The Civic Improvement Network
Matthew Hall
The Civic Improvement Network
Why Neighborland could be a platform for citizen-led civic improvement:
Matthew Hall
OpenPlans
Neighborland is not a “Facebook for cities,” as Grist suggested, or even really a social network in the traditional sense of an online venue where people can gather and share for nearly any purpose. The virtual community bulletin board for civic improvement ideas, founded in New Orleans at the Civic Center creative studio and soon rolling out in Houston and Boulder, is much more focused and business-like than Facebook, Twitter, or even LinkedIn. Neighborland is not a place to share cute photos or interesting stories from a given locality, it is a place to get down to the serious business of collectively improving physical communities and in that respect it is almost an evolution from social networks; beyond networks of sharing and into networks of collaborative improvement.