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Gaming For Better Communities

Chris Haller

"Gamification” has become a full-fledged movement.  It started with social media, then spread across industries as marketers discovered the allure of points, badges, challenges, and rewards as mediums to making almost anything seem like more fun.  These efforts to attract users met with varying degrees of success, but critics worried that such “funware” was just glorified “bling” that delivered little in terms of value.  Then Jane McGonigal gave her much-circulated TED talk on how “Gaming Can Make A Better World”, and the concept of gamification began to enjoy new-found respect as a driver for community-building and a motivator for real-life change.

An Experiment in Theoretical Urbanism

Chris Haller

Imagine a full functional city of optimal population density (roughly six million residents) - one that operates on subway alone, has zero congestion, and absolutely no water pollution all developed in a matter of 4 years. Impossible, you say?

The Knight Foundation and FCC Team Up

Chris Haller

Can a mobile app improve the quality of life for a farmer in America's heartland or perhaps help school children in Detroit, MI? Can a single app be developed that enables Americans to benefit from broadband communications -- regardless of geography, race, economic status, disability, residence on Tribal land, or limited digital or English literacy?

Participation Metrics in Online Communities Often Neglected

Chris Haller

In our opinion, evaluation of participation metrics should be paid more attention to. More often than not, online communities don’t serve their purpose of engaging visitors, simply because they are not being monitored appropriately for optimal participation. Here are just a few things that can be done to raise the bar to measure and increase public engagement in online communities.

Hyper-Local News: What’s in it for planners?

Chris Haller

There’s recently been discussion and debate surrounding the attempts of neighborhood news aggregates to build out automated collections of local news, events, blog trends, and discussions -- sites like Fwix, EveryBlock, and Outside.in being the most prominent examples.  But in order to remain vibrant, the sites must achieve the right mix of publicity, monetization, good content, and attractive presentation -- and unfortunately, it seems that none of the hyper-local news providers are hitting that magic mix.

Immersive Planning: Rethinking participation design with new technologies

Steven Schirra

Across the globe, urban planners and community decision-makers are embracing new technologies as a way of broadening and diversifying participation in local processes. But how do we design for success with these technologies -- and how do we measure that success? Far too often, indicators such as participant satisfaction surveys and rote number of participants are used to assess the impact of a project.

Urban Planners have plenty to teach the world about Public Participation

Geoff Wilson

I have always been impressed with the substantial body of public participation (P2) knowledge and experience that resides in the urban planning profession. This will be my third year chairing the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Core Values Awards, and each year IAP2 has received high quality urban planning projects from around the world. It got me thinking that public participation practitioners in any sector have lots to learn from their colleagues in urban planning.

Your Opposition Is Ahead of You

Elaine R. Clisham

Lately I’ve been reading about an increasing number of instances in which good-faith planning efforts are being ambushed, often delaying or completely derailing various initiatives. Here, for example, are the new commissioners of Carroll County, Maryland, working to “fix” their comprehensive plan – click on item VI in the agenda under the video or jump to about 1:07 to get to the heart of it. More informatively, here’s the East Bay Tea Party in California revealing the strategy it used to derail a public visioning workshop focused on sustainable development.

Expert Dependency -- Has Technology Made Us Lazy as a Civilization?

John Olson

My fear is that technology and innovation have almost made our civilization regress at an inverse relationship to innovation. Don’t misinterpret my statement.  I love technology as much as the next person, just ask my iPad sitting next to me.  The concern is not so much with technology itself as with the mis-application (or over-application) of it.  Instances of misapplied technology in planning and development can often be found in connection with an over-dependence on specialists or experts.

Participatory Budgeting Processes Taking Hold in the U.S.

Chris Haller

First implemented in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1990,  Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a planning process which allows citizens to decide directly how to allocate all or part of a public budget, typically through a series of meetings, work by community “delegates” or representatives, and ultimately through a final vote. While the process has been widely utilized worldwide, especially in Europe over the past two decades, only recently has it been implemented in a few U.S. cities — including Chicago.