Restoring Homes, Restoring Communities
Category: Daily Diary
Two great community-focused ideas came across my reading list over the past week that seemed to have great potential:
- Hyperlocal Citizens' Media - This short piece focused on a project up at Northwestern University (our old neighborhood) to create an online community: GoSkokie.
- Tool Lending Libraries - A movement to provide tools like books, allowing anyone with a library card to check out, say, a jackhammer for up to three days. Neat!
While both great, couldn't these be even better together? I think a local website that focused on a neighorhood and facilitated the sharing of information and resources could be incredibly powerful. Existing libraries or community centers could even act as a hub for this type of thing as an extension of their existing services.
It would take a pretty tech-savvy neighborhood to work, but you never know...I was impressed to read recently how a a neighborhood listserv was used to share community news over on the Little White Bungalow weblog.
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Comments
I've been thinking along similar lines. Our neighborhood is an area that has more than its share of urban issues, is also attracting new residents, and has a core of active log-time residents. It seems that some sort of digital community house could work to help us all come together more. If nothing else, I'd have a place to bad mouth lousy contractors. It's one of this things where I think, 'if I had a little more free time...'.
Posted by: john | June 19, 2004 9:56 AM
We do have the yearly block party (it's been a 20 year institution) and that is a great thing to start whereever you are. I think the thing that starts to pull us out of our houses and into the street is when the parents rent a little "moonwalk" for the kids. Somehow, when the kids all run out and that moonwalk goes up, the adults of all ages struggle out too. It gives neighbors who don't know each other something to focus on in conversations and eventually we're all dragging out picnic tables and chairs and food and wine. Then someone else across the street brings out his "set up" (he's a professional musician) and performs on the guitar, encouraging others to come up and take their turn at the mic.
Tapping into things like that really helps things along. The flyers that a neighbor sends out ahead of time really help.
As soon as we have more time ;/ this is one of the things that I love to help with. I used to live in a brownstone on Belden where I organized round robin dinner parties with apartments of strangers and ended up making wonderful friends. It was a great experience. After I got past the initial "No one is going to come! No one is going to come!" hand-wringing. But they came! And that kicked off seven years of fun.
All that was with paper...the thought of it going digital is so exciting. But we may have to do both for awhile to make the change.
Posted by: jm | June 19, 2004 11:54 AM
The tool lending library is an excellent idea ! We love our neighborhood website and listserv both are excellent ways to get useful information and important news out to the neighborhood very quickly. We've also found the listserv to be a great resource for recommendations for everything from tree trimmers to dog sitters, very helpful when you're new to the area!
Posted by: em | June 21, 2004 10:57 AM