UrbanVision - Best Practices in Community Building for the Uninitiated

Challenges Entered:

One of the best sources for understanding the divergent elements of any community system are community benchmark data, which is a comprehensive look at a community system and features data critical to the essentials of community-building knowledge. These studies and their data are available from economic development organizations across the country, including special improvement district assoction websites, urban research bureau websites, and civic data source websites. The Urban Rise project will synthesize and present data from 20 of the most cutting-edge community building websites in the country. Data that will be presented in an easy-to-understand fashion, that offers the "new" community activist an opportunity to understand how their own community works and the ways to become active in the community building processes. Think of it as a leadership primer based on the best practices of community building and the most current data about the best communities in our country.

What else have you done in this area of work?

I worked for four years as an events and marketing manager for a downtown economic development agency called Downtown Alliance, an organization which sits at the nexus of my own local city-system. I was in a unique position to work with and interact with every single aspect of our system and to gain a thorough understanding of its needs. Having moved on from this position, I have founded a new project dedicated to exploring the connections between technology and community building, The Civil Society Project.

Project Details

Project url:

http://civilsocietyproject.blogspot.com

Project video:

Project Assessment

Financial support:

Project has financial support

Project goals:

Muriel Kramer - Chair of the Hopkinton, Mass. Board of Selectman - recently noted the problems of community building. She said that, "The problem we have . . . is with visioning, that ability to see how all the pieces work together - for example, how economic development can work with conservation and preservation. It can be hard to get people to imagine how all those pieces, that seem divergent, might work toward a unified whole."Very aply put.After working for four years in for a community building organization, I would say that by and large the greatest challenge was for members of the public - who were interested in becoming involved in building up and improving their own community - had a very difficult time understanding how all the pieces of their community system fit together.The UrbanVision mashup will change all that by bringing together divergent data from numerous sources across the web in a single easy-to-understand source that will help any budding community building volunteer or activist gain the necessary tools to comprehend how their own community is put together and how they can make a decisive impact for good, armed with the understanding. In essence, this mashup will help build the future volunteer community leaders who will know what needs to be done and how to get things done.

Identified Obstacles:

I have no expertise at creating mashups or designing visualizations for such. I am in need of much computer design and engineering help. I believe I have the data and content covered and can obtain and synthesize it with little difficulty, though I have discovered that having partners who can react to content, provide commentary on, and help point out missing points can be extremely important when putting together any sort of project.