Innovative traffic solutions: mime ...

I have this friend who is from Bogota, so it should only be natural that when I see something about Bogota in the news, in a magazine or on the Internet, I linger a little longer.

So last week, I was reading this article in Newsweek discussing the danger of Obama's "change"-program getting compromised from the start by the nomination of Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, Geithner, as we may remember, who's reputation recently got a little tarnished for "forgetting" to pay some taxes. The article calls for Obama to set the tone right from the beginning and warns for cutting corners. The cut from the past has to be clean:

Changing an equilibrium of corruption—or of anything else—is extremely difficult because it's so costly to be the odd person out. As a result, everyone has to make the switch all at once. Imagine what would happen if a country tried to switch from driving on the right to driving on the left through gradual change. Mismatched expectations about the rules of the road would quickly lead to chaos, fender benders and even a reversion to the old "equilibrium" by the few early left-siders.

The author does not underestimate the difficulty in reversing the established course of things, but refuses to see it as impossible and thereby finds inspiration in what happened in Bogota in the nineties.

The change may be difficult, but not impossible. Perhaps the new administration can take inspiration from the transformation of Bogotá in the early 1990s. At the time, the city was the murder capital of the world and still reeling from the legacy of Pablo Escobar and the drug wars of the previous decade. In 1994, Bogotános elected Antanas Mockus, a former philosophy professor, to bring order to this landscape of urban chaos.

Now Antanas Mockus apparently was not the most obvious choice for becoming Mayor of a metropole like Bogota. A philosopher, artist and math professor all in one, he gained his first five minutes of fame when he bared his buttocks for an auditorium of art students to get them to calm down:

The gesture, he said at the time, should be understood "as a part of the resources which an artist can use."

Far more interesting however is what he actually did to the traffic in Bogota, which seems to have been utter chaos at the time (see where I'm coming to ?). Where I live, we see traffic camera's going up in big numbers ? Been speeding ? FLASH !! Got the sun in your eyes and didn't see the light turn red ? FLASH !! Ticket follows a month later ... no way you'll get away with anything less than 25 Euro's and the above delicts are sure to drive you over 50 Euro's. It works, I must say, but it's still a repressive system. So very much unlike what our friend Mockus came up with:

Another innovative idea was to use mimes to improve both traffic and citizens' behavior. Initially 20 professional mimes shadowed pedestrians who didn't follow crossing rules: A pedestrian running across the road would be tracked by a mime who mocked his every move. Mimes also poked fun at reckless drivers. The program was so popular that another 400 people were trained as mimes.

"It was a pacifist counterweight," Mockus said. "With neither words nor weapons, the mimes were doubly unarmed. My goal was to show the importance of cultural regulations."

Mimes ??? What the hell ??? But come to think of it and it has that touch of genius. Just imagine how you behave when someone is trying to make fun of you, even such gentle fun as mimicry, in front of a crowd. You try to get your act together, the sooner the better.

In the period between 1993 and 2003, traffic fatalities per 100.000 inhabitants in Bogota dropped from 1300 to 600. I'm not sure on how that compares to the more "repressive" ways I see implemented here, but in the series of innovative ideas, this one is sure to score high.

And so I was thinking ... China ! What ingredients do we require ?
Big cities. Check.
Chaotic traffic. Check.
Willingness to learn. Check !
Reading these articles on Mayor Mockus, I wondered if his idea could be implemented in some of the big cities in China. The country is actually the only one where I have been to that has a "special task force" beside the police to bring some rule in the often (very) unruly traffic: the retired people at the crossroads with the cap and a whistle. Now it's been two years since I was last in China, so I may not have witnessed some changes that may already have taken place, but in my memory those people's authority -sorry as I feel for them, having to do that kind of job to earn a buck after their retirement- is a joke. More often than not neglected, not able to reprimand a culprit for mostly the culprit's are much faster than they are, in fact they're a sorry sight. So could the mimes work as an alternative ? I used to often take groups of Chinese that visited our company to some of the nearby big cities and it was not seldom we ran into one of those "statues", either completely immobile, or sometimes scaring the hell out of little kids or nice looking girls by a sudden blink of an eye, or the slightest movement of their hand towards the onlooker. I noticed my fellow travel companions always went over to take a look and of course ... take the obligatory picture. So mime seems to be something that could capture their attention. Add to that the chinese fear of loosing face in front of "the rest", so how powerful could a mime, imitating your every move when you yet again break a traffic rule, be ? Pretty powerful, I would think so. And when Marcel Marceau died, he didn't go unnoticed by the Chinese press. So, worth a try ?

By any means, read this entire article on Bogota's unconventional Mayor. If only half of what the article pretends him to be were true, this would be a guy I would like to meet. And I wouldn't mind seeing for instance Sam's analysis of this "governing by example" as I definitely feel a flavour of Mencius and Confucius in there.

