Content about Science

Recently, I posted an article on the Living Labs Global blog, Report on Mobility, which prompted someone to comment on the distinction between open data and actual information.  Raw data are valuable, but the information synthesized from the data is golden.  My experiences this summer continue to highlight the need not only for better data, but also for better information.

Driving around Boston one day, a city employee spotted something unusual, according to a post over on Fast Company’s blog:

The 2012 National Infrastructure Summit is coming up this September10-12 in Regina (SK), Canada and in conjuction with this event, an innovative challenge is being introduced as a form of social engineering. The event focuses on the creation and elaboration of the best and sustainable ideas related to the growth of the City of Regina. Architects, engineers, students, city planners and innovators from around the world are invited to enter the Morph My City Challenge (MMCC) - two innovative competitions aiming to encourage and reward radical new approaches to sustainable urban planning.

While we have examples of the private sector crowdsourcing places and the public sector crowdsourcing ideas for placemaking, have we seen the public sector crowdsourcing ideas for places yet? The City of Birmingham, Alabama is at least hinting at it.

The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and the City of Birmingham partnered to create a Prize2theFuture contest to provide anyone in the world the opportunity to inspire what happens on a small city block in downtown Birmingham. It attracted 3000 registrants from 39 countries submitting 1115 ideas during the contest period from January 13 to March 11, 2011, with the winner receiving $50K, second place $10K, third place $5000, and fourth through tenth place being rewarded with $1000. Kudos to the City of Birmingham for crowdsourcing worldwide publicity and brainstorming of ideas paving the way for something innovative and fresh in its downtown.

Crowdsourcing, or not, idea generation, development and selection
While crowdsourcing was applied to the idea generation/brainstorming phase, that’s about where it ended. The phases of idea development and idea prioritization/selection weren’t crowdsourced, as they were in Bristol, Connecticut, but left to a Prize2theFuture committee that decided the 10 winners. Perhaps at least some involvement for the local crowd to provide idea development; to comment on, upvote, campaign for and possibly improve or enhance the submitted ideas wasn’t taken advantage of, what crowdsourcing expert Clay Shirky describes as ’brainwriting’. I’m not so sure the local crowd would have selected the 10 winners that the committee chose to make a reality in their neighborhood either. You can decide for yourself here, with the winning ideas represented by the images below, where each idea may look like it reflects the values of a single firm/idea submitter rather than the community. However, the committee did come up with recurring themes from the 1115 ideas, which were:
- Multi-use facility that brings people together
- Both indoor and outdoor elements but not a duplication of Railroad Park
- Environmentally friendly, LEED designed, sustainable, with material reuse
- Leading edge technology
- Food (restaurants, cafes, markets, fresh produce)
- A civic icon, a new way to look at and get oriented to Birmingham
- Performance space/ venue
- Ties to rails, stations and respect for the historic Terminal Station.

However, to many, the recurring theme, by definition, may sound a bit obvious. What’s missing maybe is a second phase to crowdsource top ten ideas in each of those themes, which is what crowdsourcing idea development does. That’s where I’m betting you would have seen the popularity for a pedestrian-only zone (architecture being a separate issue), as presented in one of the submissions (above image), but nowhere to be seen other than the artist’s own website, and thus possibly completely forgotten unless… you guessed it, crowdsourcing for images.

Identifying the developer
The Community Foundation recently announced Request For Proposals (RFPs) to select a developer. This is something that is not and should not be crowdsourced, where there are significant liabilities and livelihoods at stake, as well as data the submitting developers need to keep confidential. Of the Foundation’s criteria in selecting a developer:
- Track record on leading successful projects from design to implementation, local representation/participation, diversity of team, LEED experience
- Track record of project financing, current financials
- Commitment to design excellence/innovation in interpreting Prize2theFuture themes
- Evidence of short-term/long-term financing for this project
- Economic sustainability/quality of proposed tenants

...one more criteria would make for a very compelling end result:
- Application of the open participation/crowdsourcing process in the Prize2theFuture program to the actual design and development. Maybe the criteria isn’t there because there are so few developers like a Renaissance Downtowns that’s actually committed to such an approach at a large scale.

Crowdsourcing the funding
However, the Community Foundation is way ahead of its time when it comes to funding. As a very progressive sign of things to come with crowdsourced placemaking, the Foundation raised $1,000,000 for predevelopment, crowdfunded by donors in a way, via a fundraising effort to invest in one’s own city.

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

• Tales of the city: the rise of the local blog – "In its daily blogposts, Spitalfields Life aims to portray the full colour of life in London's East End. But who is the mysterious 'Gentle Author' behind this extraordinary work of social history?"
• Apache Cordova – "Apache Cordova is a platform for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript."
• Building Community in your Area? There’s a Handbook for that! – "The Community Organizers Handbook is the one-stop-shop for tips, tricks and how-tos for organizing local communities."
• User experience design on new.shropshire.gov.uk – Project WIP – "Our aim is to provide the user with best experience we can possibly give them allowing them to do what they want quickly and easily."
• When is an ‘official’ Twitter account not an official Twitter account? | Puffbox.com – "Much consternation in certain political circles this afternoon, as Boris Johnson renames his Twitter account… and takes a quarter of a million people's details over to his election campaign HQ."
• The problem with digital politics – "If the major parties get their act together, the next election could be a very interesting time indeed for technology-watchers."
• @LiamStacey9 : Tangential Ramblings – "Online hate is a big problem. Children, adults, celebrities and people outside of the public eye are all victims. The trouble is: those that dole out the abuse don’t seem to be the sorts of people who care."

