One thing we’ve noticed over the last year or so is that city-specific content rules.
It’s all fine and well for us to talk generally about urban gondolas and cable-propelled transit, but it’s not until ideas specific to a given city are put forward that people really start paying attention.
That doesn’t apply simply to this site either. Once concepts and ideas are put forward for a city in specific, conversation is spurred by virtue of the fact that locals know their city better than anyone else.
So here’s an idea we’ve been toying with and want Gondola Project readers to voice their opinions on:
What if we created city-specific Gondola Project pages? Places where, for example, our Toronto gondola system could be analyzed, changed, debated and promoted. Or Brian’s Pittsburgh concept. Or Ryan’s Palmerston North proposal.
We could even produce city-specific pages to follow actual projects, such as the St. Louis gondola, Burnaby Mountain proposal in Vancouver, or even the London Cable Car (gondola).
What do people think? Is this a worthwhile endeavor?
Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments section (and be as harsh and honest as possible) and/or send us an email at gondola (at) creativeurbanprojects (dot) com.
5 Comments
The idea has appeal, and might generate more discussion and content on some systems, but I’m concerned about dividing activity between too many areas. This is a small enough community without diving up the conversation. As you’ve pointed out yourself, exploring existing systems from all over the world is very important because those systems contain ideas that are new to us. Diving up the content by city won’t serve that and just make people focus myopically on local systems, maybe missing the big ideas that are happening in another city’s section.
@ Erik,
Conceivably, yes, you may be right. What I’m more looking at is expanding the community and awareness. We’ve done a pretty good job here of raising awareness so far, but it takes a lot to get people’s attention. We’ve noticed a demonstrable spike in readership whenever someone (somewhere) on the internet proposes a locally-based cable system. That’s suggesting to us that maybe this is a tactic we could use to expand our reach.
Just occurred to me, that sort of thing really fits much better into a forum. No pressure.
@ Erik,
Yeah, the forum . . . the forum’s ready to go, we just need the time and people to help populate it with some conversations and topics prior to making it available. At the same time, maybe I’m just being gunshy and should open it and see what happens. Thoughts?
Open it. Keep subforums to a minimal to condense conversation. Keep it about cable technology in general to include ropeway cargo transport technology, as such technology bleeds over. Should help to organize all the technology terms to a wiki format one day. It lets topics and questions stay open instead of getting buried in old topic comments.