A Complex World

It's a complex world we live in and though of course it is not anything new I was confronted several times with that thought in the past couple of days. Just take this for instance: with our world's growing focus on the effects of global warming, on seeking to reduce greenhouse gases and CO2 emissions..., we start to look more and more for environmentally friendly technologies and models for sustainable development, so enters the currently best alternative to our dependence on oil to make our cars take us wherever we want to go: biofuel. We're not quite there yet, but it's supposed to be one step in the right direction. But is it really ? Because of the success of the biofuel crops, other crops get neglected and before we know it, the more vulnerable places on this world have another famine in the making. So shall we choke or starve ? Indeed not an easy choice.

Or what to think about this ? About two weeks ago, my colleague was telling about the solar panels he had installed half a year ago on his roof, and how, after a sunfilled weekend, it had been the first time he had actually produced more energy than he needed so the overproduction gets sent onto the nations' power grid and no energy gets wasted. Sounds beautiful ? It does but think again. About two days later I heard a representative of the incumbent energy supplier explain on the radio that the success and growth of new environmentally friendly energy systems such as solar panels started to become a problem, because the national power grid was at it's maximum capacity and couldn't take all the new energy that was infused onto it by all these households that were under the impression they were making a contribution to making our planet a place that might actually survive.

No fact seems allowed to be taken for granted anymore and adding to the complexity in this confusing world is ... China. As if the French had a monopoly on people who could foresee the future, there was next to Jules Verne -who took us for a trip of twenty thousand leagues under the sea more than a century before Jacques Piccard would steer his bathyscaphe "Triëste" to the deepest point on earth, the Marianen Trench- that other Frenchman of worldfame, Napoleon, who predicted that "Lorsque la Chine s'éveillera, le monde tremblera" (When China will wake up, the world will tremble). Nobody will argue the fact anymore: China HAS waken up and the world is just dressing up to go and attend it's welcoming reception as the new kid on the block is hosting the Olympics ... the single biggest spor ... euh ... geo-political event in the world since it was assigned to the Middle Kingdom in 2001.

Shall we tremble ? It is not so difficult to see where the unease of the Western world with respect to China is coming from. Like it's very symbol, the dragon, China is a hybrid creature of the capitalism we have grown up with on the one hand and communism that we have been told was the enemy on the other hand. It just doesn't fit in a Cold War model, so you can't attack it like we used to see with the USSR (remember some slogans like: "Rather a nuclear missile in my garden than a Russian in my kitchen" ?). Okay, then let's go for the engagement model. But what happens when you engage a giant ? People see their jobs being taken away and handed over to Chinese who, after some trying, succeed in producing roughly the same quality as we did here, only at a fraction of the cost, and all because of the very system we have all been very happy with while all went well for our side: capitalism. We brought the gospel of capitalism to China and now China is outdoing us at our own game. It's difficult to grasp when you actually have to face the facts, it's actually quite ... complex.

The Chinese reality is evading us at every level. For years we have been predicting the decline of their economic model, for too much too fast. Still, the double digit growth is still on the tables and voices claming an imminent collapse have become increasingly rare. So could it be that China has developed a system that actually might work ? The problem with being the first is that you can't prove it until it has existed long enough to be able to withstand any further scrutiny. As for now, we still don't trust China will be able to sustain what it is doing right now, for it hasn't been done before. Not in a country of this scale. So now we tremble, for a collapse of the giant has become just as frightening as it's further strengthening. We can only hope that, as "capitalist roaders" amongst each other, in the end we will be able to find a modus vivendi ...

Pierre de Coubertin may turn around in his grave, but for this year's host of the Olympic Games, it is NOT about participating, it's all about winning. It's up to the rest of the world to decide how to deal with it.

Tiptoeing "The Line"

I think it's fair to say that, if you have any interest in nowadays China, even be it mildly, this guy should be on your radar screen. He definitely is on mine, but always with this big questionmark: how long still before he drops off the screen, how long before a missile takes him out of the air ? 

Tiptoeing "the line" is feasible when you know where the line is drawn, but in China it can be moved around at random, which makes everyone inside it's borders virtually a sitting duck. Fate can strike at any time, depending on how it's being moved.  That makes "walking the line" an extremely dangerous game and those who practice it may be in for some rough times ahead. Pan Yue seems to be one of those, as can be gathered again from his two article series on "Chinadialogue" (here and here).

   

What do we mean by the phrase “green China”? We mean a China that is sustainable, democratic, fair, harmonious and socialist. This conclusion has been reached after many years of struggle. Each word is the distillation of the blood, sweat and tears of several generations. We want to build a green China because green is the color of life, of sustainability. For something to be called “green” it has to be sustainable – and currently China has yet to achieve sustainability.

