Behaviour Change, Empowered Citizens and Sustainable Communities, with Rachel Smith

In this episode I have a fantastic conversation with Rachel Smith, who is a previous podcast guest, and also a transport planning and demand management consultant. This episode is actually the audio from the video interview I did with Rachel, which is part of the series I've been doing on YouTube catching up with previous guests during this time of much change in the world. So if you want to see those interviews you can head on over to our YouTube channel to catch up with what previous guests like Ryan McManus, Debbie Reynolds, Sally Illingworth, and Jonathan Reichental have been getting up to in the last few months. In this episode Rachel and I chat about the work she does in demand management and why it's important to Smart Community approach, plus what crises can show us about how we can use resources in Smart ways. We discuss what COVID has exposed about the way people live, and the relationship between consumerism and mobility/transport. Rachel and I also talk about why it's so important to have foundational systems that underpin the sexy tech solutions like Mobility as a Service, as well as involving end users in designing the solutions so we're not just giving more options to people who already had options and continuing to leave out the people with the most at stake. We cover the reasons we should be communicating technical things and important decisions in plain English to the public, how we can encourage more informed and engaged citizens, and the power of government directives to shape public behaviour. Rachel also tells us what she learned from her research and the three things required for human behaviour change. We finish our chat discussing why we should forget our fear of failure and put our best and most innovative ideas for post-COVID life forward so we can shape the future. Because this wasn't a usual podcast interview, Rachel doesn't tell us where to connect with her at the end of the episode, but you can find her on LinkedIn or at her website, and the links are in the description of this episode. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it. Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community Connect with Rachel via LinkedIn or her website cyclingrachelsmith.com Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.