Category Archives: Uncategorized

Next American City writes about the future of hyperlocal media and its relationship to urban planning. The question of how hyperlocal media shapes community decision making is a great one and worth some exploration. People and Place explores the idea of social learning, touching on how facilitation and process design can have social learning implications. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The Monitor Institute has a new data visualization tool designed to help funders see relationships between their funding and grantmaking by other foundations but potentially useful for community planning applications. It’s a very cool tool – it offers clear, clear visualizations of multiple data layers, it’s easy to navigate, and they obviously put a lot [...]