Monthly Archives: December 2009

Skill Sharing

Make Your Own Handcart/Bike Trailer

This is a lightweight handcart that can also be used as a bicycle trailer. The design shown is fabricated from steel sections that are generally available at comparatively low cost, angle section for the base frame and reinforcing bar for the upper frame.
Most of the load will be carried by the central cross-member of the [...]

Skill Sharing

Giant Puppets in the Likeness of Specific People

The Art and Revolution street theatre collective has used this simple quick technique to make easily recognisable giant puppets of famous—or infamous—public figures: President Clinton, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown or, on the positive side, Nigerian environmental leader Ken Saro Wiwa and former Irish political prisoner Roisin McAliskey.

Skill Sharing

A Recipe For Pedal Power

Recycling the remains of the automobile and bringing music and dancing to the streets. What could be more perfect than this easy to make bike-powered sound system?

Blog

More about relative freedoms of movement

Freedoms of movement are relative, as we learned by an Einsteinian thought experiment (posting of 31 October here). What does that help us with, in terms of planning transport?
I think it can help us understand why walking cities are better than automobile-cities, among other things.
When a certain amount of space enables higher [...]

Car Cult Review

Think or drive!

Robert Jones, a driver from Doncaster, UK, followed the instructions of his sat-nav a little too carefully – only noticing the limits of the machine as he hit a fence on the edge of a cliff. His sat-nav mistook a footpath for a road and he followed it. His sat-nav showed a road continuing over the [...]

Skill Sharing

How to organize an info stall

Follow these steps and you’ll do super!

It is necessary to have a visible sign of your organization or your slogan on t-shirts as well as on your table. In case you’re arranging a petition you’ll need a bigger banner or board so people can tell what it is about.
Remember that you are there to represent [...]

Skill Sharing

How to fight road building with noise pollution

Noise pollution is one of the worst things about roads going through, or close to, cities. To protest the plans for building a new highway ring around Stockholm (capital of Sweden), activists from Planka.nu and Klimax made a noise pollution action outside the Swedish parliament. This highway was planned to cross many neighbourhoods on the [...]

Skill Sharing

Creative Uses of Public Space

So you’ve read all about loss of home territory and you feel enraged. Want to take back the street from the cars and don’t know what to have there instead? Courtesy of a mad brainstorming moment in the Car Busters office here we have, in no particular order of preference, our suggestions of how to help rebuild community spirit, encourage laughter in your streets and make your neighbourhood a fun place.

Skill Sharing

How to create a Critical Mass

“What’s this all about?” ask amused and bemused pedestrians as hundreds of noisy, high-spirited icyclists ride past, yelling and ringing their bells. There are a wide variety of answers: “It’s about banning cars.” “It’s about having fun in the street.” “It’s about a more social way of life.” “It’s about asserting our right to the road.”

Skill Sharing

How to make a banner

Follow this guide to banner-making with the help of a literate adult and we guarantee you’ll have the
best banner in the parade!