Next American City interviews Portland Mayor Sam Adams about the city’s new EcoDistricts Initiative (with partner the Portland Sustainability Initiative). Mayor Adams talks briefly about the approach, the civic engagement, and the technology. His “help them see the benefits” language doesn’t necessarily jive with the sort of civic participation process we tend to prefer, but it’s an interesting project.
People & Place offers their own thoughts on the initiative as well.
Next American City also reported on the much-anticipated (at least here at PlaceMatters) launch of CityOne, a next generation SimCity created by IBM. They offer a thoughtful if disappointing review.
Rob Goodspeed ruminates on public sector crowdsourcing.
Metropolis pokes a little fun at the Why Design Now? conference, noting how tough a time the speakers had holding the attention of the audience with such attractive distractions as the view of Columbus Circle and the live twitter feed projected onto the wall. I remember at a NetSquared conference being dumbfounded at the idea that everyone in the room was involved in separate simultaneous chat room conversations about the presentations. Seems like an arena ripe with opportunity for powerful interactive meeting tools.
Augmented Reality previews a German service that allows you to point your phone at a movie theater, see the offerings, see trailers, and order tickets.
Digital Urban shows off a very cool dashboard display – the Bike-o-Meter – of how bicycle rentals in cities around the world are performing. They also report, sadly, that the provider running a number of these requested that DU stop using their data, so the displays are now empty.
HUD announced the recipients of its Sustainable Communities grants.
Congrats to CNT for its 2010 Chicago Innovation Award nomination for its H+T Index showing the links between housing and transportation.
This is just a little dated, but . . . Public Decisions links to a new article called “The New Generation of Public Participation: Internet-based Participation Tools.”
