At the forefront of this trend is the City of Salt Lake City, which already implemented a wide range of digital engagement tools, including websites, Open City Hall, blogs, SpeakOutSLC, social media, and Textizen. Like many cities using these types of tools, Salt Lake has faced some challenges. Because so many people can participate online, the amount of input can quickly become overwhelming and difficult to analyze. Further, the City wasn’t sure how to evaluate the effectiveness of the tools it was using, especially compared to other outreach methods. To address these challenges, Salt Lake City asked PlaceMatters to research and make recommendations on the following two questions:

1. How to synthesize (compile and summarize) the input gathered through digital outreach methods into a format that is useful for local government planners and decision-makers?
2. How to evaluate the effectiveness of digital outreach methods?

Our research involved three steps: first, we interviewed Salt Lake City’s engagement manager and conducted an online survey of approximately 20 selected City staff. Second, we carried out a thorough literature review of previous research on the topics. Finally, we interviewed academics and practitioners, both inside and outside the US, with expertise in public engagement generally and digital outreach in particular.

Based on this research, PlaceMatters made the following recommendations to the City, which any government agency interested in using digital outreach tools should consider:

1. Confirm the key objectives the City hopes to achieve through the use of digital outreach tools. For example, we identified three objectives for Salt Lake City: “engage a diverse group of stakeholders,” “increase trust in government,” and “enhance citizen knowledge of policy issues.”
2. Establish a systematic approach to evaluation with minimum standards to be incorporated into all public engagement efforts, and build these into individual and department work plans. Specific categories and methods of evaluation include ease of use, usage, efficiency, and effectiveness.
3. Establish a central repository of public input. The idea is to store public input collected through diverse methods and across different projects in a centralized location, using a tool that is easy to use and search through.
4. Dedicate staff and resources for public engagement.
5. Share practices and evaluation results internally and externally. Building a culture of community engagement and evaluation both within the community and nationwide will lead to continuous improvement in engagement tools and techniques.

The full report is available for download below. Please contact Marine Siohan (marine@placematters.org) for any additional questions, feedback or comments.

SLC_Report-FINAL

These tools are about creatively engaging people with interactive planning experiences. We chose to demonstrate them accordingly, as opposed to having tool providers deliver a short presentation while conference-goers passively sit and watch. We wanted to foster more interactive demonstration and dialogue, giving attendees the opportunity to ask questions, meet and collaborate, experiment with technologies, and apply them directly to their own real-life scenarios. The Tech Fair became an open house to enable tool developers to demonstrate their real value in smart planning to conference attendees.

With thirteen different tool providers demonstrating their innovative tools, the Tech Fair was the place to find cutting edge tools for scenario planning, opportunity mapping, crowdsourced planning, and community engagement. PlaceMatters provided our custom-built touchtables for providers to live-demonstrate many of the tools. We were also able to share some of the tools PlaceMatters has been developing, including CrowdGauge, Brainstorm Anywhere, and WALKscope.

Tools being demonstrated included:

• UrbanFootprint from Calthorpe Associates
• Envision Tomorrow from Fregonese Associates, Inc.
• CommunityViz from Placeways
• Denver Regional Equity Atlas from DRCOG
• Community Analyst Online from ESRI
• Smart Location Database from US EPA
• Location Affordability Portal from US HUD and DOT
• GreaterPlaces
• LocalData
• Shareabouts & Plan in a Box from OpenPlans
• Urban Forest Cloud Web Apps from Plan-It Geo
• MetroQuest
• BrightPages from Urban Interactive Studio

However, we rarely have this kind of data for active transportation like biking and walking. This lack of data puts active transportation at a disadvantage when it’s time to allocate resources; after all, how do you argue for more sidewalks or prioritize where to put resources when you can’t demonstrate where the existing gaps and strengths are in the network? Following the “what gets measured gets done” logic, auto-oriented uses are better equipped to demonstrate need because they have data, perpetuating a cycle of auto-focused spending.

WALKscope desktop view

Over the last few months, PlaceMatters has been working with our friends at Walk Denver on a new tool for crowdsourcing data about the existing conditions and usage of Denver’s pedestrian infrastructure. The concept behind WALKscope is simple: drop a pin on a map, and then answer a few questions about pedestrian counts, street quality, or intersection quality.

At the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference last month, we were able to test it out in the field with 30 participants in a mobile workshop. Participants were given a quick tour of the tool, some maps showing them where to canvas, and then they were sent out into the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Denver. After about 30 minutes, we’d covered several blocks.

