrelevant as they are overtaken by fast-changing technologies and lifestyle patterns. The high-speed rail link was talked of in a timescale of 2015-2027, thus raising the possibility of serious improvements in aircraft efficiency, and the real chance that by the time it’s finished we might all be driving electric cars, charged off a (clean) electricity grid.

Robert Goodwill (shadow roads minister) was unmoved by this, advocating we “let technological changes play out over time and then let the public decide which is best”. Unfortunately, in the context of transport, this approach sounds rather like car companies who for years have told us ‘we’ll build new types of vehicles, such as electric cars, when our customers tell us that they want them’. This hasn’t exactly got the auto industry into a brilliant position, and as an argument, has two key flaws. Firstly, the people who use a product or service (car, train, airport) have little way of feeding back what is good and bad, and inputting into the design process. Secondly, they tend to not actually be very good at articulating a clear, ambitious vision of the future. As Henry Ford famously said upon unveiling the Model T Ford, “if I’d have asked people what they wanted, they’d have said 'faster horses'".

It was therefore left to old hand Steve Norris – rather than any of the ‘new’ Conservatives, to articulate some vision and foresight. At the end of the debate, he came up to me and said:

“You’re right of course - by 2027, we will all likely be driving electric cars. So the environmental stuff will be much less of an issue. What we therefore have to sort out are problems like congestion and parking. And the key to this will be to break the link between economic prosperity and rising traffic levels. To do that, we need to have a multi-pronged approach, and look much more at things like the way people work and commute – local ideas, not just big ones.”

It was a moment of clarity and sense in a bitty, turbulent debate all too similar to other ‘future transport’ events I’ve seen in the past couple of years. It illustrates how those hoping for radical improvements to Britain’s transport system under a new and different Government are likely to be disappointed. What’s clear is the danger we risk in looking to politicians, and the political process to provide great future visions. It was clear that few here were thinking really far into the future, about the real potential impact of technology on travel, or about new types of vehicles that would actually be more enjoyable, or quicker to move around cities in. Sadly, this isn’t in the nature of politicians in the current political process – illustrating all the more, why there is need for talented designers, and a better process by which designers, and the public can engage to create better, faster, more enjoyable transportation experiences.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 9th October 2008

Photo credits: David Cameron - Star-one on flickr, under creative commons license.
Heathrow runway - Joseph Simpson.

This blog originally appeared on Mobility-trends-design - Joe's new personal blog, for the more irreverent, quirky side of design and some of Joe's more personal observations. He remains at The Movement Design Bureau, and having wrapped up his studies at the RCA - will be contributing on a much more regular basis to Re*Move.

October 09, 2008 in Analysis, Aviation, Cities, Events and debates, Sustainability, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Saying bye to the Trijets

Amsterdam Schipol offers splendid views.

It also happens to be, as the base of KLM, and a key cargo airport, one of last places in the world where you are surrounded by lots of three-engined jets close up.

They're disappearing quickly and KLM's large passenger fleet is unlikely to last too long before they switch to big twins. This is the final evolution of the DC-10, designed during 1967. I always stand and marvel at how the Douglas engineers got that engine up onto the tail. They patented the tail design, apparently.

John Newhouse's 1982 book, The Sporty Game, tells the astonishing story of how two over-confident US aircraft manufacturers - Douglas and Lockheed - effectively killed eachother's commercial airliner businesses by designing two competing airliners when there was only ever a market for one. The DC-10's rival, the Lockheed TriStar, technically the better plane, lost Lockheed $2.5 billion by the time production ended in the early 1980s. And that was in 1982 money. McDonnell Douglas, the demon of the pair because it launched the spoiler product, couldn't keep pace with Airbus's growth, had no development cash and sold out to Boeing in 1997. The upgraded MD-11 was dropped. By the 1990s there was enough confidence in the reliability of high bypass engines, still an unknown quantity when the DC-10 was designed, to fly long distances over water (and over the Rocky Mountains) on a 'big twin'.

If you pass through Schipol, enjoy the sight this year. Everything else looks the same now.

Posted by Mark Charmer. Mark is founder of The Movement Design Bureau.


Originally uploaded by Charmermrk

May 13, 2008 in Aviation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Welcome to COOL WALLS

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Those of you close to us - especially those who follow us on Twitter - will know we're working on the launch of our city-based trend research network in early summer.

I can't share the details yet but suffice to say we're going to throw out of the window many of the assumptions that hold Think Tanks back - number one being that most spend their time producing boring reports that noone reads.

We're rejecting what Dominic Campbell and I describe as the tendency to become the "Centre for Obvious Research". Obvious stuff which is expensively commissioned because decision-makers can only do intuitive things if they have a detailed report to prove it's true. Things like this report that proves towns in Northern England like Blackpool and Burnley need to forge better links with nearby cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. Well go figure.

A new generation of designers, policy people and entrepreneurs working on movement, cities and interaction are looking for something much more open and useable. And we're basing it around photography as the starting point.

How it works

Our trend team will maintain a network of global Cool Walls. For now we're focusing on MOVEMENT. There are just three rules:

1. You must have taken the photos yourself.

2. Each must be captioned with the date and location it was taken. You can add long captions if you like, but that's your call.

(and this is critical)

3. You must set the licensing to Creative Commons.

We encourage people to keep a Cool Wall of between 20 and 30 images. About 24 is optimal. For now, we're finding Flickr is the best place to host your Cool Wall.

In early summer I'll explain how the best trend watchers will earn money watching trends that they communicate via photography, rather than earning money selling photography. This is quite a leap - but an important one. In the meantime we won't be earning money directly out of your photos. That I can guarantee.

For now, if you want to get involved, email me (with the subject COOL WALL) to sign up to follow the beta programme. Or better still participate by just setting up your own Cool Wall on Flickr and then email me the location. As a trend watcher, you can be as public or anonymous about your identity as you like. If we think it's a Cool Wall, we'll promote it. Even if you tell me who you are, I promise not to pass that on without your permission.

You can follow mine and Joe's Cool Walls for inspiration. I expect yours to be better.

Posted by Mark Charmer on 15 April 2008. Mark is director of The Movement Design Bureau, a global think tank.

April 15, 2008 in About us, Analysis, Auto, Aviation, Cities, Energy, Media insight, Products & Services, Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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