Transport Transition Engineering

Invention powered by flipping the perspective

The Transition Engineering Approach uses all of the knowledge built up over the past century in Civil Engineering of Transport Infrastructures, Urban Planning, and Traffic Engineering, but flips it over to look at the PURPOSE of the personal transport activity for the household, and the various destinations. ?The PURPOSE is not transport mobility. The PURPOSE isn’t flowing traffic, spending time in the car or parking. The PURPOSE is not burning fuel, depleting or charging batteries. The PURPOSE isn’t to respond to policies or to take climate action. These are all FUNCTIONS.?

?The PURPOSE of a personal transport trip is to engage in a regular activity (work, school), access services (medical, hair cut), access goods (market, shopping), engage in a leisure or social activity (visiting family, entertainment, cultural activity, sport, nature).

I have a feeling you are not seeing why this difference between FUNCTION of the engineered system and PURPOSE of the human system is important. Let's explore an analogy.

A human being has a Primary PURPOSE – to survive and thrive.

The human body has an amazing array of systems that all need to FUNCTION for us to enjoy our life.

The FUNCTION of the circulatory system is to move oxygen, nutrients, wastes, chemical feedstocks, and biochemicals around to the different organs. Each organ has its own FUNCTION. There are hard, infrastructure systems (bones, teeth, nails); there are food, air, water and waste processing systems (stomach, lungs, kidneys, liver, bowels, lymph glands); there are feedback control systems (pancreas, thyroid, adrenal gland); and there is the system that connects the conscious human being with their body for the PURPOSE of living (brain, nervous system).

Each of the systems in the body can be studied independently, measurements can be developed, tests can be taken, diagnoses can be made of dysfunction or disease. Each of the organs can be understood at structural level and at a cellular level. The dynamics of the metabolism and regulatory systems can be studied, measured, and mapped for interactions with each other. Doctors can diagnose diseases or degraded functions, and prescribe interventions. At the end of the day, there can be state of health, or not. The miracle of the body is that it doesn’t build any elements that are inefficient or unnecessary (except appendix or tailbone), and it all works to do all those functions in real time with tight controls so that the HUMAN inhabiting the body can survive and thrive.?

There has been some recent modelling using interdisciplinary perspectives on urban design which they are calling “Urban Metabolism”.? It is a kind of “material and energy flow” analysis of a city. ?The methods are mostly diagnostic. The aim of the methodologies are largely developing regulations or policies.?The diagnosis of our cities which have been planned and developed for the MOBILITY of PERSONAL CARS is not good. The metabolism is not efficient, it is not healthy, it is killing us and Nature.

As an engineer, I want understanding of fundamentals and modelling tools that let me design for function, to achieve the purpose in the most efficient and elegant way possible. As a Transition Engineer, I want to understand the problems of the incumbent systems, but also to understand processes that drive emergent development and regeneration. Transition Engineering of Transport will invent transition mechanisms that trigger transformation of existing urban form into a new form, function, feedback controls, energy and material flows that sustainably and efficiently serve the PURPOSE of surviving and thriving of the human individuals and society.?

The drivers for growth in the current city are the two symbiotic systems of property development and civic infrastructure and services. These drivers have ontology, approaches, methods and tools used to conceive, finance, deliver and operate the built environment. ?Within the urban metabolism established by these builders and operators, the households and enterprises go about their cyclical, habitually established behaviours for their own purposes of surviving and thriving. While the ontology of the developers and civic planners is growth, this growth is actually degrading the urban metabolism and increasing risks of un-sustainability.

It is interesting to note that there was a pre-fossil metabolism and urban culture that didn't have personal cars in the picture. In the first step of the InTIME Design we take a trip back in time to 1911 and have a look around. We are time-travelling to understand that there are different ways that property and civil infrastructure can be organised. This location, now unfit for human habitation, was the farm where my husband's ancestors lived. The fossil-fuelled world grew organically, with forms dictated by the fast flow of traffic, with rules and behaviours emerging along with the profits to both drive and manage the growth. The fossil-fuelled built environment, metabolism, and behaviours are not sustainable.

Imagine that we are watching a blockbuster movie where the hero saves the future. Imagine that the planetary thermal balance is achieved, because the fossil fuel drops down to a small fraction of what the city and its hinterland and supply chains were built to use. How did the people of this pretty normal city somewhere in the middle of America adapt?

The Transition Engineering work starts with the built environment as it currently exists, characterises the usefulness and necessary activities of all the places, then invents, designs and creates the metamorphosis mechanisms that transition the fossil-fuelled system to about 5% of the current fossil-fuel throughput. The transition mechanisms are a re-development of the built environment and self-organising shift from high to low energy as the driver for the emergent development.?

I have a feeling you aren't understanding this idea of metamorphosis, so let's dig in.

Yes, I’m basically talking about metamorphosis as we first learned about it in primary school. An egg hatches and a very hungry, leaf-destroying, caterpillar grows rapidly. Then one day, the caterpillar stops, uses a mechanism we didn't see before and spins a cocoon around itself. Over some weeks, the organism re-organises its physical form, using the energy and material it already has acquired, into a new, delicate form with tiny appetite, no growth but the ability to fly, pollenate, sip nectar, mate and reproduce. The metamorphosis is self-organising, efficient, transformational. The purpose of the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is surviving and thriving of the species within a ecosystem context with the rest of nature.

What if belief could overturn nature?

Imagine if a new caterpillar culture grew, where they became convinced that they could continue devouring leaves and growing forever? That would mean the end of survival of the species. The belief of a species that goes against Nature is a false belief. The caterpillar has no choice in the long term, it must transition to the new diet of tiny sips of nectar, and it must give back to nature by being a pollinator and a tasty meal for birds. Luckily for the organism, the instructions for sustainability are already in it’s DNA, and it doesn't get strange ideas about the need for continuous growth.

Are we smarter than bugs?

Urban built environment and personal transport are not only unsustainably dependent on fossil fuel, the drivers for growth go against nature. What invention could possibly occur now that would use the energy, materials, and drivers already in the energy intensive, nature-consuming, super fast growing city to metamorphose into an elegant, beautiful, non-growing, sustainable metabolism, in reciprocal balance with Nature?? Imagine a mutation of the current urban development DNA that can unlock self-organising and re-generating as a superior ontology for investment and construction than sprawl.? My previous research has been aimed at this invention. Transition Engineering will use all of the previous research to understand flows, human activities, cycles, processes, infrastructure, feedback controls. We will create the disruptive pathways and transition mechanisms to initiate the metamorphosis. We will engineer the digital infrastructure to shift the property development and civic planning ontology to re-development and self-organisation, driven by the purpose to survive and thrive and reciprocate with nature.?

We will work through the Transition Engineering invention process, pull together the knowledge and capability for two primary objectives: Invent, build and demonstrate the transition mechanisms, and build the feedback control system to regulate the system for health and wellbeing for all into the distant future.?

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I hope that makes sense. We don’t have time to study the caterpillar in more depth, or to try to convince the worm not to devour the world. We know it can’t continue. We know enough. Now we have a small window of time to mutate our cultural DNA to achieve the metamorphosis.

What does this cultural DNA for transition look like? Watch for updates from the Transition Engineering Lab.