30 minutes of WALKscope with 6 groups

When participants returned, we pulled up the map and groups were able to report out on the data they’d just collected, including the pictures they took. Cool.

Using WALKscope to report what we found during the data collection.

We then got down to my favorite part, a usability review of the tool. Overall, the comments were really positive. Some of the pluses:

• responsive design: because it’s designed for use with mobile devices, the interface for collecting data was really easy to use in the field.
• pictures: incorporating pictures is really helpful for adding detail to what is otherwise a pretty basic survey of the area
• conversation starter: several folks mentioned that neighborhood residents asked them what they were up to, and a couple of those residents even asked how they could get involved and pitch in.

and the most common requests/issues:

• more categories: it’s always tricky balancing the desire for precision with the need to generalize categories to make the data manageable. We got some helpful feedback on refining our current ways of categorizing sidewalks and intersections.
• ped counter interface: one of the best ideas we heard was to add a clicker feature to the ped counter option so people could just tick off a new pedestrian each time they saw one rather than remembering the total and updating it at the end. I love this idea; definitely something we’d like to implement.
• user access: currently you can sign in via twitter or facebook, but people understandably would love to be able to have persistent sign-in so they could log a bunch of data points and have a user account keep up with it all for them.

So what’s next for WALKscope? If you’re in Denver, it’s up and ready for you to use it! We’ll be doing some data visualizations and other reporting from the work we’re doing with Walk Denver, and we’re talking with other organizations who are interested in using it. If you’d like more info on the tool, let us know!

PS: A huge amount of credit is due to the folks at OpenPlans for developing Shareabouts, the platform on which WALKscope is built.

However, little has been written to date about how civic technologists focused on reaching underrepresented communities can most effectively approach their work.  In response to this issue, PlaceMatters conducted best practices research, with support from the Ford Foundation.  We are pleased to release “Engagement Tech for All: Best Practices in the Use of Technology in Engagement Underrepresented Communities in Planning” today.

Mobile: An emerging frontier in civic engagement

Widespread adoption of mobile technologies is enabling some households to leapfrog the “digital divide.”  The Pew Research Center reports that as of May 2013, 91% of American adults had mobile phones, including 86% of adults with lower incomes.  Pew further reports that African-Americans and Latinos use social media slightly more than whites (non-Hispanics), and are more likely than whites to want the government to post more information on social media.

Case studies highlighted in the report illustrate how planners can leverage this widespread use of mobile phones and social media to engage a broad audience.  Mi Parque, for example, is a bi-lingual mobile smartphone application that gathers input about a 23-acre park being developed over a former Superfund site in Little Village in Chicago. The application was created by an all-women team including Motorola and several students and faculty affiliated with the Open Youth Networks from Columbia University, mentored by engineers from several tech companies. The report also describes #VizLou, a Twitter-based social media tool and website, developed by Living Cities in partnership with OpenPlans, which invites youth (“Visionaries”) in Louisville, KY, to engage around civic issues.

Emerging Best Practices

General best practices that emerge from the report include the following:

1. Members of the target population should provide input on tool development, to ensure the tool will be accessible to and used by the community.
2. For underrepresented communities in particular, new tools or add-ons should be built based upon tools and technology these communities are already using.
3. Visual communication, including graphics, short videos, and images are often a more effective means of communicating and engaging underrepresented groups that have a variety of language and educational backgrounds.
4. Tools that track user demographics can help practitioners evaluate the effectiveness of the tool in reaching target populations, and demonstrate the value of the tools to sometimes-skeptical public decision-makers
5. Regardless of the outreach method used, the most critical determinant of success (real and perceived) is whether the input gathered is reflected in decisions, actions, and outcomes.  Quick implementation of on-the-ground changes, even small ones, can demonstrate the responsiveness of public agencies to community input and needs.
6. The most effective examples of technology-based tool use take advantage of social networks, community groups, and trusted advocates that already exist in the real world, and use these tools to support, rather than replace, face-to-face interaction.

Our report concludes by noting that, while communities are using technology to effectively engage typically underrepresented groups, rigorous evaluation of these efforts has been limited.  In some cases, communities need to collect additional data to more accurately determine who is participating, and to meaningfully compare the costs and benefits associated with different tools or outreach methods.  For example, better information on demographics and cost per participant associated with hosting public meetings versus engaging residents through online or mobile technologies can help communities use limited resources more efficiently, and to target more expensive outreach methods to specific groups that may be difficult to engage otherwise.

Click the links below to download the main report and related appendices:

Engagement Tech for All: Main Report

Engagement Tech for All: Appendix A

Engagement Tech for All: Appendix B

This post also appeared on the Living Cities blog, The Catalyst.

