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?

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