Social Web Developers: Urban Transformers
My overarching focus on this blog has always been to cover and promote innovations in the diverse urban planning field.
As a catchall profession, urban planning tenets are applicable to all facets of daily life—above all else, as planners, our primary concern is to create healthy, sustainable, and happy communities. (If you’re somewhat perplexed about the planning practice, please read this post from May.)
With the advent of the Social Web, software developers—seeking the trifecta of personal, professional, and financial satisfaction—continually develop products that promote healthy, sustainable, and happy communities.
I am talking about urban oriented applications in the iPhone App Store; web/mobile social networking applications (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, etc); Government 2.0/civic engagement applications (CitySourced); crowdsourcing forums (DIY City) and blogs (Neighborhoodr); and, purveyors of open source civic tools (The Open Planning Project).
There is a clear, natural linkage between the urban planning practice and the Social Web; they dovetail nicely, as the ultimate goal of both is to improve our quality of life.
As I wrote in a soon to be published piece about Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s social media outreach efforts, “…the growth of social media [is] parallel to successful city building, as in order to be successful at both, people must employ a multifaceted, transparent, and engaging approach.”
Online cities are growing, and it is only a nascent development. In just a few years, our virtual and concrete worlds have meshed.
On my personal blog, I recently mentioned venture capitalist Fred Wilson’s blog post, “Urban Architects,” in which he celebrates “the intersection between mobile, local, and urban life.”
I wrote:
[Wilson] argues that the advent of powerful internet applications, coupled with mobile phones, is transforming how we use our cities.
These “powerful internet applications” are also driving us into the Third Place, defined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg as “the heart of a community’s social vitality, the grassroots of democracy,” or places like the coffee shop, the barbershop, or the local tavern.
In the same post, I cited the rise of Social Web applications to develop a counterpoint to Mary Newsom’s article, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” in which she, according to my original post, “argues against the notion that online communities have become the modern Third Place, defending the traditional ‘value of real places where real people meet, and the little-heeded but significant role they play in the life of our cities and towns.’”
In response, I argued that Social Web applications actually push us into the Third Place:
By nature, the social media vs. the Third Place issue is reconciled by the fact that mobile enhanced innovations … and the interactive hyper-locals that are spouting everywhere are all drawing us into the Third Place.
It’s a business model that works, and it’s generating more social and involved communities. Both can naturally co-exist and work together in community building.
While one can choose to shun the Third Place and huddle at home, the Social Web is making us even more social than ever in the real world—a boon, as I wrote, for “community building.”
That is the simple, yet profound, connection between urban planning and the Social Web, and if the just announced NYC BigApps Competition is any indication, we are just realizing how Social Web applications will change us, our communities, and create better communities—bringing the virtual world to the concrete world and back again.
Sponsored by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city of New York, the competition is seeking software developers “to create innovative online and mobile applications to serve New York City residents, businesses, and visitors,” as described in the blog post announcing the competition. (The software architecture is applicable to any location that has open data sets; so theoretically, the applications could also serve the world).
In the introductory blog post, Mayor Bloomberg wrote:
We have worked diligently to make a considerable amount of City data available on the new NYC.gov Data Mine (coming the afternoon of October 6th). The data will remain accessible upon conclusion of the NYC BigApps Competition for all New Yorkers.
NYC BigApps provides a competitive outlet for developers and encourages the general public to get involved as well. We welcome public comment on the process – indicate your support for the competition, share app ideas, and inform contestants on what type of app you’d like to see. “Popular Choice” winners will be selected through open voting on the site, so make sure to vote for your favorite app starting in December.
It is pure Government 2.0, although the private sector is driving progress—just like John Reiser is doing with the New Jersey State Atlas—but the goal is the same: use the emerging (virtual) technology community to improve our (concrete) communities, while concurrently spurring economic development.
In my September interview with Mr. Reiser, he commented that a significant impediment to municipal application development is the inaccessibility of raw data. Unlock the data vault, and a veritable goldmine will be available to innovative developers.
The NYC BigApps Competition has solved this problem by launching the “NYC Data Mine,” a clearinghouse that contains around 170 data sets (i.e., locations of all types of city facilities, as well as municipal tax data, inspection information, and traffic reports, among other sets) culled from over 25 city agencies.
It’s transparency in action.
To sweeten the deal, the competition is offering $20,000 in cash prizes, as judged by a panel of tech leaders. Even more valuable than the potential monetary windfall is the exposure applicants will get on tech blogs—TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, etc—and from venture capitalists, including the highly respected Fred Wilson, who, as a panel member, is obviously interested in innovative products by Urban Architects (and the programmers are no doubt interested in impressing him and the other VCs).
The stakes are high for everyone: the software developers who will create innovative applications, the panel who will judge the applications, and us, the citizens, who will use the applications to streamline our lives.
While Social Web developers are not classically trained urban planners, they are urban planners in their own right, by creating applications that will promote healthy, sustainable, and happy communities.
I’ll keep you abreast of the latest NYC BigApps Competition developments.
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