[sustran] Regional focus for sustran-discuss: Asia or the global South?

[Paul Barter]

Dear sustran-discussers

 

There is a suggestion to rethink the geographical focus of this forum,
sustran-discuss.   

 

I want your views on which regional focus would be best for
sustran-discuss:

 

A.    Should we be clearer about our regional focus in order to keep the
discussions more focused and consistently "on topic"? 

 

B.     If you said yes to A above, then which of the following do you
prefer? 

1.   Keep things as they are:  we say in our blurb that our focus is on
developing countries

2.   Revert to the original focus on "Asia" (rich and poor alike)

3.   Other ways to define our regional focus? (I am open to suggestions)

 

WHY BOTHER THINKING ABOUT A CHANGE?

* We started with an Asia focus, which we mostly still have, even though
the list description says we focus on the 'global South' (developing
countries).  

So, in practice, 2 probably reflects the discussions here more
accurately than 1. So maybe switching to "Asia" would be clearer?
High-income Asian cities (Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, HK and Singapore)
often come up and they certainly feel relevant enough even if they are
not in developing countries.

* In practice, we don't really get much material here on Africa, Latin
America, south-western Asia or Eastern Europe anyway.  

* Also in practice, we get a bit TOO much discussion on issues in the
West (Europe, North America, Australia/NZ) and we often need to remind
everyone that there are various other forums better suited to such
material. 

 

Your views? 

 

Paul

 

Paul A. Barter | Assistant Professor | LKY School of Public Policy
National University of Singapore | 469C Bukit Timah Road | Singapore
259772 | Tel: +65-6516 3324 | Fax: +65-6778 1020 | paulbarter at nus.edu.sg
| http://www.spp.nus.edu.sg/Faculty_Paul_Barter.aspx
http://reinventingtransport.blogspot.com/

 

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