Talk:New Mobility Agenda

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Contents 1 This article doesn't belong in the wikipedia 2 Article needs to be cleaned up 3 Links 4 Realistic? 5 mobility and Transportation 6 NPOV

[edit] This article doesn't belong in the wikipedia

Am I alone in thinking this, and New mobility, read like original research, and POV?

Wikipedia:No original research

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

Thanks/wangi 14:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you Wangi, I would like to try to clarify in both cases, taking them in opposite order. Let me start however by saying that your challenge is well taken.

The guarantee of neutrality of point of view is understood, and this is the reason that I have invited the very large number of experts and colleagues working on these issues world wide to come to what I propose in both cases as a draft, and to add their expertise and sources to both entries. (You can see the letter of invitation and guidelines, if you click the Wikipedia link on the top menu of http:www.newmobility.org. (Given that it's a vacation time in much of the world, this process may take a couple of weeks before bearing fruit.)

No, the Agenda does no original research. Rather it is a collection point for the innovations, projects and research of, once again, leading edge researchers and practitioner world wide. If you want to get a feel for the range and the exceptional quality of the backgrounds and accomplishments of these people, I would invite you to go to the Kyoto World Cities 20/20 Challenge program, itself started by more than one hundred and fifty people and groups working along these important lines, whose qualifications and accomplishments you can see if you click the Advisory Council link on the top menu of [[1]].

I agree that given the lack of broad familiarity with this kind of Self-Organizing Collaborative Networks concept, it will probably take some time for me to get this quite right. That said, if you are looking for an analogy of course, maybe the Wikipedia itself is not that far off.

In a final note, let me just point out that this entire program is 100% unfunded and that all the collaboration of those who share their information and experience is done without a penny going in any direction. Now that too may sound familiar to you.  ;-)

PS. I keep working in my available time almost daily in trying (a) to tighten up the orignal defnition (yes, still far too long) and (b) to improve the content and references within the entry. I really do want it to be, as someone put it, of "encyclopedia quality". ericbritton 15:15, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

From the Car Free Days Collaborative

Wikipedia - Help define "New Mobility". Because even though the concept has been around for more than a decade, it is still not very well known nor understood. We would thus like to invite you to help provide a clear public statement of what it is and how it works. The instrument: the current listing in the Wikipedia. A major information resource for journalists, scholars, students and policy advisors.

Collaborative factfinding, even if not original research, is in clear violation of wikipedia policies!

Please migrate this to campaigns wikia. In fact, campaigns wikia already has a similar article: [2] 82.32.60.14 12:30, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks you for asking. Let me see if I can help in this. The New Mobility Agenda is neither a campaign, nor a research project. It is an international institution which while virtual and collaborative has existed for close to two decades now and which has already changed policy and practice in many cities and other places around the world.

If the New Mobility Agenda fails your test, then so too do the World Resources Institute, the Hudson Institute, and the Stockholm Environment Institute among many others who have found their place in (and here I chose my word carefully) our encyclopedia. Unless it is your view that institutions worth repertorying here must have bricks and mortar to justify their existence – a rather surprising claim under these circumstances I would respectfully suggest.

Now does the New Mobility Agenda have anything to do with campaigns?. You bet we do, but that is quite another kettle of fish. Let me take the latest one by way of example, the New Mobility Advisory/Briefs at http://www.newmobilityadvisory.org. But that and others along these lines are entirely different propositions.ericbritton 20:45, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

PS. You mention a "similar article: [3]", which I can understand after a quick read might seem to do the job. But please try to take the time to understand what this is all about. These are critical transorming issues for our society and age, and if you think that you can do your homework on them in a few minutes, well I must have missed you at Harvard. ericbritton 20:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

It might help if the lede was re-written to say (using your words), "New Mobility Agenda is a virtual and collaborative international institution..." Right now it isn't clear what the NMA is. -Will Beback 22:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree that this is not an encyclopedia article; it is pushing the agenda. The article should simply explain that it is a phenomenon or movement characterized by such and such, and give link to the new mobility web sites. -Ian Ford, Aug 06