Introduce Public Coffee, an all volunteer-run local Denver organization and self-proclaimed adaptable “toolbox to be used and shared by everyone to build our community the way we wish to see it,” with a mission to activate public spaces and build connections. Public Coffee’s role is to be facilitators of meaningful conversations. In the context of the New Partners for Smart Growth conference, they sought to give attendees the chance to meet and share their thoughts with others.  During two coffee breaks at the conference Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, Public Coffee repurposed the coffee and tea stations into centers for connection. Enthusiastic volunteers handed out “Tandem Cups”– two small cups tied together with string and a pre-printed prompt between — to pairs of conference-goers, encouraging them to simply enjoy a cup of coffee together and share their thoughts on a wide range of topics such as sustainability, smart growth, equity and gentrification issues, innovative technology, or just thoughts and comments about the conference in general.

The planning process is just as important as the event for the Public Coffee team. They collaborated with PlaceMatters, Local Government Commission (conference organizers), and the hotel staff to define the goals, understand the audience, and identify critical topics for discussion. All prompt questions, which were given with each set of tandem cups, were collaboratively developed. Some examples include:

- How do you define smart growth? Is the original definition from the 20th century still relevant, or does it need to be updated for the 21st century?
- How can smart growth planners balance efficiency and collaboration?
- What do you believe is the greatest innovation currently developing in your community?
- How do you feel about the phrase “being green”? In what ways can this phrase be helpful or limiting for discussions of sustainable, environmentally-responsible growth?
- What is a skill or passion that you have that you would like to apply more directly to what you do professionally?
- Is the ‘traditional’ downtown a thing of the past?  Is that OK?

What is Public Coffee up to when not tying people together at conferences? The group operates a mobile coffee shop in Denver, converted out of a trailer. They are invited to pop-up at neighborhoods, businesses, and community events around town serving coffee for the specific reason of starting meaningful conversations. Public Coffee is adaptable in form, location, and programming so that anyone anywhere can use it to empower the community. Being on wheels has allowed Public Coffee to help activate conversations all across the city. To date, they have facilitated connections at art museums, libraries, galleries, neighborhoods, local businesses, a middle school, a 5K event, and a print shop.

Public Coffee is supported by the generosity of the community. They operate on a Pay-What-You-Can model so that they may be accessible for all. The build-out of their trailer and their start-up costs were supported by a Kickstarter campaign in March 2013. Having a year under their belts, the team is currently writing a reflection book so that everyone may learn from their experience, models, mistakes, and process.

For more about Public Coffee, visit their website here. For more information about the New Partners conference and PlaceMatters’ involvement, please visit here.

With support from the Sustainable Communities Learning Network and several generous sponsors, PlaceMatters hosted an indoor parklet (among several other cool things) at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference here in Denver just a couple weeks ago.

Traditionally, a parklet is a:

“small urban park, often created by replacing a parking spot with sod, planters, trees, benches, café tables and chairs–even artwork or bicycle parking. They are designed to provide urban green space and to bring awareness to the quantity of public community space that is devoted to parking rather than creating vibrant community spaces” (American Society of Landscape Architects, ASLA.org).

Parklets are typically installed in a standard 10′ x 20′ parking space in urban areas where current green space is lacking or where the existing sidewalk width is not large enough to accommodate vibrant street life activities and passive recreation. Parklets provide a community space for passersby to sit, relax, interact with other city-dwellers, and enjoy the city atmosphere around them.  The first parklet was installed in San Franscisco in 2011 as part of a movement to bring back a more holistic view of city spaces and streets, and parklets have since garnered support from planners, residents, and even business owners who enjoy the unique, vibrant public space which in turn attracts customers and fosters community interaction. Many cities have embraced the concept and install parklets at least seasonally, including San Francisco, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

For demonstration purposes of the conference, the parklets were placed inside the conference foyer area as opposed to outside. We then took advantage of a spacious corner to upgrade to a Pocket Park that was larger than the standard 10’ x 20’ parklet space. Just as a real urban park, the Pocket Park became a place for folks to have meetings, connect with other conference-goers, or even just to enjoy a quiet lunch or respite amidst pleasant scenery. In addition, the Pocket Park also hosted “The Doctor is In” 20-minute office hours in partnership with Kevin Nelson from EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities, and a touchtable demonstration of our new tool WALKscope. Of course, the Pocket Park would not have been possible if it were not for the generous help and contributions from several local businesses: Streetscapes and Tournesol Siteworks provided the comfortable yet stylish furniture and bright eye-catching planters, while Denver Botanic Gardens provided live trees and plants to make the indoor park even more realistic, and Ally Sales with Alliance Lighting really helped us set the mood with energy-efficient LED lighting through the entry walkway.