How about that for an opening line ? In the first two sentences you got the summary of what Pan Yue is about: deputy director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), he's at the same time a senior government official but just as well as one of China's most outspoken critics of it's current development model. Remark the precedence the "sustainable" and "fair" take over the CCP buzzword "harmonious" and the "democratic" over the "socialist". He may well be in charge of environmental issues, but his criticism goes way beyond that.

We have always taken “development” to mean economic development alone, and this to mean the simple accumulation of wealth. As a result, the pursuit of wealth has become the sole aim of society. In theory, the value of all resources is determined by the market price, but the latent value of scarce resources such as land, water, the environment, and biodiversity has been ignored. Many social resources have been absorbed by projects designed to help people “get rich quick”. Blind investment, continual rebuilding and a lifestyle based on massive consumption have built up an enormous financial risk. At the same time, the extreme worship of wealth has lead to a decline in consideration for others and a breakdown in social ethics and values.

Clearly this is not your average Joe caring only about that tree in his garden. Pan Yue actually dares to take on the Chinese economic miracle and actively question it. Not today's results, which he doesn't deny, but the aftermath that is to come. The whole model of development gets scrutinized and it doesn't pass the test in his eyes. Along the way, some painful introspection is part of the journey:

The World Bank has said that no other country has seen such a large income disparity emerge in just 15 years. For so long we criticized capitalism for being unsustainable, unfair and unequal, but if our socialism cannot solve problems of social inequality, then how can we claim our system is superior ?

And then finally the candle on the cake:

The longer I am involved in environmental protection, the more I realize the importance of democracy and the legal system. I am convinced that environmental protection cannot be advanced by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) alone. It requires action from the whole of society, and the establishment and implementation of democracy, and a mature legal system. Environmental protection is the ideal field in which to experiment with democracy and law, because it is a fairly apolitical area and one on which it is reasonably easy to reach a consensus.

The fact that he is responsible for environmental issues, may indeed be the reason why he is still around. The environment up till now has been a fairly open topic to discuss without too much interference. With articles like these, I would be surprised if the rules of the game were not soon to change, but no matter how, China -and by extension the entire world, since, let's face it, most of the countries we live in have not yet been shining examples in the environmental field either- will sooner or later have to answer to the questions that Pan is raising today. He's giving a wake-up call to the Chinese society in particular to start changing it's destructive habits and reorganize the value chain. The means he is advocating to do that, may bring him in the line of fire one day, but as long as he is able to tiptoe that invisible line, China AND the world had better listen to what he got to say. Every minute that he and the likes of his are out there should increase our hopes and confidence that China in the end will find the right balance, which will be to the benefit the entire world. If that were to become true, then China can rightfully and proudly call itself a "social"-ist state.

China through the eyes of Hedda Morrison

Sometimes, surfing the web, you just get lucky.

The day I stumbled into this website, must have been such a lucky day.

Hedda Hammer (Morrison) was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1908. From an early age she had an interest in photography. In 1929 she enrolled at the Bavarian State Institute for Photography in Munich where she studied for three years. Two years after graduation Hedda, like many German artists and intellectuals, made plans to leave Germany which was coming increasingly under Nazi control. She answered an advertisement in a German photographic journal and secured a job as manager of the Hartung’s Photo Shop in Peking. From 1933 Hedda Morrison managed the German-owned commercial photographic studio in the Legation quarter which had a well-established clientele of customers including diplomats and resident foreigners. After her contract expired in 1938, she continued to work in Peking as a freelance photographer.

During her thirteen years in Peking, Hedda Morrison took thousands of photographs that document architecture and streetscapes, craftspeople at work, street vendors, and religious or folk customs. She was particularly interested in traditional crafts and took many series of photographs that record processes of making. Being a long-term resident of Peking she had an established network of contacts that provided her with unique access to people and places.

When you get to see pictures like this, you can not but be amazed how far China has come in such a short time, while at the same time regret how much of the scenery has disappeared under the relentless sledgehammer of the construction boom. With some of the pictures however, you'll feel amazed how some things never seem to change at all

Having added Howard French's " A Glimpse of the World" to my blogroll just yesterday, it may be a good idea to have these scenes from pre-liberation China contrast with his photographic impressions of contemporary China. (Btw, French just put up a new, photography only, website called "Glimpse"

Be sure to check out the pictures on display on this well designed website of the Powerhouse Museum. The pictures are in Flash, which allows you to view them in stunning detail. And for those of you that crave to see more, just continue on to these pages of the Harvard University Library for almost 5000 pictures of this amazing German woman photographer.