Saturday, 16 June 2012

Seven ways to disrupt your public space

Street level signI distrust numbered lists of ‘rules’ or ‘laws’. In community practice and social policy we ought to have grown out of cheap commercial advertising techniques.

And apart from anything else I feel patronised by the implication that I am so stupid, these ideas that someone wants to sell me have to be reduced to a list I can carry round in my wallet and check furtively while I’m in the post office queue. (You bet my lips move while I'm reading it). Somewhere I have a draft of the Five Reasons Not to Bother With Silly Lists of Rules.

Having said that, ahem, yes I accept there’s often useful stuff to be gleaned, even wisdom, as in this case over on the Placemaking Blog:

  1. Identify and eliminate your place’s persistent visitor pain points
  2. Dramatically reduce complexity
  3. Cut costs 90 percent or more: think Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper
  4. Make stupid places smart
  5. Teach your stakeholders to talk
  6. Be utterly inclusive
  7. Make loyalty dramatically easier than disloyalty.

 

 

16 Jun 2012 15:18:06 | Governance and participation, Space and place

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Stimulating digital conversations in low income areas Should we be investing in the potential of online networks in low income neighbourhoods? A recent study from the Young Foundation suggests it’s hard to generate online participation, claiming that: ‘The technology makes participation easier for most, but it does not affect the underlying behaviours and values that really motivate people to get involved.’ Meanwhile we’ve seen the publication in the US of an e-democracy.org report on an ‘inclusive social media’ project in two ‘high-immigrant, low-income, racially and ethnically diverse urban neighbourhoods’ in Minneapolis-St Paul. Some of the lessons here are about how digital conversations are seeded, and the need to have someone on the ground for a few hours a week stimulating interest face-to-face and online. But it can be hard to get sites flourishing. There are real challenges to do with understanding marginalisation. Sometimes people who experience exclusion may perceive what others might think of as ‘empowering’ opportunities, with indifference. Hugh Flouch and I have just published a review of the reports, with thoughts on the issues, over on the Networked Neighbourhoods blog.
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Houses and values: juxtaprose 7 ‘Values increase an average of 2 to 3 percent for homes within half a mile of a Wal-Mart store and 1 to 2 percent when the home is a half mile to 1 mile from a store.’ (‘The Wal-Mart effect on home values’, Chicago Tribune, 7 June 2012) Previously juxtaprosed. ‘Community development practitioners developing social capital may not specifically have property values in mind when building community. However, neighborhoods with higher levels of social capital should have lower crime rates and provide a healthier social environment for their residents. To the extent these are perceived as amenities, this social environment should be capitalized into the value of housing within the neighborhood.’ (Temkin and Rohe, ‘Social capital and neighborhood stability,’ 1998)

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