PlaceMatters hosted a Pocket Park parklet throughout the duration of the conference, which served as a place to relax and meet with other conference-goers. Stay tuned to our blog for more information and pictures on our Pocket Park.

Along with EPA and the Open Planning Tools Group, we also created an open house to bring together tool developers and users to demonstrate their value in smart planning to conference attendees. Stay tuned to our blog for more information and pictures on the Tech Fair.

The Open Planning Tools Group announced the winners of announced the winners of the Open Planning Tools Group Innovation Awards: Forest Planner from EcoTrust and Massachusetts Priority Mapping Protocol from MAPC. You can read more about the winners in this blog post on ScenarioPlanningTools.org.

We were incredibly excited to be able to get our local friends Public Coffee involved in the conference to help facilitate face-to-face interaction between conference attendees. During two coffee breaks at the conference Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, enthusiastic volunteers handed out “Tandem Cups”–two small cups tied together with string and a pre-printed prompt between–to pairs of conference-goers, encouraging them to simply enjoy a cup of coffee together and share their thoughts on a wide range of topics such as sustainability, smart growth, equity and gentrification issues, innovative technology, or just thoughts and comments about the conference in general.

Together with our friends at WalkDenver, we led an “Urban Walkshop” on Sunday morning exploring the Jefferson Park neighborhood in Denver with WALKscope, a newly developed pedestrian data collection tool by PlaceMatters and WalkDenver. Stay tuned to our blog to hear more about the development and implementation of the WALKscope tool.

We moderated two panel discussions at the conference: “Building Leadership for Water-Wise Growth in the West” and “Lessons from the Vacant School House: Turning Empty Buildings into Assets.” More information and outcomes of the great discussions which took place during these sessions will be blogged about soon, so keep an eye out!

2014 Awards

Innovative Open Source Planning Tool Award: An annual award to the best new contribution(s) to open source planning tools.

Exemplary Implementation of Open Source Planning Tool Award: An annual award to a planning endeavor that utilized planning tools in an innovative manner to create effective public engagement or improved analysis supporting the resolution of a significant challenge.  Projects must have utilized open source software.  The applicant could be a lead public agency or consultant involved in the activity.

In addition, each award comes with a $500 cash prize.

Eligibility Criteria

Innovative Tool Award

• Topic Areas:
  • Applications to advance scenario planning
  • Applications that facilitate community engagement and/or public education
  • Efforts to facilitate use of current scenario planning tools for exploratory scenario planning efforts
  • New enhancements that can be used with scenario planning tools – such as linking land use and public health issues
  • Applications that assist with assembling data for use with planning tools

• Requirements

• The “Key Elements” of the tool being submitted for the award should be licensed under a recognized OS license and the code publicly accessible at the time of judging to be eligible
• At least some portion of the nominated effort must have occurred within the last year

Exemplary Implementation Award

• Topic Areas – Exemplary planning efforts in any of the following areas
• Requirements

• Scenario Planning
• Community Engagement
• Comprehensive / General Plans

• The tool being used as the “key” element or enabling technology in the nominated planning and implementation effort would ideally be licensed under a recognized OS license and the code released for public access at the time of judging.  Non-open source tools that embody the OPTG principles will also be considered.
• Entries will be judged both on the planning process used and the final product or outcomes
• At least some portion of the nominated effort must have occurred within the last year

Scoring Categories

Innovative Planning Tool

Exemplary Implementation Award

Submission Materials
The combined nominating materials specified below must total no more than 4 pages in length (12 pt type):

• Project Summary:  this should be suitable to be used as a public information piece and as a description of the project in a best practices database
• Advancing OPTG Principles:  identify how the nominated project advances the 12 guiding principles of the OPT Group (attached).  This is not expected to be an item by item list but a synthesis statement
• Documentation of Innovation:  Identify the uses of the application / tool / or planning process and the transferability of the lessons learned or the tool for other efforts
• Contact Information:  A listing of responsible individuals and their name, organization, phone number and email address.
• The Nominated Product:  Submit a copy of the actual product, or a link to see or use the product or a website created to support and document the planning process.
• Additionally, the applicant may optionally submit up to 2 letters of support. These letters do not count as part of the application length.

Submission Details

• Final deadline is 5pm on Feb 3, 2014.  All materials must be received by the deadline
• Submit materials electronically to: award@placematters.org
• Awards will be announced during the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, Feb 14 – 16, 2014 in Denver, Colorado.

