Sources of Innovation: People.

Thank you to Mark and to gary for extending our thinking about crowd-sourcing and planning. I've been thinking about their remarks and questions and have been intrigued by the word innovation as it relates to creating community.

Tonight Mark Morris, Steve Cornell, and I walked through Hidden Hollow. The air was cold and I'm certain the water in Parley's creek was much colder. But the sound of the water moving was refreshing nonetheless. A couple of large trees had fallen at the creek's edge, contributing to the very natural feel of the hollow. Walking along we spoke of the history of that place and I wondered out loud about the stories the land held. Mark mentioned the Sugar House Stories done by gary and Westminster. We talked about what this land could be for the community and all the possibilities it held, the history there, and the importance of doing the right thing with this precious resource.

The key to success when it comes to creating a community (for a place, a product--IPod, Facebook, Rock and Roll, Starbucks, for example, or whatever) is having a great product and/or concept. Frankly, if you create a great place/product/concept, you may not be able to stop a community from forming even if you tried. By contrast, it’s hard to build a community around mundane and mediocre places/products/etc., no matter what you do.

Gary asked: Does Sugar House have particular sources of innovation and resources that allow innovations to flourish and then sustain themselves? I think the sources of innovation are the people, their ideas, and their stories. How we plan to include the community and how we assist people and organizations in the work of creating something worth building a community around is essential.

Mark shared Cooltownstudios with us writing about "Crowdsourcing" which relies on the participants in a group to identify what they need in their community. Maybe it's time for a Sugar House Community Studio: an umbrella organization that serves to connect people and their ideas about their place to the resources and the avenues available for change.

The Sugar House Community Studio could provide for placemaking that promotes connection, is informed by local history, and is designed by and for the local community. The studio would be local to Sugar House. The players in the studio would come and go depending on the project and what the needs are. And in the process, the community will build a pool of resources from which to draw to get things done.

The Envision Sugar House Masterplan concept fits nicely into this studio concept. So does the idea of extending the Westminster Campus into the Sugar House community. (I know this hasn't been mentioned, but it's conversation worthy. Eg. Savannah, GA)

Earlier today I discovered this great little quote. Mark has it posted above his desk. "Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking." Wangari Maathai

People will build community around great ideas. Branding Sugar House and building community in new ways from the history won't be difficult to do. We just need to create the forums for expression and then find the ways to help people do what they find the words to speak about.

Crowdsourcing and planning

Thanks to Mark for the post on crowdsourcing. I'm drawn to crowdsourcing for lots of reasons:

• it allows activists to succeed
• it isn't centrally directed
• it functions very much the way that healthy cities have long functioned (here I'm drawing on Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities where she argues that diverse interests expressing themselves actually build much healthier communities than where zoning and planning dictate proper use and design)

That said, I wonder about a couple of implications of crowdsourcing when it is applied to real communities as opposed to virtual ones. Here are my concerns:

• in the real world, people who don't crowdsource can be hurt by the behavior of people who do. This is much rarer in a virtual world where unlimited space and virtual resources mean that groups can do what they wish. But in real communities it is often those with connections who bring about change, and the poor and marginalized who suffer the effects.
• crowdsourcing can be seen as an end-around existing processes that are meant (at least) to be democratic and deliberative.

I don't mean to suggest that crowdsourcing ought to be considered a bad thing. I wonder, though, what the process that goes from innovation (or crowdsourcing) to stablity looks like. Can communities incubate innovations and then, at some point, choose those that best suit it, while letting the others pass away? How?

And more specifically, how can Sugar House do it? Does it have particular sources of innovation? Resources that allow innovations to flourish, and then to sustain themselves?