[sustran] Re: Regional focus for sustran-discuss: Asia or the globalSouth?

[Brendan Finn]

Dear Paul, 

Thanks for stimulating this discussion. 

- I agree that there should be clearer regional focus. I support the suggestion from Carlos about 'Global South'. I think there is great value in sharing challenges, practice, experience, and opinion across the continents. I note that some not-so-south locations share characteristics of society or transportation
- I would not exclude contribution of experience from 'Global North' - i.e. from North America, Europe and Australia/NZ (which of course are the most South of all). However, they should be in an 'additive' way to discussion which keeps its focus on the target regions
- We need to avoid analysis or judgement which uses the perspective and value set of 'Global North' to comment on 'Global South', except in cases where this is clearly useful and adds value
- We should exclude the use of Sustran forum by 'Global North' participants as yet another place to fight out their own old arguments

I join with others to warmly congratulate you on achieving 10 years of Sustran.

With best wishes, 


Brendan.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Brendan Finn          e-mail : etts at indigo.ie          tel : +353.87.2530286
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Paul Barter 
  To: Sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org 
  Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 10:15 AM
  Subject: [sustran] Regional focus for sustran-discuss: Asia or the globalSouth?


  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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