2013 – 2014 Awards Committee

Ted Cochin, U.S. EPA

Gordon Garry, Sacramento Area Council of Governments

Ruth Miller, Independent Contractor

Nathaniel Roth, University of California, Davis

Garlynn Woodsong, Calthorpe Associates

Download the Full Announcement, including the OPTG Mission and Guiding Principles.

Cross-posted on scenarioplanningtools.org

Date: February 19, 2014

Time: 12:00 – 1:30 pm MDT

Registration: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/278207318

Comprehensive planning that integrates the needs and expertise of a broad range of sectors, communities and approaches is the foundation of HUD’s Sustainable Communities Initiative.  With the grant program’s emphasis on increasing the engagement of historically marginalized communities in the planning process, local governments and regions have been forging new relationships, new problem-solving methods, and new, inclusive decision-making tables.

The challenge now is how to transition this work into long-term strategies and institutionalized practices for continued community engagement beyond the grant-funding period.  PlaceMatters and PolicyLink have therefore teamed up to host a webinar on strategies and resources for institutionalizing inclusive, meaningful engagement through behavioral, organizational, structural or other changes.

The webinar will feature speakers from two different communities that are on the forefront of implementing long-term strategies for community engagement – the Kansas City Region and Piedmont Triad.  Join this webinar to learn about the approaches these regions are exploring and using to continue and institutionalize the public/community partnerships developed during the SCI planning phase.

Speakers:

• Jill Locantore, Sustainable Solutions Group, PlaceMatters (moderator)
• Sarita Turner, Senior Associate, PolicyLink
• Ron Achelpohl, Assistant Director of Transportation, Mid-America Regional Council
• Gloria Ortiz-Fisher, Executive Director, Westside Housing Organization
• Mark E. Kirstner, AICP, Director of Planning, Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation
• David Allen, Communications and Youth Outreach, Beloved Community Center, Greensboro, NC

Please contact Jill Locantore at jill@placematters.org if you have any questions.

This webinar session is sponsored by the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities at U.S. HUD. The primary audience is Sustainable Communities Partnership grantees and their consortium partners, but anyone who is interested may participate.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2014 — 9:30 AM – 3:30 PM

Take a stroll through the Technology Fair and try out cutting edge tools for scenario planning and public engagement. You can also talk to leading tool developers and users about how to put these tools to work for you. Tools on exhibit will include:

• Mapping and alternative analysis tools;
• Tools for understanding and communicating complexity;
• Online tools and mobile apps to engage typically underrepresented stakeholders.

PlaceMatters, along with EPA and the Open Source Planning Tools Collaborative, created this open house to bring together leading tool developers and users to demonstrate their value in smart planning to New Partners for Smart Growth attendees.

TOOL PROVIDERS WILL INCLUDE:

• OpenPlans featuring Plan In A Box / Shareabouts
• Calthorpe Associates featuring UrbanFootprint
• LocalData featuring LocalData
• Plan-it Geo featuring Urban Forest Cloud Web Apps
• PlaceWays featuring CommunityViz
• MetroQuest featuring MetroQuest
• ESRI featuring Community Analyst Online
• Fregonese Associates, Inc. featuring Envision Tomorrow
• Urban Interactive Studio featuring BrightPages
• U.S. HUD featuring the Location Affordability Portal
• U.S. EPA featuring the Smart Location Database
• Denver Regional COG featuring the Denver Regional Equity Atlas
• GreaterPlaces.com featuring GreaterPlaces

Cross-Posted on NewPartners.org

CityBuild members, have you registered yet? Use the special discount code CITYBUILD when registering to receive $75 off conference price!
http://newpartners.org/

AmericaSpeaks has helped and influenced PlaceMatters in a number of ways. In 1998, the same year she started AmericaSpeaks, Carolyn Lukensmeyer was the charismatic keynote speaker at our inaugural Tools for Community Design and Decision Making (TCDM) conference in Chattanooga, a conference I helped organize while at the Department of Energy that provided the inspiration to start PlaceMatters. Joe Goldman, who was also an important thought leader at AmericaSpeaks for over a decade, worked closely with us at PlaceMatters on a number of occasions. They both provided guidance and inspiration for my work and the work of PlaceMatters overall.

