Content about Guides

"The community can naturally self-correct. There were several times during the fire when members of the Twitter community corrected erroneous tweets before we (as the “official” Twitter accounts) could get to them. Everyone had a stake in communicating truthfully, so we were all on the same team."

Launched in December, Google+ Communities are a place where users can share ideas and content relating to a particular topic with others who are just as interested in striking up a conversation. Already, the types of Communities available to the Google+ audience seem endless — ranging from science, animals, and even groups devoted to cities such as Detroit and Kansas City.

Infographics have become a useful and entertaining way to present facts and share ideas. Of course, not all infographics can engage an audience or make learning enjoyable.

What would happen in your neighborhood if you started eating dinner with your family out on your front patio instead or inside or out back? My own back patio opens up to grass commons area, where my family can watch our neighbors and catch up with them over our low fence, as they pass by with their kids and dogs on a nightly stroll. This is one of the most attractive qualities about the community I live in.

With all the options for social media today, it is a common concern we’re faced with: what is the best way to engage citizens and stakeholders cost effectively? We all want to get information out quickly to relevant audiences whose expectations for information access have grown so fast. So which outreach channel should we be focused on? According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 92 percent of adults use email which can be thought of as “the central hub of all online communication.”

At the recent Congress for the New Urbanism, Ian Wolfe Ross, of City Design Collective, delivered a presentation called “Code for the People.”  The talk was a rallying cry for the younger generation of New Urbanists, and a reminder that to achieve goals like restructuring corridors and revitalizing districts, planners need to focus on the design of the public realm – and involve the community in the visioning process.  As Ross put, “Developers are not your clients, nor are council members or any other interest group.  Your clients are the people, period.”  After the talk, I sat down with him during the conference to talk more about the most important issues facing young planners today.

Executive Director of City Parks Alliance, Catherine Nagel, was asked recently why building and maintaining parks was so important, given all of our other obvious public and urban needs, and considering how costly it can be to fund such projects. Her response: “With the urbanization of our planet, people living in these dense environments — this is kind of obvious — need clean air to breathe, clean water to drink. Their children need places to play. We have the researchnow. All the new health studies about open space have been significantly helpful. There is growing recognition that proximity to parks has a direct impact on how healthy a community and its residents are.”

For nearly two centuries, New York City has led the way in its commitment to providing parks and green space for all residents. From the great historic Central and Prospect Parks, to the revitalized Bronx River Greenway to the catalytic High Line Park, the city’s innovative approaches to park development and partnerships can be adapted by all great cities. This coming July, city park planners, designers and visionaries, will have a chance to experience New York City’s parks like never before at the International Urban Parks Conference! Presented by City Parks Alliance, the event development committee for this year’s Greater & Greener conference promises a highly interactive program to include mobile workshops, a volunteer day, weekend tours, and receptions in great parks. 

It seems that cities known for their successful public transportation programs have done a bit of listening to residents to make improvements, plan, and respond to citizen needs. In a city like Chicago where each day thousands of people rely on the Chicago Transit Authority to get to their destination, a good transit experience seems to make or break their day. And how do we know this? Search for the Twitter hashtag #cta and you’ll discover a multitude of statements from the Chicagoland populace.

We recently stumbled across what might be one of Cyburbia’s oldest and richest resources, “A Citizen Planner’s Toolbox”. This forum was created a while back as a gathering place for the kinds of complimentary, affordable, and alternative resources that are desperately needed by citizen planners. Since its inception, there have been quite a few ideas and links posted by peers thoughout ther planning field, that we think our readers will find valuable; especially those who often have little or no budget to work with in communicating their projects’ development plans.

The American Planning Association (APA) is gearing up for it’s 2012 National Planning Conference in Los Angeles next month (April 14-17), and the Technology and Planning Division have some great sessions set for this year. From what we’ve heard, this year’s program calls for sessions on 3-D simulation, performance measurement tools, as well as citizen engagement programs and GIS applications. Here is a list of sessions which intrigued us, and we wanted to share with you...

Can you imagine today’s world without location-based technology? It’s everywhere—in augmented reality apps for smartphones, GPS systems in our cars, urban transportation systems, and with public participation (ie. Gov 2.0) and visualisation web portals. In the past year, EngagingCities alone has dedicated over twenty posts to the subject of GIS in planning, with a 2012 location-based article series in the works as we speak. This being said, getting a handle on the multitude of planning related geospacial platforms and tools out there isn't easy, especially considering the rapid rate at which this technology is evolving.