Hi Pat, good to have you here. Hope you have a good experience here and find Appropedia useful, personally and for your transport project, and we look forward to learning from you.
Let me know if you have questions or feedback or need any help. --Chriswaterguy 16:52, 8 October 2012 (PDT)
Backing up key pages
I'd like to back up some key pages I've made contributions towards offline. User:Chriswaterguy reckons it can be done ... now need to figure out how.
Links to useful discussions at Village Pump and others re Appropedia history, missions, plans
- http://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:A_history_of_collaboration
- http://www.appropedia.org/Green_wikis
- "The approach of the Appropedia community has been to see articles on sustainability, green design, appropriate technology, renewable energy and international development, in their social, cultural and technological aspects, as part of a spectrum of related and overlapping topics, which are therefore best covered on a single wiki."
- http://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Village_pump#Things_that_should_not_be_on_appropedia (Contains a good discussion of "towards quality control, ranking, and a scientific board" - and differentiating more project pages from encyclopaedic ones).
- http://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Village_pump#Organizational_point_of_view
Welcome!
Thanks
Hi Pat,
Thanks for your great contributions here. I agree with your sentiment at Sustainable transport. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to assist you. --Lonny 01:50, 14 November 2012 (PST)
Thinking about Appropedia and a Cities Portal
I guess this is a 2-part post and suggestion for response:
- (A) An initial proposal for "Cities" or an equivalent (e.g. Sustainable Cities) to be in the left sidebar of "Areas" on the Appropedia site.
- (B) An effort to clarify the hierarchy of pages in that area that already exist.
Starting with (A) ... I think the case for this is the much-quoted statistic that in the last couple of years demographers think that > 50% of the global population would be urbanised (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/26/news/UN-GEN-UN-Growing-Cities.php).
I realise a focus on Cities is a fair way from much of the historic focus of the Appropriate Technology movement on rural communities. But I suggest given the above, a holistic approach to Appropriate Development and Sustainability globally should take cities as one of the major starting points and focus areas. Note, I'm not suggesting Appropedia should be Pro cities - in fact I agree that in many cases putting effort to improving the quality of life & sustainability of rural and village residents is important to slow urbanisation and support traditional cultures etc. BUT cities will continue existing, and in both the developed & developing world there's pressing needs for more sustainable & appropriate approaches to provision of life's needs & goals in urban regions.
I see there is already "Construction" in the list, but I think "Cities" as a category would emphasise more holistic integration of this with some other categories - e.g. transport, social life, community planning approaches in more urban settlements.
Which brings me to (B), relevant pages.
I notice that http://www.appropedia.org/Cities currently redirects to the "Built environment" page, which also has its own category.
Then there is the high-level page "Sustainable cities", which also has a Category, and "Sustainable city living", which doesn't have a category but has a (nicely done) Portal page.
I think its worthwhile clarifying the relationship between these pages and possibly re-factoring ... e.g. perhaps a new Cities top-level Portal and category, closely linked to the Sustainable cities page.
Does anyone have any opinions/views on all of this?
I guess one of my rationales is not just a wish to organised current info better, but make it more appealing for other people worldwide working on sustainable cities / urban design to get involved, if the landscape of pages better matches how people are educated in urban planning & urban design schools.
--PatSunter 00:59, 21 May 2013 (PDT)