Below is a stitched together picture I took at their Listening to New York event after 9/11 where AmericaSpeaks gave me a VIP pass to roam the event. Watching AmericaSpeaks in action was incredible: 5,000 participants sat at 500 round tables with volunteer facilitators and notetakers at each table using networked computers and keypads for each of the participants.  Dozens of tables set up to accommodate multiple languages offered simultaneous translation. Residents of the region alternated between full group presentations and more intimate roundtable discussions, followed by keypad polling to further prioritize suggestions collected from the table conversations. The tools and techniques AmericaSpeaks has tested and perfected over the years have inspired public agencies, professional facilitators, and organizations like PlaceMatters to experiment with similar techniques. Together we have worked to improve civic and stakeholder participation across the county.

Best wishes to staff as they find new jobs and begin new chapters in life. I’m sure we will continue to cross paths with many of them over time and that they will continue to do great things.

While many things have changed over that time (for example, I think the first time I helped run a keypad polling event at a meeting the keypads were the size of toasters and now they are the size of a credit card), there are a few constants as well. Some things that I’ve learned:

• A successful public engagement process is thought out clearly at the outset, but is flexible.
• Some people love technology.
• Some people love maps.
• The integration of many different channels of information into a public process is difficult, but seeing participants better understand the impacts of their choices (and sympathize with the agency staff who have to make difficult decisions all the time) is worth the effort.
• When running a public meeting, have a Plan B for everything. Also have a Plan C.
• Online and mobile technology are changing everything, and changing nothing, at the same time. Face-to-face interaction is still the best way to truly engage people in the decisions that impact their lives, in part because it helps establish trust and accountability. That said, a mobile phone poll gets a nugget of information from someone who otherwise wouldn’t be engaged at all.
• Some people hate technology.
• Some people hate maps.
• Our understanding of how the systems in which we live operate is getting better all the time–we have huge datasets and remote sensing and complex analysis and crowdsourcing–and whether something in a community works or doesn’t work still often depends on some ineffable quality we don’t yet get.
• Also have a Plan D.

Some food for thought.

For those of you that have not heard, I have taken a new position with Colorado State University as Director of their Denver Operational Initiatives. I’ll be working on a variety of projects, but will be focused primarily on CSU’s role within the partnership working on the redevelopment of the National Western Stock Show and Coliseum site. I am, of course, sad to be leaving PlaceMatters and our great partners and clients, but I’m also excited at the new opportunity.

We congratulate the BCDCOG and the team that worked to develop this innovative plan, and we are thrilled that our work was useful for this award-winning project. We will watch the implementation of the plan with interest!

PlaceMatters is excited to announce our involvement with the new local initiative called CityBuild Denver.  Started just this year through support from the Downtown Denver Partnership, CityBuild is a group of individuals working to create a strong platform for a diverse group of Denver enthusiasts to come together and collaborate on big ideas that help shape and create the Denver community.  We are a group of creative and thoughtful Denverites that are focused on the incredible opportunity we have in such a dynamic city to help create the place we truly want to live in. This community is just getting off the ground, but we are excited about the tremendous energy and following we have seen thus far.

Along with the rest of the leadership team for CityBuild, we recently celebrated the launch of this initiative with a fun and innovative Hack-a-Happy Hour last week at Denver’s Sculpture Park in LoDo. With a giant canvas and tons of sharpies, we invited folks to come tell us what they love about Denver. The result was amazing – over 60 participants and a beautiful canvas to show for it (if you didn’t get to see it, don’t worry – we’ll be hauling it to most of our future events too). After coloring the canvas, we adjourned to nearby Epernay Lounge for drinks and networking.

CityBuild’s next event will be the First Annual CollaborEat: The Ultimate Community Dining Table, and will take place on October 13, 2013, in Civic Center Park. We will host 200 people for dinner at two giant tables in the park, have key conversations about positive city building, and recreate one of Denver’s oldest parks into a beautiful community dining room. You can RSVP for this FREE event here, and join the Facebook event here. For more information on this event and others, you can find CityBuild on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and if you’re really excited about getting involved (which we hope you are!), you can get on our list here.

CityBuild is an exciting initiative for PlaceMatters to be involved in. As the main PlaceMatters representative on CityBuild’s leadership team, I am very excited to be a part of CityBuild’s leadership team. Not only do I love being able to work on local projects and initiatives in my home and favourite city, Denver, but I also get to experiment hands on with tactical urbanism projects and collaborate with other passionate people who feel the same way. If you do too, then join us!

Originally launched in 2002 and then spun-off and re-created in 2007 as an independent 501(c)3 organization, we have spent the last 11 years supporting the creation and maintenance of sustainable, vibrant communities through improving decision-making in our on-the-ground projects, research and publications, and local and national partnerships.

