Monthly Archives: November 2010

Educational Planning/Architecture Toys

In Jacob’s weekly round-up, he mentions Chris Steins’ Planetizen post on toys for budding planners.  As a contributor to the Planetizen blog, I responded with my favorite pick–Buckyballs! Since it is Black Friday today, I figured I would make another pitch for these small but surprisingly strong magnetic balls and how fun it is to [...]

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PlaceMatters Weekly Blog Roundup: November 15, 2010

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities published a report on digital and media literacy needs. Their findings may speak to some of the opportunities and limitations of using technology-based civic participation tools. New York University announced a new community visioning tool called Betaville. It sounds like it has potential as a multi-stakeholder [...]

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PlaceMatters Weekly Blog Roundup: November 11, 2010

The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation released a new “Resource Guide on Public Engagement.” American Speaks surveys online public input tools. CommunityMatters reviews their Gov 2.0 teleconference last week. Allison Fine posts about the Case Foundation’s review of their Make It Your Own project, an attempt to promote citizen-centered approaches to community building. Philanthropy [...]

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Grist to the mill: can people be seduced into a low carbon lifestyle?

Over the months I have been collaborating with Bill Becker from Natural Capital and Jonathan Arnold from Arnold imaging on a website, exhibit, and suite of resources to help communities imagine a more sustainable future.  The central premise is that people need inspiration, not just dooms-day projections, to be motivated to pursue a more sustainable [...]

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Using social media to create solutions

On the eve of the mid-term elections, Micah Sifry wrote a nice piece on social media and democracy called Point-and-Click Politics in the WSJ.  The article starts out with some of the negative impacts — the fact that people seem to be talking more than listening and getting more polarized in their political opinions.  Some [...]

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