I recently had a chance to talk to Aaron Naparstek of Livable Streets about how his organization advocates for healthier, less car-focused, urban environments. The initiative got started in New York when Aaron got fed up with the traffic noise outside of his window and began to think about transportation and urban planning issues. As these issues are very often local the model he envisioned was to first connect advocates in each community and then link them to a wider community within Livable Streets. A network-centric approach that harnesses the power and experience of the collective while still maintaining the local focus.

Today Livable Streets is a loose collection of around 300 influential bloggers, community activists and those with interest in urban planning. That network in turn reaches out and influences many of the 100 000 or so people who, by Aaron’s estimate, are interested in transportation issues in general. There are local communities in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and a new one on Capitol Hill.

The overall Livable Streets community is very collaborative, exchanging ideas and best practices on a daily basis. The community also rallies around bigger causes such as the recent $43 billion transportation component of the stimulus bill. Originally the majority of the money was earmarked for roads and highways leaving out public transport and other urban environment friendly investments. The community began to work on a campaign to influence the lawmakers and counteract the large highway lobby that was supporting the original bill. The community’s efforts, in collaboration with other advocacy groups, resulted in major adjustments to the bill.

The networked approach seems to be a very effective way to bring global expertise to support disparate local initiatives. While Livable Streets may be a relatively new effort the approach the organization takes should be a model for others.