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.

Hacks/Hackers started an excellent “survival glossary”, helping journalists navigate the world of tech:
Confused? So were we, which is why we put together this Hacks/Hackers Survival Glossary as an explanation of terms that help us understand the information landscape. This is a crowdsourced document that provides a guide to technologies involved in modern content distribution, coordinated by Hacks/Hackers, a grassroots group that brings journalists and technologists together. Don’t know Drupal from Django, API from Ajax, mashup from metadata? This is the list for you. It’s written for intelligent nontechies in (mostly) plain English. Feel free to distribute or contribute.
Where’s the equivalent for planners? It would be neat to have a doc that gives non-planners some useful info, and the same for planners who want to understand tech beyond ‘there’s an app for that”…
(I have an org-crush on Hacks/Hackers — if planners felt more urgently in crisis, maybe we’d see something similar.)

In January 2011, Michael McDonald and Micah Altman founded the Public Mapping Project and began building the open source platform DistrictBuilder to give citizens more of a say in the redistricting process.
We asked McDonald and Altman to share how the project came to be, its key features and how others can put it to use.
What’s the story behind starting DistrictBuilder
DistrictBuilder allows citizens to draw the boundaries of their communities and generate new redistricting plans via their Web browsers. The software’s engineering and implementation services were provided by Azavea. The Azavea folks deserve a share of the credit — both for the heavy coding and for contributing a portion of the effort pro-bono. Additionally, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation helped to fund the project; their funding helped to make the program a reality.
So far, we’re worked with groups in New York (www.RedistrictNY.org), Ohio (http://drawthelinemidwest.org/ohio), Michigan (http://michiganredistricting.org/), Minnesota (http://www.drawminnesota.org/contest/), Arizona (http://azredistricting.com/) and Philadelphia (http://www.fixphillydistricts.com/) to customize DistrictBuilder. In many cases, states are hosting their own student mapping competitions where the winning maps are sent to the capital for consideration, like in New York where we just announced the winners of the 2012 New York Redistricting Project. At the Public Mapping Project, we’re always interested in speaking to other organizations that may be interested in using the software for their own state initiative.
What are DistrictBuilder’s key features?
The DistrictBuilder software allows users can build their maps on variety of criteria — from a basic level down to a granular one. Specifically, the software pulls data from a few different source: the 2010 US Census (race, age, population and ethnicity), election data (Republicans, Democrats, Independents) and map data (i.e. what the current districts look like). Additionally, these districts can be divided based on county lines, overall competitiveness (Republicans vs. Democrats) as well as voting age.
Recently, we unveiled the winners of the 2012 New York Redistricting Competition at Fordham University. The winning New York Senate and Congressional maps, which were created by a student from George Mason University and a team of students from the University of Buffalo Law School, are being sent to Albany for consideration for adoption by the government.
What are the costs, pricing plans?
Since DistrictBuilder is an open-source software, it’s free of charge. The software is freely available and there’s no charge for its use. Plus, the source code is made available under a standard open software license (Apache v.2). This means that anyone is free to modify the software, redistribute it or use it for any purpose, including commercial ones.
Also, the redistricting data that is obtained through DistrictBuilder is free under an open (Creative Commons) license.
The only cost that can come is if an organization wanted to host a redistricting competition, which usually requires professional grade hosting. Some organizations can host the competition in-house on servers, but most require external server hosting.

Thanks to a tweet by Evgeny Morozov I came across this new research paper by W. Ben Towne and James D. Herbsleb, published in the current edition of Journal of Information Technology & Politics (Volume 9, Issue 1, 2012, pages 97-115): Design Considerations for Online Deliberation Systems (subscription required)
ABSTRACT. Online deliberation enables structured, topical discussion about particular questions or concepts. A number of Web-based deliberation systems have been independently introduced in recent years, and reported on as single-point examples. This article reviews several of these systems, focusing on the design principles behind them and how they worked out. From this literature, we distill another iteration of design considerations that can be used to design online deliberation systems to “inform the debate.” These considerations focus on the mutually reinforcing goals of attracting contributions, navigating through content, improving usability, focusing on quality content, and promoting wide-scale tool adoption
On page 100, the authors explain that in selecting these guidelines, they sought ideas that are “understandable, robust, likely to remain stable, and consistent with one another” and that they are presented “at a reasonably high level”:

These are general guidelines that should apply to most online deliberation systems. As noted in Lindström’s (2006) description of general principles for IT systems, “The principles are not imperative; they are only supposed to provide operative directions and guidance” (p. 3). We recognize that not every item below will be appropriate in every context; [...] We propose that each of these items should be considered during the development of an online deliberation system, hence the term “considerations.”

