Behavior Change Case Study: Elemental Excelerator – The Equity & Access Program
Elemental Excelerator was first established in Hawaii as a place-based, clean energy accelerator. Its model is reflective of the fact that the organization’s founding roots were laid upon a set of islands, and was designed to help people on those islands reach their fullest potential. Accordingly, Elemental centers in its work an ethos of deep respect for relationships and for the land, which are essential for anyone living or doing business in a small place inhabited by a small community of people and surrounded by water.
Behavior Change Case Study: Sacramento Municipal Utility District – Driving Electrification
Much can be learned about promoting individual and population-scale behavior change from SMUD’s efforts to drive electrification across its residential and business customer base. Arlen stated that his team’s work was informed directly by the MINDSPACE and EAST frameworks. Specifically, by building an engagement strategy informed by human behavior and known cognitive biases in the human brain, along with nuanced data and trends about their customers, SMUD was able to directly engage with their customers in ways that were meaningful to them and responsive to their particular tendencies.
Off-Hours Delivery: Right-Sizing Policies When One-Size-Fits-All Just Won’t Do
Implementing off hours delivery (OHD) across a region can be particularly advantageous. In São Paulo, shifting inner urban core deliveries to off-hours means carriers can use their trucks by day to do suburban or rural deliveries, and by night to complete inner city deliveries. This complementary pattern means carriers’ assets are in productive use around the clock, thereby lowering their costs overall. In fact, a major driver of this policy shift has been the carrier companies’ syndicate. They have been pressuring government and receivers to use OHD because it’s in their financial best interest, as our pilot has confirmed.
Behavior Change Case Study: Cleveland Neighborhood Progress – The Racial Equity & Inclusion Initiative
The approach taken by Erika and the Cleveland Neighborhood Progress team to develop and drive a racial equity and inclusion initiative is as multifaceted as it is inspiring. In developing and nurturing the projects and partnerships that comprised the Year of Awareness Building, the Cleveland Neighborhood Progress team appears to have drawn from many aspects of the EAST and MINDSPACE frameworks.
Behavior Change Case Study: The National Street Service Project
The kinds of behavior change NSS sought centered on how people think, how they vote, and how they engage in and advocate for change. The idea that seeded the genesis of and strategy behind the National Streets Service project was that transforming streets for a human scale would require building political capital. Thus, the NSS project was designed to engage people meaningfully and thoughtfully by embracing the tendencies of human nature and behavior.
Behavior Change Case Study: People’s Liberty
The People’s Liberty philanthropic lab was established with the intention of changing the field of foundation philanthropy and the potential scale of impact such institutions can bring about in the community development realm. While Eric acknowledges that the actual change realized by People’s Liberty was in the way it redefined community development, it’s clear there is much to be learned from the behavior change aspects of this initiative.
Testing for Efficacy: Assessing the Real Impacts of E-Commerce Policy & Practice
Europe has been experimenting with and using different types of package pickup strategies. For example, in France, there are pick-up points at either post offices or neighborhood businesses, where packages are dropped for the neighborhood. Residents then pick them up at one centralized location. This reduces the vehicle miles traveled (VMTs) involved in going from house to house to house or building to building to building for individual deliveries.
Planning & Implementing BRT in South Africa
A big assumption was that BRT would take root and work well in South Africa simply because it has been so successful across Latin America. Unfortunately, while yes, BRT has been very successful in Latin American cities, as with most things, there’s no such thing as “one size fits all” when it comes to transit.
Off-Hours Consumer Delivery Systems May Unlock Sustainability at Scale
There are several parts of the web where change needs to happen, and enlightened policy has the potential to facilitate change across that web. Shifting delivery times seems straightforward and simple, but moving an entire community and its supply chains to greater sustainability requires multiple interventions happening in parallel—with consumer behavior, with infrastructure, and with use of technology.
What it Takes for Cities to Practice Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive cities are analytical. Their leaders set a balanced vision for the future of the community, and then collect and study data, continually look for patterns, and use that information and analysis to inform long-range planning and infrastructure investments to realize that vision.
How Participatory Data Collection is Shaping China’s Mobility & Climate Policy
Ms. Xumei Chen works as one of the key research fellows in the China Urban Sustainable Transportation Research Center (CUSTReC), an international think tank on urban transport under Ministry of Transportation, China. In early July, Meeting of the Minds Consultant and Writer Kate O’Brien connected with Ms. Chen to learn about her research and policy work focused on public transport systems in her rapidly urbanizing country.