Monthly Archives: January 2011

PlaceMatters Weekly Blog Roundup: January 31, 2010

By Jacob Smith | Published: January 31, 2011

Clay Shirkey has an interesting piece in Foreign Affairs arguing that the real potential of social media is in supporting civil society and the public sphere rather than for any particular foreign policy aims. It’s especially pertinent (and prescient) in light of the unrest in Egypt. We can’t help but think the same basic argument [...]

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PlaceMatters gets a Kinect

By Jason Lally | Published: January 25, 2011
Kinect

Christmas came a little late at the PlaceMatters office, but we have ourselves an XBox Kinect sans XBox.  Why? Well, as Jacob indicated in his last roundup, this handy piece of hardware is quite a powerful device.  Now that we have one here ourselves, we’re going to see what small projects we can do.  We’ve [...]

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Doug Walker: CommunityViz and Community Engagement

By Jacob Smith | Published: January 24, 2011

Last week I visited with Doug Walker at the Boulder headquarters of Placeways, an organization best known for its remarkable CommunityViz software. Doug offered a walk-through of the CommunityViz package If you don’t know CommunityViz, my chat with Doug is worth a watch . . . this is seriously amazing software that helps communities and [...]

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PlaceMatters Weekly Blog Roundup: January 19, 2010

By Jacob Smith | Published: January 19, 2011

Next American City outlines their notion of ‘Planning 2.0.’ The ESRI-sponsored post makes the case for the importance of GIS mapping technologies in Planning 2.0 approaches (naturally), but it also does a nice job of laying out a definition based on informing, engaging, and empowering stakeholders. The “2.0″ metaphor is pretty tired (and has been [...]

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Jack Dangermond – Thoughts on GeoDesign

By Jason Lally | Published: January 19, 2011

I interviewed Jack Dangermond while at the GeoDesign Summit in Redlands, CA.  I was able to get about 4 minutes of his very busy schedule to ask him what he thought of the potential of GeoDesign coming out of this summit.  In the interview, he talks about the need for collaboration and Carl Steinitz’s four [...]

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Reflections on the GeoDesign Summit

By Jason Lally | Published: January 13, 2011

Recently I returned from the GeoDesign summit in Redlands, CA and met a lot of interesting people doing a lot of different work from varied disciplines.  While there, a question came up during lunch with one of my colleagues.  It was regarding whether this whole “GeoDesign” thing would just end up being a fad (this [...]

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WRT receives APA National Planning Excellence Award for a Planning Firm

By Ken Snyder | Published: January 12, 2011

I learned today, the American Planning Association selected our partner in the Albany 2030 Comprehensive Plan Development, WRT, to receive their first ever National Planning Excellence Award for a Planning Firm award. They were selected for their innovative and collaborative approach to planning and the bodies of distinguished work they have produced over the years [...]

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Jason Lally: Place-Based Gaming and Urban Planning

By Jacob Smith | Published: January 12, 2011

I chatted today with my PlaceMatters colleague and officemate Jason Lally, who just returned from the GeoDesign Summit and who’s pretty jazzed about where geodesign is headed and the opportunities it presents for community planning and civic participation. He’s particularly excited about place-based or reality-based gaming, which has mostly been the “purview of nerds and [...]

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What Are You Excited About for 2011?

By Jacob Smith | Published: January 12, 2011

I asked folks in the office here at PlaceMatters what treasures they think 2011 might hold in store for community engagement, civic participation, and decision support. Here’s what they said: Ken Snyder: I’m excited about the new iPad rumored to include cameras like the iPhone4.  This will make it possible to view spatial data with [...]

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Holding public meetings in multiple languages – new translator tool helps with brainstorming and polling

By Ken Snyder | Published: January 11, 2011

PlaceMatters Anywhere Translator from PlaceMatters Decision Lab on Vimeo. In Denver, PlaceMatters teamed with A+ and the Denver Public Schools District in a 10 month process to engage citizens in Far Northeast Denver in a conversation about turnaround strategies for low performing schools. It was essential to have all meetings in Spanish and English. School [...]

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