Here's a very innovative, new media / virtual world effort to encourage public engagement with community planning. The urban planning department at Tufts University is working with the town of Akton, MA to launch an initiative they call the "Open Neighborhood" project.
The effort combines a Second Life sim designed to look like downtown Akton, a crowd-sourced Google Map interface, and a web app to visualize what different configurations of downtown might look like. All of these tools at intended to help Akton residents envision how their town might develop over the next years and what they would like to see built. According to the Tufts Daily, volunteers will be working with Akton citizens to help them to navigate through the Second Life virtual Akton, add to the Google Map, and play with the web app redesigning their town. The Akton government will then take into account all of this input as they move forward with plans to redesign the town.
The organizers seem realistic about the outcomes of this effort. “We would love to see hundreds of people from Acton, people that have never been involved, come out and have a really positive experience, but we are realistic and this method of involvement is really novel,” project lead Professor Justin Hollander is quoted as saying.
More details in the Tufts Daily.
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