Slate’s “Nimble Cities” project

Nimble Cities

Elizabeth Campbell, Jun 15, 10.

Nimble Cities is the second in Slate’s Hive series, “a project designed to harvest the world’s collective wisdom to solve the world’s most pressing problems.”

Slate is asking you for your best proposals to help solve an increasingly relevant problem: “how to move the most people around and between cities in the most efficient, safe, and perhaps even pleasurable manner.” They may be your own wild brainstorms, or they may be examples, whether grand or mundane, of things you’ve experienced in your own city or while traveling. And then they want you to vote on which of those submissions you think are best.

Below is a summary of Slate’s call for submissions:

So let’s hear it: What are the things that will help create more Nimble Cities?

These may be big-picture: high-speed rail corridors that return our intracity train systems to their (much faster) glory days, or maybe even personal rapid transit. But they need not be grandiose: Maybe it’s free Wi-Fi on interurban buses; maybe it’s cycle superhighways; maybe it’s a subway display that tells users which cars are most crowded or Seoul’s active OLEV (Online Electric Vehicle) project, in which vehicles draw electric power from strips embedded in the road.

Submit a brief write-up and include images if at all possible! It will help people notice, and perhaps vote for, your idea.

Since transportation is such a complex problem—encompassing design, engineering, land use, politics, economics, and psychology—we’re expecting a vast range of proposals. Some will geek out on the transparency of transit data; others will gravitate toward the best bike locks; some will go the “supertrain” route; others may fixate on traffic-signal timings. Over the course of the next few weeks, Tom Vanderbilt will single out several of the most compelling ideas—including the three that get the most votes from the readers—and explore them in more depth.

So submit your idea (Slate is accepting entries through July 6) and vote for the other entries you like. Over the course of the month, new ideas will continue to come in, and as you consider them, it may be worth recalling Arthur C. Clarke’s dictum on intellectual progress: “New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!”

(Photo Credit: Colodio)