Economic recovery, through a mobility lens

By Adam Beck | Curator at Bounce Lab | Secretariat at Center for Data Leadership | Executive Director at Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand

On 27 April the Smart Cities Council ANZ Mobility Task Force dedicated its monthly meet to undertake a discovery session around mobility and its role in the economic recovery.

We looked at four questions/prompts to guide the discussion:

1. What changes in mobility have you observed?

2. What might help in stimulating economic recovery?

3. What do you fear?

4. Three mobility priorities for our recovery?

After an intense 1hr session we certainly identified some priority strategies for strategically using mobility as an opportunity to drive economic recovery.

However, questions still remain.

How many of our ideas and recommendations are the ones we have been advocating all along - eg. greater allocation of road space to bikes and pedestrians, reduce speed limits in streets, expand out footpaths.

There are some strategies identified in the session that do have a direct link to jobs creation, and better accessibility to existing jobs when the CBD works transition back.

I asked the question about granular small business opportunities. How can people and bikes in the suburbs help the recovery for them? Are there innovative ways of having our cake (more walking and cycling in suburbia), and eat it as well (stimulate broken small businesses)?

What's the role of tech and data? What is the data telling us right now?

And on the popular cry for more cycle ways and temporary bike lanes, what about this article late last year from City Lab - Why We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes - asking the question "cars and trucks get billions in government money, why are we (urbanists) settling for broken twigs?"

Do we now have the burning platform we always needed to spark action and investment?

Listen and watch the Task Force meeting below.