Velco City í Kaupmannahöfn

Morten Lange er staddur í Kaupmannahöfn og sendi okkur eftirfarandi pistil:

On Tuesday the Velo-City Global Conference opens in Copenhagen, and will last for 4 days.

I can warmly recommend taking a look at the program and abstracts available at the web-site, www.velo-city2010.com. I trust that also for people not attending the conference, the programme and abstracts can supply useful pointers to people working in interesting fields, regarding cycling and the South.

There are several workshops focusing on the Global South's  experience in cycle-promotion, as this is supposed to be the first Global Velo-City conference.  (But there have been some  "predecessors", arranged by "another tribe" : VeloMondial.net  )

Vandana Shiva, from India will deliver a plenary talk. Shiva holds a Phd in Physics, is an activist and receiver of the Right Livelihood Award ( the "Alternative Nobel price" ) for work for Indian farmers and biodiversity, amongst  other things.  In the programme presentation we are told: "Dr Shiva sees the bicycle as an instrument of democracy and as an essential element of green mobility."

Other plenary speakers include former mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, that helped transform transportation in that city.

In a workshop titled "Developing countries collaborating for the future", there will be presentations from ITDP Mexico and UNDP Kenya.

The conference has 940 registered participants, in spite of the fact that only one year has passed since the Velo-City 2009 conference in Brussels.  The participant come from from about 50 countries, the largest numbers coming from northern Europe and then the rest of the OECD, but also including from Souh-East Asia, India, China, Africa and Latin America.

The strongest presence of the international press at the conference is French. Journalists from Le Monde and Radio France International are on the list of participants.