[edit] Article needs to be cleaned up

I need a little help here and if possible I would like to take it from the top: solve that one and then move on down into the guts of our case. Are you suggesting (in the first place) that I need to tighten up the first line of the entry (as I have done today in carsharing for example – say, something on the order of 100-150 crisp words to define the entry? And then go on to provide the necessary background, references, links -- so as to make sure that this is not some figment of my imagination, harangue, spam or plan for a research project? If that’s it, I’m off to work. ericbritton 21:15, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links

Well, yes I guess that's the case. Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles and Wikipedia:Manual of Style should help you out there. You also need to have a good look at the external links section, normally only a few are added and only when they are absolutely required, see: Wikipedia:External links. Also internal links isn't a standard Wikipedia section and infact they are the same as see also, again far too many - what is the use of so many links for a reader? Thanks/wangi 21:38, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, just to add - you'll want separate References and External links sections. Wikipedia:Citing sources. wangi 21:41, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I realize that for many people the listing of all these links internal and external may seem unnecessary and even to some possibly a sign of incompetence. However, it is in fact the nature of the New Mobility Agenda approach, which consists of the selection and orchestration of a very large number of measures and tools, not all of which either sufficiently well known nor entirely understood. So without all these details you have no New Mobility Agenda. On the other hand, if you have ONLY the details you have just “sustainable transportation”. (Now I realize that this is not quite fair, but I put it in these terms in an attempt to get the underlying Agenda idea of strategic policy to the fore.) But if that is not yet clear, or if you think it’s wrong, please come back at me and I’ll try to do better. ericbritton 18:18, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Realistic?

I think it's worth noting that this whole idea is stupid and would never work in the U.S. As it is, the article is just a commercial for the New Mobility Agenda which lists all of its supposed benefits without any discussion of its feasibility, its costs, or its cons. You can't tell me that those kids are not going to get run over in this picture: [4]

Well, okay, maybe they won't, but the article still needs some balance. Are higher population densities really all that desirable? Do you really want to be limited in where you can go, e.g. you're at the grocery store and you realize that you need to make a stop at a farmer's market ten miles away- now you have to take the bus home to get to where your car is, drive there while stopping every fifty feet to allow slow, smug, ipod-listening pedestrians and smelly hippy bike-riders of questionable gender to cross the street, and fill up with the new tax-inflated $10/gal gas, all just to buy a fresh watermelon? I think not; I'll keep my car and my thirty mile commute, thank you very much. And don't say that the farmers market will just move itself closer to the grocery store- there's no room because it all got built-up with starbucks-es and pretentious 'our culture is so superior because we accept other cultures which means we view them like a bunch of ants running around and doing things in a peculiar foreign ant-way, and our art is all great because it's so old and uses multi-syllabic words to describe' museams. BULLCRAP.

Yes, it's realistic because it has already proven to work in countries such as the Netherlands. this picture is the reality in the Netherlands. There, the majority of kids cycle to school. The question is, will the rest of the world be prepared to adopt it?

[edit] mobility and Transportation

There are certainly people working in this area. For example the new 'Centre for Mobility Research' at Lancaster University in the UK sociology Department. To quote:

"The study of 'mobilities' is a newly emerging interdisciplinary field in which Lancaster University is developing particular strengths. The concept of 'mobilities' encompasses both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as well as the more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public space, and the travel of material things within everyday life. Recent developments in transportation and communications infrastructures, along with new social and cultural practices of mobility, have elicited a number of new research initiatives for understanding the connections between these diverse mobilities.

"This is an area of exceptional growth of academic and policy debate and interest, and Lancaster has already established a distinct market 'niche' combining leading social theory with grounded, policy-oriented empirical research.

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/cemore/

Mobility Research seems to focus on the need for mobility and to think mobility systemically, about complexity, and come from a social angle. Sustainable Transport tends to focus on individual modes and come from a transport angle. Increasingly transport policy is driving thinking towards the 'softer' end of the spectrum looking for social development rather than concrete and metal (certainly this is true from the UK angle).

Personally I currently find it a bit of a head-trip separating the current entries for the New Mobility Agenda entry and the Sustainable Transportation entry (which has a lot of shared content with this one). The Sustainable transport entry is much less contentious.

I would like to see this article stay but be tightened up, shorted, and referenced as proposed. I would like to see input coming from other recognised authorities on the subject to try to balance it out.

[edit] NPOV

Too gushing - not written in aneutral tone. Needs serious work Spartaz 09:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)