Table 1: Considerations for the Design of Online Deliberation Systems

Below the list of considerations:
Design to Attract Contributions

• Maintain low entry barriers for contributions of value
• Make contributions immediately visible
• Divide and conquer
• Self-selection of roles
• Well defined tasks and questions
• Overcome or accept access bias
• Accommodate but identify content bias
• Link in outside resources
• Loosen up on structure

Design for Navigability

• Relate solutions to one another
• Allow hyperlink exploration, but not as the only option
• Organize content topically, rather than temporally
• Minimize or eliminate duplication
• Use visual aids to navigation
• Include an effective search utility

Design for Usability

• Build clear affordances
• Stick with the principles of Robert’s Rules
• Open windows to the content in many places
• Interoperate with other systems, e.g. through APIs
• Attach unchanging URLs to specific content
• Automate nonsemantic operations
• Use stable, functional, secure, responsive technology

Design for Quality Content

• Identify contributors
• Maintain accountability for decision-making outcomes
• Institute an effective rating and reputation system
• Allow iterative “horizontal” interactions between users

Design for Adoption

• Improve the decision-making process; don’t overthrow it
• Have a “plausible promise” and achieve it
• Open opportunities for communities to form
• Open up the design process

The authors conclude (page 112):
[...] We strive to take a step beyond case studies by surveying the literature and its many single-point evaluations, examining them for common themes, and deriving a set of design considerations that can be used for the next iteration of online deliberation tools. These considerations are derived from the online deliberation literature, and we have described the justifications offered for each of them.
An online deliberation system does not need to perfectly match all the guidelines presented here, but its designers should consider these points when making their design decisions, as a way of learning from the work that has already been done in this field. [...]
We hope that this work will broaden the reach and improve the quality of future online deliberation systems by enhancing their usability, utility, and ability to attract and organize quality contributions. We also hope that through further experimentation and exchanges of experience, future work will systematically test each of these design considerations to produce a solid foundation of proven design principles leading to high quality online deliberation and further development of this field.
This article complements another design-oriented paper we covered recently (Five Design Categories for Online Deliberation), and the guidelines presented here should prove quite useful not only for tool builders but for anyone trying to make the best use of existing tools:

• Some of the considerations are in fact process questions that don’t necessarily require any particular technical implementation.
• With any tool, it’s important not to overlook the functionality and features that are already in place and which might help achieve the design goals.
• There may be more than one way to achieve a certain outcome, and lists like the above can serve as a good starting point to discuss possible work-arounds should a necessary feature be missing.

The paper mentions several online deliberation tools, most of which are already being tracked on ParticipateDB. Accordingly, I’ve added this paper to the list of references.

On May 2/3 2012 the Living Labs Global Award will culminate in an Award Ceremony, a Matchmaking Summit and an Executive Training Workshop to bring solution providers and cities together and enable the dialogue around major urban challenges. The Living Labs Global Award Ceremony will take place on the eve of the Rio Summit on Service Innovation in Cities on May 2nd 2012. 21 Cities will present the shortlist and winners for their challenges in a festive ceremony.

Augmented reality applications haven't yet reached their potential as a community decision-making tool, but they are maturing quickly.
Way back in January of 2011, I asked my colleagues here at PlaceMatters what they were most excited about for the new year. Here’s a quick look at how our expectations for 2011 tracked to what the year actually held:
Ken was excited about how the rumored addition of a camera on the new iPad would enable very cool augmented reality apps that might include, for example, information like bus routes, Walkscores, and zoning proposals. As it turns out, the iPad 2 rocks but the augmented reality technology still has a ways to go before it really plays a role in community decision-making. Nonetheless, augmented reality technology is advancing, including implementations by Bosch Home Appliances, CASA, and Wikitude Drive. Ken was also excited about integrating interactive touch tables into public meetings (which we’ve been doing a bunch), about emerging online community dashboards (which are more and more common now), and about the PlaceMatters Decision Lab, which in 2011 started to find its sea legs and is poised for some great work this year.
Jason pointed to mobile apps. He was excited about the growing smartphone adoption rate (Pew reported 35% mid-year) and technological advances in the apps themselves enabling low-cost and high-value engagement tools. And he was right in his prediction about the expanding use of game-based approaches to civic participation, as well, like Crowdsourced Moscow 2012 and those Jason described in a May blog post (“Can Games Save the World?“).
Jocelyn’s enthusiasm was more focused on federal policy and funding rather than technology, in particular the ramping up of the HUD Sustainable Communities Grants program. Forty-five regions and communities across the country begin implementing HUD grants, kicking off a fundamental shift in the way the federal government tackles regional planning. PlaceMatters has long championed the integration of transportation, land use, housing, and environmental considerations in regional planning, and to watch this integration begin occurring in so many places across the country was truly exciting. And in September, HUD announced the recipients of a second round of grant awards, including two that PlaceMatters will work on (Erie County, PA and the Denver Metro region).