Editor's note: For the past half-year Clive Doucet has traveled through Asia Minor and Europe examining some of the world's most ancient human settlements. In that time he visited ten Paleolithic and Neolithic sites, and dozens of still-occupied settlements from the Roman era. He reports that he toured the sites "by tram, bus, ferry, subway, overnight express train – and one private car rental". This post is his last installment filed from abroad, and, as Clive has now returned to Ottawa to take up a position as a Visiting Scholar at Carleton University's College of the Humanities, the "On Cities" feature will once again be written from his home base. There are no high rises in Jane Austen’s Bath. The one shopping centre I have been able to find is approached by foot and from the outside looks the same as an 18th century building. The buildings themselves are constructed from a honey-yellow limestone that glows in the sunlight and glowers in the rain. You can find all of the houses and apartments that the Austen family ‘let’ in Bath, they’re all a comfortable walk one from the other. The Austen’s family wasn’t rich. Jane’s father was a clergyman, farmer and school teacher and with eight children had to work hard to make ends meet. Yet, they all did very well. Two of her brothers became Admirals of the Fleet. Another became a clergyman like his father and took over the parsonage at Stevenson where Jane had been raised.  Like most families, the Austen’s had mixed luck. She had one brother who was born with a serious mental handicap. Another who went bankrupt as a banker and hurt many of his friends and family in the bank’s failure. Cassandra and Jane both lost their ‘men’ to sudden death.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="State-run high-speed train running beside privately-operated autoroute: the French do things differently"][/caption] The question you see often posed with some bewilderment in Canada and the U.S. is  - what is the matter with the French?  Why can’t they get it right?  Why can’t they get rid of their unions?  Why can’t they lower their agricultural tariffs and reduce their rich public services?  Don’t they know they can’t afford their school, heath, rail systems?  What’s the matter with them? The temptation when responding is to promenade from factoid to factoid.  I notice this whenever I write about some recent sustainability innovation in France, the Mia electric car, the Bordeaux city electric trams and now of course, the recently introduced electric-sharing car, the ‘blue car’ in Paris.  Where billionaire investor Vincent Bolloré has teamed up with Mayor Bertrand Delanoe to give Parisiens the car equivalent of their ‘velolib’ service. The ‘blue car’ is a subcompact that has a range of 250 kilometers on one charge with a top speed 130 km.  The Bolloré group has spent 1.5 billion euros to develop their new lithium, metal-polymer battery to power the cars. One of the returns they hope from ‘autolib’ is that it will promote and popularize their new battery. But nations are more than a collection of differing factoids.  How is that the folks who live in Bordeaux can choose expensive trams powered by underground wiring and the folks in Ottawa can’t even get a tram?   How is that Charles DeGaulle one of the most Conservative of Conservative French Presidents ever when asked by the private sector to build super highways across the country, similar to Ontario’s 401 and 400 series responded:  “If you want fast highways for your big trucks, you build them and toll them.  We already have a national road system – the N series.”

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Nothing overhead but the trees: electric-at-grade Bordeaux tram"][/caption] There is an extraordinary thing happening in France, the little villages are growing, not declining.  More than a 1,000 villages this year will apply to be reclassified as towns based on the fact that their population now exceeds 2,000 people.  It doesn’t surprise me because everywhere I travel I see signs of this resurgence and a strong attitude towards sustainability.  The French are just bringing out an all electric car as I write called the Mia.  Villages have ‘velo buses’ (bike buses) to collect children for school.  Bike buses are regular, supervised routes school children travel in groups to ensure their safety.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="Parisian public enjoying a Unesco World Heritage Site"][/caption] If I was still a city councilor and traveling around Europe ‘au frais de la princess’ (at public expense), I would be with a group of other city officials and we would be earnestly studying ‘best practices’. In Sweden, we would be looking at the ‘waste treatment and heating systems’  In Amsterdam, it would be bicycle transportation. In Bordeaux, it would be their new surface rail. It’s the city as machine approach to running a city. Find out who does what best (best practices) and then come home with a recommendation to copy it. This is how change usually happens. Innovation rarely happens by invention, it is transmitted mostly by imitation. People have run cities this way from the beginning of time. The phonetic alphabet was invented in a couple of small Sumerian cities in modern day Iraq and within a couple of generations, the concept of the phonetic alphabet had spread to Egypt and throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

