Long-term planning: NYC
I went back today and looked at the Future Melbourne wiki - a long-term planning project undertaken by the city’s residents. There were more than 11K edits from people there, and most of them thought the wiki was a useful tool. Melbourne wants to be a “bold, inspirational, and sustainable city,” and they started their ten-year strategic planning online.
I also learned today that New York’s tech Meetup is up to more than eleven thousand members. Their purpose: “On the 1st Tuesday of each month at 7PM, 6 people get 5 minutes each to demo something cool to New York’s tech community (geeks, investors, entrepreneurs, hackers, etc).” That’s a big group - and it’s just a fraction of the zillions of people all around the five boroughts starting new companies, finding new ways of making a living, and disrupting all the incumbent businesses in the city.
And my third data point today: NYU’s ITP winter 2009 show. The students were looking a little dazed - they had probably finished working right before the doors opened, and then they had to explain what everything was to all of us. But they were basically game. One of my favorite projects was Current, by Zoe Fraade-Blanar - mapping the intensity of Google queries over time to mainstream news coverage of the subjects of those queries. Basic finding: often the WSJ and NYT aren’t covering what people seem to be interested in reading about.
So if I were thinking about NYC’s future, I’d look to what Melbourne is carrying off - collaborative long-term planning, using online tools where possible - and I’d enlist the help of the NYU ITP students and the NYC tech meetup to drag this city’s planning into the 21st century. I’d bolster the role of NYU as this city’s MIT, because we know that universities catalyze and sustain regional innovation clusters (and because ITP is at NYU!). “Metropolitan regions—and regional industry clusters—represent a potent source of innovation and therefore productivity at a moment of national economic crisis,” as Brookings says. I’d figure out what new tech industries needed help to get off the ground, and I’d make sure that they had the connectivity to get there.
In the meantime, consider Melbourne. Nice beaches. Visionary planning capabilities.
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“Basic finding: often the WSJ and NYT aren’t covering what people seem to be interested in reading about.”
This is a good thing, I think. We don’t want our best reporters working the Tiger Woods beat. I think switching this around reframes the problem more accurately: people aren’t interested in good journalism and good ideas.
“I’d figure out what new tech industries needed help to get off the ground”
A big step would be removing the state’s LLC publishing requirement, which needlessly sucks about $2500 out of every new LLC in the city and redirects it to print publications that few people read.
The collaborative planning scene is actually really strong in NYC. The Open Planning project (their fixcity.org site for crowdsourcing bike rack locations is an example of a unique local innovation) and the Regional Plan Association have started holding regular Planning and Technology workshops. Also, there is the OpenNY meetup - http://opennyforum.org - which has been holding regular events about open government and civic technology. There is already a lot of crossover between these groups and ITP and the Tech meetup. Hopefully there are opportunities in 2010 to try out these new possibilities in the Apple.
OpenNY Meetup is definitely doing some good work.
I’ve been impressed recently that ITAC has a fair grip on things. http://www.itac.org/
Gale Brewer is also showing initiative: http://www.nycctechcomm.wordpress.com/