Crowdsourced placemaking had been a private sector sponsored success in Bristol, CT, but what about coming from the public sector?

To many, public sector sponsored crowdsourced placemaking sounded rather impossible, with such arguments as:

- A municipality doesn’t do placemaking, or implementation, the private sector does. It’s the actual physical implementation of building real places that sets crowdsourced placemaking apart from just crowdsourcing.
- The city government is obligated to

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The sons of a big-time developer in Washington DC learned enough about the real estate industry to the point they feel it’s ‘broken’. So, rather than continue the ‘Big Head’ oriented path of the real estate industry, the chose to forge a new one via the ‘Long Tail’. That is, they’re looking to crowdsource what gets built, starting with ground-floor businesses in Washington DC.

From their website: “Today, neighborhood development is dominated by large institutional companies that use Wall

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As we’re witnessing in communities from the Middle East to Wall Street, people are taking it upon themselves to organize and effect lasting change on behalf of the triple bottom line (being economically, socially and environmentally beneficial). These groups aren’t advocating having swarms of people as a better structure for governance, they’re just tired of what’s known in business as the ‘Big Head‘ (represented by the red in the graph above) having too much control, such as in

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Demand sparks supply, so let’s get a list of cities that want to see crowdsourced placemaking in their city, town and/or neighborhood. Then we’ll look into how we can secure grants for them, whether it’s through a new national/international nonprofit or through a local nonprofit. See this NY Times story on Bristol, CT,“You ‘Like’ It, They Build It” for an example of results, which should be a compelling story for potential funders for programs initiated by the local community.

What would the

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With the Village of Hempstead, Long Island, New York, when a development team implemented crowdsourcing into the development process in 2011, the Village approved it unanimously. Not so when it wasn’t part of the process in 2007, which resulted in rejection.

In 2007, a development company presented the Village of Hempstead residents (pop. 53K), struggling economically at a medium income half of the immediate area, with 5200 construction jobs, 1200 permanent jobs and $35 million a year in new

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There’s a plethora of books on crowdsourcing out there, but only one documents the crowdsourcing of a city’s entire downtown. In other words, it shows you how far crowdsourcing has come along, from T-shirts to now cities.

Below is the full excerpt from the book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crowdsourcing by Aliza Sherman, published July 2011 (sure, we had something to do with it). Two days after the book was released, the NY Times published an article on the crowdsourced placemaking of the

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Inspired by the Better Block Program in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas that crowdsourced a weekend demonstration of what a downtown street should be like, Memphis hosted their own last November. Located on Broad Street, the event, “A New Face for Old Broad“, attracting 13,000 attendees.

Pat Brown, co-owner of T. Clifton Art Gallery on Broad, sums it up nicely, “It’s easier for any of us to envision what the future can be if you can see it, touch it and taste it as well. Instead of looking at a

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People often ask, “How does crowdsourced placemaking work in the real world?“

This is best answered via real world examples, such as the piazza in Bristol, Connecticut (pop. 61,000) .

As you can see in the December 30, 2010 story, “Blending online and face-face crowdsourcing“, the Bristol survey was just launching, with “A plaza/piazza” garnering a mere 9 likes at the time. Master developer Renaissance Downtowns, which is partnering with the City of Bristol to develop a 17-acre former strip

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Being that there really is no other resource on crowdsourced placemaking, here’s a brief update on how the field is progressing, with an invite for others to contribute their own updates.

Permanent projects.
- We’ve got a whammy of a real project in Bristol, Connecticut, pop. 61,000… a $1.2 billion downtown revitalization where the crowd has a direct role in identifying what public amenities should be the centerpiece. 200 votes for public amenity ideas they come up with within a two-month

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When it comes to crowdsourcing, there’s not much compelling about the Give a Minute program that allows a city’s residents to send in their ideas to improve their community via website, Facebook, Twitter, or text, like an online suggestion box. However, when a city commits to actually implementing the most popular and feasible ideas, now you have something meaningful.

That’s what New York City is adding to the Give a Minute! program, which has run its course in Chicago and Memphis. NYC’s

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