It’s been about 1,500 years since the south of France was a Roman province but the remains of that civilization and its 500 years of settlement here are still present. Every Roman city of any importance had theatres, a race track or circus and of course the amphitheatre.  It is the ruins of the amphitheatres and theatres which every tourist is most aware of because they are still major points of urban reference.  The amphitheatre in Nimes is still used and still the central focus of the city where all the major entertainment events take place. The race tracks were the largest Roman entertainment centre but there is little left of these but the name, not even in Rome or Istanbul where the chariot teams used to race before 250,000 people.  Perge in Turkey has a small one still standing but that’s the only one I’ve been able to find.  On the other hand a surprising number of the amphitheatres and theatres are not only still standing, they are still in use.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Bolognese arcade: beauty no safeguard against grafitti"][/caption] Ravenna is only about an hour from Bologna by a slow train but what a difference an hour makes. Ravenna is a three star tourist city in line for the European Cultural Capital Award for which the competition is ferocious and for good reason.  For that year, the award distinguishes a city beyond all others and millions of tourists circle the city that wins the crown. You can see why Ravenna is on the short list.  It has some fabulous Byzantine mosaics.  They are so fine that when you enter the church and see them for the first time, they literally take your breath away.  The sun itself seems to pour out of the gold halos which surround faces that are as real as the man or woman sitting next to you on the bus, and Ravenna is clean, quiet and easy as pie to visit.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="Postcard view from the banks of the Danube"][/caption] On a bronze plaque, high above the Danube where you have a grand view of the bridges, the Hungarian parliament buildings and the beautiful 19th century buildings which line the river there is a bronze plaque, which many tourists stop to read.  It says: Budapest The banks of the Danube and the Buda castle quarter considering that it is one of the world’s outstanding urban landscapes and illustrates the great period in the history of the Hungarian capital was inscribed in 1987 on the - ‘World Heritage List’ – in accordance with the convention concerning the protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The site was extended in 2002 to include Andrassy avenue and its surroundings as a representative example of late 19th century social development and civil urban planning. It is spectacular as a view and wonderful to visit.  The first subway in Europe was built under Andrassy Avenue.  It’s still working away very efficiently and many still use it both locals and tourists alike.  The little stations are beautifully tiled and it’s surprisingly close to the surface, just a brief walk down a single flight of stairs and you’re there.  Within a minute, the little subway train arrives and we rode it to the western end where it deposited us in a gorgeous park with one of Budapest’s large ‘belle époque’ bathing establishments. The bathing house has interior hot pools and exterior hot pools with cascading water from fountains and a large swimming pool.   It is a delight to visit and as I watched an Hungarian man with one foot in the hot pool and one foot on shore, doing business on his cel phone, I couldn’t help but think the only thing missing was the toga.

[flickrslideshow acct_name="spacing" id="72157627028572526"] The Istanbul transit system is probably impossible for an Ottawa transitway planner to ever imagine, but as I hear the tram bell ring from my hotel room, I can’t help giving it the old college try. Imagine this. The Ottawa O train has a dedicated rail line and one train arrives at the station every 20 minutes, that’s about 300 people max every 20 minutes.  The Istanbul I line goes through the centre of Istanbul is not on a dedicated line.  It shares the roadway with other vehicles, but the tram arrives every 60 seconds, and it is double hitched.  Double hitched means it’s the equivalent of two O trains every time it arrives at the station.  So every 60 seconds, the I line carries the same number of people as O train carries in 40 minutes.