In celebration of our 11th anniversary, we hosted a reception at our new offices at Uncubed (15th and Blake St. in Denver’s LoDo) a few weeks ago. With drinks, delicious catered bites from The Foodie Call, music, and table tennis, we celebrated with the successes of PlaceMatters over the last 11 years. We would like to thank wholeheartedly our dear friends Brian Gryth (Program Manager at Business Intelligence Center for Colorado Secretary of State), Holly St. Clair (Data Services Director at Metropolitan Area Planning Council), and Wendy Hawthorne (Executive Director at Groundwork Denver) who gave testimonies to the excellence and importance of the work that we do at PlaceMatters. It was exciting for us to hear the positive impacts that we have made, and empowering for us moving forward to continue the work we are so passionate about doing.

So what’s next for PlaceMatters? We will continue our work on on-the-ground projects, working with communities, regions, and organizations to improve decision-making processes. We are also continuing to improve upon our own methods and building partnerships with other organizations who do the same, such as our new open source tool CrowdGauge. In addition to this, we have been working closely with Matter, a Denver local design and communications firm, to launch our new website in the coming months. Look for an announcement of the new website soon.

Thank you to all those who have supported us over the years! Your continued support is essential in keeping our work going. Want to stay in the loop on what’s going on? Follow us on Facebook or Twitter or sign up for our email list here. You can also support PlaceMatters financially here.

The EcoDistrict folks just announced the keynote for the event as well–Steve Pemberton, Chief Diversity Officer and Divisional Vice President at Walgreens. I’m looking forward to hearing his thoughts on district scale work and sustainability.

What is the future of online education anyway?
What is the first thing you do when you are out and about and come across something you don’t know? If you are like me you Google it. For example, I was recently in a debate over different kinds of crabs and I had to look it up on line to see what they look like. We have increasingly come to expect that we can learn the things we need to know on demand, whether it is the trivial to that which we need as professionals.

Enter the massive open online course (MOOC). A MOOC delivers access to connect anyone, anywhere to a course. MOOCs allow people to learn in a highly flexible environment and allows participants to engage as much or as little as they may wish with the content in the course. At Ohio State University, we partnered with Coursera as our MOOC platform.

This past May I offered a course, TechniCity, bringing together thousands around the world to discuss technology and its applications in planning. PlaceMatters’ Jason Lally (now with the SF Mayor’s Office of Innovation), participated in a lecture speaking to the importance of code-a-thons.

The result was thousands of people imagining how technology can better be used to enhance their city. One of the most exciting ways that participants shared their ideas is through their final project. Ranging from videos, to posters, to reports, we were truly impressed with the diversity and practicality of the exciting ideas that participants brought forward.

TechniCity will be offered again in February, 2014 and is open for registration at http://www.coursera.org/course/techcity

Along these lines, I was recently sent a copy of the book “Who Counts? The Power of Participatory Statistics,” a collection of articles and case studies on the use of participatory data and information collection and knowledge sharing. The book, edited by Jeremy Holland at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, focuses on international development and describes best practices for a variety of participatory techniques.

The book’s introduction is packed with useful information and an overview of participatory statistic and grassroots data collection and use, and how recent improvements in methodology are making participatory research more robust. In addition, I was particularly interested in the chapter on Participatory 3D Modelling, by Giacomo Rambaldi of the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation in the Netherlands.

Rambaldi discusses examples of the use of large 3D representations (generally the base of which is constructed using thin layers of durable material. Participants then add push pins, yarn, and other markers to represent their mental maps and knowledge of the area. Many features can then be verified using GPS, and the resulting maps are frequently more accurate than official maps. Rambaldi describes a process like this in Ethiopia that was geared toward helping the community repair environmental degradation from deforestation.

The mapping process in Ethiopia provided an opportunity for adults to remember and describe to youth what the environment had been like, and realize the impacts of deforestation on livelihoods. In addition, it provided an educational opportunity for all, since the mapping exercise meant participants thought about the connections between different parts of the ecosystem.

While this chapter was perhaps the most similar to work that PlaceMatters does in the U.S., there are many case studies and articles that are relevant to informed civic engagement in decision-making processes as well as the use of participatory statistics in evaluating program success. A few points that were raised overall, among projects around the world:

• Participatory GIS, research, modeling, etc. must be carefully designed to be authentically participatory and include not only the elite
• The information that comes out of participatory processes can lead to community empowerment, but also to the use of the data and information to further disempower residents—for example, identification of additional resources to be extracted by business or government. (PlaceMatters has been working on the flip side of this coin, advocating for the opening of datasets for the public to use).
• New technologies such as OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi’s Crowdmap, wikis, and mobile tech are making participatory research, data collection and statistics easier and more accurate.

