Crowdsourcing

Sugar House can benefit from the high interest of its populace in community connectivity. It enjoys a great reputation for being a great place to live, with park space, great connections to the rest of the region, a great commercial core, quality (relatively) affordable housing, and people who are highly interested in the success of their community.

Lately I've been following a blog called Cooltownstudios, which focuses on a concept called "crowdsourcing." Similar to the concept of "outsourcing," crowdsourcing relies on the participants in the group to identify what they need in their community, gather a group together that sees a similar need, and once they reach critical mass, look for a sponsor or entrepreneur to meet that need.

From Cooltown:

Start crowdsourcing the kind of project you'd like to see in your city or neighborhood. Is it a coffeehouse? A coworking site? Attainably-priced lofts? You define the vision, then start attracting people to build up a crowd. What's next? Once you build up a sizable crowd of at least a hundred people; a beta community, we'll help you find a 'Sponsor', that is, an entrepreneur willing to work with your group to implement your collective vision.

Similar to the concepts of Web 2.0, crowdsourcing relies on the user to "create content" or to be the direct, driving force behind development of community assets. Crowdsourcing employs the tools of the virtual world (online communities, Facebook groups, etc), but has the added benefit of being able to use those communities to create something in the "real world" and see real community change.

This concept is similar to good old fashioned community activism. A recent effort that exemplifies crowdsourcing was the installation of lights at the Fairmont Skate Park. Users of the skatepark saw the need, and collectively gathered more than 1,000 signatures to petition Salt Lake City to improve the skatepark so that it could be used later into the evening. This effort benefited from having an existing physical location where interested people gathered frequently, and could be easily identified. Crowdsourcing can champion change for elements that don't currently have a physical location, but may have an as yet unknown group.

Sugar House Chatauqua?

In my comment to Kathleen's post I wondered a bit about how to make a community plan while at the same time creating a creative and collaborative process. One way to do that is to host events that both serve to educate the public about the community and the plan, while at the same time revising or creating anew the plan. Such events would both give strength to the core idea of creating a community plan and allow community members to create their own plans, linked tightly or loosely to the first plan.

In other words, I'm imagining something like a real-world wiki. The closest historical example is the chatauqua movement that educated and entertained millions of Americans between the 1890s and 1930s. The trick today wouldn't be to create a one-time event that drew hundreds of visitors to Sugar House--Brolly Arts has shown that it can do that with the Legend of Hidden Hollow, as have Lynne, Sheri, and the KOPE Kids. The trick would be to do it in a way that provoked face-to-face and online interaction between the events. How do we do that? How do we build the spirit of chatauqua (or local, democratic community-making) into the practices of local organizations, the classrooms of local schools, and the lives of local residents?

Plans and Processes

In our conversation about community building in Sugar House, one of the ideas we discussed was the concept of creating an illustrative master plan for the Westminster and Sugar House communities. Basically it would demonstrate the physical form of the community in the landscape and serve to visually connect the Westminster Campus to the Sugar House District. Ideally, while representing what is, the plan will also reflect what can be. It will become a living document that illustrates the possibilities.

Water, food, music, art, history, stories, landmarks, and the presence of detail have power to promote connection, fostering the attachment that binds people to each other and to the places they live. Their civic space is strengthened by extension. Places and plans for these elements are what we hope to illustrate with the Envision Sugar House Master Plan.

The plan will show the areas within the landscape where pedestrian pathways can be enhanced and/or created to connect people. It will show where community building events (like the splendid Sugar House Stroll by Brolly Arts) can be planned and programmed. And it will provide a clear image from which to draw when discovering new ways to make connections and dreaming of new ways to bring people together.

Westminster College and Sugar House are places where everyone belongs. In honor of the spirit of peace and inclusion for all, in honor of community building, in honor of the process, and in honor of making no small plans, I'd like to offer the words of others who have spoken of plans and processes much better than I am able.

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die." Daniel Burnham, Architect and Urban Planner, Plan of Chicago

"We slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from selfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all [people], nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all [people], but as that which affords a rule for living as well as a test of faith. Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself." Jane Addams, Hull House, Chicago

I look forward to our conversations, our processes, our dreams, and what we will make real in the process as we work together for the good of people and our places.

We're all in this together. Thank Goodness. :-) Big plans? We can be the change we're hoping for. Small moves for success? We just need to rethink the size of our catalog.

Kathleen Hill