“Will the red-hot microblogging platform Twitter change the way we live in our cities, how we call for help in an emergency, or even help rally a group to topple the city’s government? Or is it a frivolous technology that simply atomizes our thoughts and relationships into 140-character bits?”
Read more: A Twitter in the City
In my master’s final paper I described how to adapt five basic criteria for public participation in urban planning to the Internet. The fifth criteria was information, defined as “provide more information in a clearly understood form, free of distortion and technical jargon.” For providing information over the Internet, the most important concept is usability.
If urban planners want to engage broad and diverse constituencies over the Internet through websites, forums, blogs, emails, or any web technology, they must consider the usability of these tools. It sounds like a simple concept, but anyone who has struggled to extract basic information from a convoluted government website will understand its importance. When we designed Rethink College Park, we used large fonts, a streamlined design, and intuitive interface to present information as clearly as possible.
That’s why I was particularly interested to hear from Julie Harpring, a master’s student in human-computer interaction design at Indiana University. She is interested in applying usability to urban planning for her capstone project. Although we just discussed possible ideas for the project and it won’t be complete until next spring, I liked the Bloomington by Bike and Bus map she created for IU last summer. Although technically it’s a simply application of Google Maps API, it seamlessly brings together disparate sources of information for students to use to plan travel (university bus routes, city bike lanes, bicycle rack locations and types, in addition to Google’s street map and aerial photos). Who knows how many bloated PDFs on government websites contain information that could be better displayed through such an interface?
My master’s final paper covers the history of public participation in American urban planning, participation theory, and the general approach that should guide using the Internet for urban planning, among other topics. However, it deliberately avoids the subject of what specific Internet tools could be used. This was intentional, as the technology is rapidly evolving.
Therefore I’ve put together a page on the topic of Internet Tools for e-Democracy in Urban Planning. It contains additional information about why planners should using the web, and a comparison matrix of common Internet technologies (webpages, email lists, blogs, wikis, etc). It also contains an evolving list of additional applications available to local governments that may be useful for urban planning purposes.
The Washington Post company recently launched a rewards program called PostPoints. The launch included strange television ads featuring people exchanging anthropomorphized blue point chips for things like pizza. I recently signed up to see how the program worked and whether I too could get some free pizza out of it.
Since I am not a Washington Post subscriber I joined at the “silver” level, earning 500 points for joining and another 125 points for proving some basic information about myself. Members can earn 5 points per day for visiting washingtonpost.com, reading Express and entering a code, or answering a quiz requiring a copy of today’s Post. Other ways to earn points include attending community service events or getting coupons at certain businesses, but I didn’t think I’d be able to do either. Most days I read online or Express, meaning I could earn between 5 and 10 points. With over 600 points already earned, I was off and running.
A quick look at the rewards dampened my enthusiasm. A $10 CVS gift card looked like a useful prize. However, at 3,385 points it would take me 677 days of Express reading or almost one year of reading both a print publication and the website to earn enough points to earn it. If I purchased copies of the Post from newsstands for the $10 gift card, it would cost me $338.50 in newspapers. Taking 1 minute a day to enter the Express daily code would add up to 11.3 hours for the gift card. A $25 Visa gift card was even more out of reach. At 6,325 points, it would take 3.47 years of reading one publication daily to earn enough points for it.
In fact, the only prize available for less than 1,000 points was a points exchange between PostPoints and Amtrak’s frequent rider program: 500 PostPoints for 100 Amtrak points. Since a one-way coach ticket in the Eastern zone costs 3,000 Amtrak points, those 500 PostPoints cover roughly 3% of the cost of a ticket.
And the pizza? At 2,500 points, I’ll have to read both washingtonpost.com and Express for 50 weeks continuously.
I just added a link to my profile on dodgeball.com to the “personal” section on the right hand side, bringing the number of social networking site profiles I have listed to 11. I’m not sure how many people I know who use the service in D.C., but if you are one by all means click the link and add me. I thought I’d add it after reading this account reminded me of the service, although the author is the type of social networking guru for whom a service like this works best.
There’s some good news for the Heurich House, a beautiful victorian mansion in DC that is facing auction if the nonprofit foundation that runs the house can’t come up with $250,000. Since I wrote about the home’s plight in January the group has raised $70,000 towards their goal and won pledges for more funds and support to come.
Also, today DCist reports the bank is giving the organization a 30-day extension to raise the remaining $180,000. I’ve already given $10 and considering another donation, but if you needed convincing there’s nothing better than a recent blog post by Mike Grass who makes the excellent argument the house is worth saving not only because it would be expensive and difficult to recover it’s current state if the home’s contents are cleared out, but also because it is a unique symbol of the non-federal side of DC. I think he’s absolutely right: the house faces peril partly because it was built by a brewer, and “not a naval hero, not a granddaughter of Martha Washington, not even a Gilded Age mining millionaire turned politician …” And it is precisely for that reason, in addition to its beauty, that it deserves preservation.
For more information see brewmasterscastle.com.
I have been spending the weekend at the Young People For student conference here in D.C. For information about the project see www.youngpeoplefor.org
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