The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) grants a number of fellowships each year through the Comparative Domestic Policy (CDP) program.
CDP fellowships, jointly supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo and the Bank of America Foundation with additional support provided by the Ford Foundation, are intended to provide opportunities for practitioners and policy-makers working on economic and social issues at the urban and regional policy levels to meet with their counterparts across the Atlantic and discuss policies and measures that have been implemented. Fellows can then return from their time overseas equipped with the ideas and insights necessary to effect significant and lasting positive change in their own communities.
**The Spring 2010 Call for Applications is now open. Further information can befound here.**
Matt Nichols is Principal Transportation Planner for the City of Berkeley, California, where he supervises the city’s efforts in mobility management/TDM, carsharing, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, and transit planning. He is a contributing author of Berkeley’s Climate Action Plan, and helped obtain financing for the Ed Roberts Campus, a universally accessible transit-oriented development at Berkeley’s Ashby BART Station.
Matt earned a Master’s in Urban Planning from UCLA. He has worked for ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the Bay Area Air Quality Managemetnt District, and has served on the San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s “Parking Policy for Smart Growth” technical advisory committee. Matt also served as a founding member of the Board of Directors of City CarShare, the car sharing non-profit for the Bay Area.
From February-May 2010, Matt will be based in Torino, Italy as the Comparative Domestic Policy Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, where he is investigating European cities that have made recent significant transit investments to compare approaches to station area planning and multi-modal accessibility.
He is married to Margi Clarke, is the father of two boys, Kiernan and Eli. They have been living without owning a car for 6 years.
Very informative Pedestrian Summit today at the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC): http://www.mtc.ca.gov/meetings/events/ped_summit.htm One of my colleagues, Bob Schnieder was able to speak about research UC Berkley has done on developing bike and pedestrian count and modeling methods and Meghan Mitman from Fehr and Peers shared her expertise and discussed a best practice website her firm has put together: http://coolpedestrianenvironments.org/
In other news, it’s interesting that two transportation oriented organizations have decided to rebrand themselves recently: TransLink the Bay Area’s regional transit fare card will change itself to Clipper (http://2cu2.sl.pt ; see also the post by the Bay Area’s Akit) through a $500,000 rebranding campaign; and the UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center will become SafeTREC, the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center. (http://www.safetrec.berkeley.edu/)
Both names are about as interesting as the iPad; would not have been my choices since one sounds like people are riding trains like pirates and the other big Vulcans fans who walk around saying ‘live long and prosper.’ Both still have great things going for them but in an era of fiscal crisis, it makes me wonder if rebranding transportation is responsible? It doesn’t seem to address or be the solution to ridership or research issues. It is money well-spent on changing transportation mode shift or doing good transportation research?
