Bicycle city development is a part of a new four-party project

Bicycle city development is a part of a new four-party project

During February 2012 to April 2015, the National Municipal League of Thailand (NMT) carried out the Thai Municipalities toward Low Carbon City in Honour of HM the King’s 84 Anniversary Project with clear success, creating great interest in the development of low carbon city at local level.  It therefore thought of moving continuously forward to create wider and deeper impacts. The NMT consequently discussed with three other agencies – Thailand Cycling Club (TCC)’s Walking and Cycling Public Policy Actualisation Project, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), and Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organisation (TGO) – and the four parties agreed to work together in a new project, Low Carbon City, Bicycle City, and Disaster-Aware and Response-Ready City Building for Livable and Sustainable Localities Project.  This two-year project from September 2015 to August 2017 aims to develop 15 model cities and 15 network cities that learn from the model ones.

The first activity of the project was a meeting of its Working Group for Development of Concepts, Success Indicators and Guidelines for Development of Low Carbon City, Bicycle City and Disaster-Aware and Response-Ready City, which acts as the project steering committee, on 12^th November 2015.  The meeting was attended by 20 people who were members of the working group, consisting representatives of the four partners, representatives from 7 departments of any municipality, and project staffs, headed by Chairman of the NMT’s Environment Committee.  TCC was represented by Mr. Gawin Chutima, a committee member.

The working group was briefed about results of the previous project and main ideas of the new project of which the Whole Municipal Approach would be adopted – the concepts of low carbon city, bicycle city, and disaster-aware and response-ready city would be structurally integrated into development of municipality with concrete actions taken by all seven departments of each municipality.  Work plan and timeline of the project was also discussed.  Members of the working group were then divided into small groups according to areas of work in a municipality to discuss how the concepts could be integrated and corresponding actions taken in each area of work or department.  Results were reported to the plenary.

Now an announcement would be made to potential municipalities, such as those whose carbon footprint had been assessed, inviting them to apply to take part in the project.  Then selection would be done with predetermined criteria, and a contract would be signed with each of them before the end of the year, and training organized in the first quarter of 2016 for their resource person/support team. Development of model cities would begin in the second quarter.

Reported by Gawin Chutima, TCC Committee Member

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