While “Who Counts?” focuses on international projects, its take-home lessons resonate with anyone working on engaging community. Some of the methodologies described would be easily transferred to domestic settings, and could be an improvement on the way we are engaging (particularly in non-urban settings). The book is worth a look, even for those of us not in international development.

Want the book? Here’s the info: “Who Counts? The Power of Participatory Statistics.” Edited by Jeremy Holland, with an Afterword by Robert Chambers. Published by Practical Action Publishing.

The Future of Cities and Regions

A case study of PlaceMatters’ work in Chula Vista was published this year in The Future of Cities and Regions: Simulation, Scenario and Visioning, Governance, and Scale. The book features best practices in urban and regional simulation with nine case studies from around the world. The chapter was researched by our 2010 PlaceMatters’ Fellow, Elise Novak, in collaboration with Ken Snyder and Doug Newman (project leads) highlighting the project’s innovative integration of sophisticated building energy analysis and VMT modeling with planning at the neighborhood scale. The integrated use of land use, transportation, and building energy technologies was shown to reduce aggregate energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions of a large-scale development project by as much as 45% when compared with the Title-24-compliant project. The book is available in hardcover and as an ebook.

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Join us in Boston November 12-14 for the EcoDistricts Summit, a can’t-miss event for leaders who are shaping and building the cities and urban neighborhoods of the future. Each year the Summit convenes leading municipal policymakers, developers, business leaders, planners, and community leaders – people with decision-making power – to share best practices and shape the growing EcoDistricts marketplace. We invite you to shape the 2013 Summit by proposing an innovative education session. Deadline for submissions is Friday, July 19. Please see our Proposal Guidelines for more information.

One of the concerns that often accompanies the usage of technology like smartphones for civic engagement is a fear that they only reach a small and sometimes over-represented portion of the population. Well, the good folks at Pew Research Center published a study last month that found we’ve made it past the 50% mark for smartphone ownership. In typical Pew fashion, there are some really interesting insights in the slicing and dicing of demographics in the report. For instance, only 9% of respondents reported not owning any cell phone (and yes they did include land line calls in the survey). Of course, cell phones are just one of many mechanisms for engaging stakeholders, and are probably best used as ways of augmenting conventional engagement approaches. While we’re still a good ways off from full adoption of smartphones, there’s good reason to be excited about mobile technology for crowdsourcing, outreach, and other purposes.

And in other news of smartphones and the people who use them, check out this map of smartphone usage by brand. Notice any breakdowns along other demographic features?

Hack4Colorado will be just one of 100 civic hackathons happening all across the U.S. on the weekend of May 31, all under the umbrella of the National Day of Civic Hacking. A hackathon is an event where computer programmers and others in the field of software development, as well as graphic designers, interface designers and project managers collaborate intensively on software projects. These events are food and caffeine fueled events where innovation happens and new ideas are born.

What does it mean to participate and support a Civic Hackathon? Well, it means different things to different people.

Some people come with visions of venture funding, a great new start up, building a company and becoming the next Techstars company. That’s a great aspiration but that’s not really the primary goal of a “Civic” hackathon. It could happen. You could build an app that really blows up and you form a company and sell this app to every city, state and municipality and retire like Ted Turner. But a Civic hackathon has a different spin. It’s about the community we live in and giving something meaningful back to that community.

There are others who come because they are just sick and tired of not having an app that tells them to move their car because it’s street sweeping day or they are desperate for an app that really addresses the Veterans struggle to overcome PTSD. At our last organizing committee meeting, one of our members was talking about their frustration of not being able to get live bus data to help her catch the next bus without standing around waiting. Can you get your head around that one? Imagine, you open the app on your mobile device or tablet and it tells you that the #6 will be at your stop in 2 minutes- better run!

Why will you come, invest a weekend, hack, collaborate, and compete? For the challenge? The food? The fun? The comraderie? To give back? For the prizes? Hack4Colorado promises to be challenging, super cool and if you’re good, very rewarding!

The organizers come from OpenColorado, PlaceMatters, and Executive Lattice. The sponsors include some great local companies like iTriage, SendGrid, ReadyTalk, Noodles & Company, Illegal Petes, Galvanize, COIN, and Commerce Kitchen.

Check it out at www.hack4colorado.com. Registration is open for the event, May 31st – June 2nd, and we’d love to have you! Come on and join the Geeks for the Good of Colorado! Follow @Hack4Co on Twitter for more updates.
If you missed the Hackathon we put on last year, you can read a re-cap of it here.

Re-posted with permission from writer, Ann Spoor. Original post here.