Brickstarter, el libro

Estuve siguiendo en su momento el trabajo que estuvieron haciendo desde SITRA con Brickstarter. Estando Dan Hill de por medio, suponía una buena exploración sobre las herramientas digitales de colaboración para el desarrollo de proyectos urbanos desde una perspectiva ciudadana. De junio a septiembre de 2012 publicaron una serie de revisiones (Fast Cards) sobre diferentes plataformas de crowdfunding aplicado a proyectos urbanos (desde un criterio amplio y diverso) como Kickstarter, Neighborland o ioby, que por entonces estaban empezando a ganar bastante impacto social. Ese repaso estructurado ya es por sí mismo una buena reconstrucción ordenada del uso que puede tener y las diferentes opciones con las que se han diseñado herramientas de este tipo.

Sin embargo, el proyecto es una investigación más amplia sobre las claves de diseño estratégico y su correspondiente plasmación en una plataforma digital de un proyecto -en este caso, Brickstarter se planteaba como proyecto teórico llevado a fase de prototipo y compartido para quien quiera aprovechar en la práctica este desarrollo- que se sitúa en la intersección de los nuevos medios digitales de acción cívica, el urbanismo adaptativo, las políticas locales o los movimientos sociales. Se desarrolló, además, en un momento en que surgían algunas voces que buscaban ir un paso más allá del aparente éxito que empezaban a tener plataformas de este tipo, especialmente Kickstarter, como Etahn Zuckerman en How do we make civic crowdfunding awesome? o Alexandra Lange en Against Kickstarter urbanism (y un buen resumen de todo ello en Crowdfunding… ¿aplicado al desarrollo urbano?)

Estos días he aprovechado para leer el libro Brickstarter (que puedes descargar o pedir impreso bajo demanda) editado por Bryan Boyer y Dan Hill , que resume el desarrollo del proyecto, las principales conclusiones del proceso y algunos ensayos de contexto y conceptuales. Es un magnífico trabajo de análisis sobre las condiciones actuales para el desarrollo de proyectos urbanos, tanto desde la perspectiva de las dificultades institucionales y estructurales para abordar proyectos urbanos (donde destaca el concepto de dark matter que explica bien esta complejidad) como desde la perspectiva ciudadana y los movimientos contradictorios que existen sobre preferencias y concepciones sobre lo colectivo que también dificultan los proyectos urbanos.

Destacaría sobre todo el capítulo central, en el que se desarrollan algunas cuestiones de fondo a la hora de pensar en la oportunidad y viabilidad de proyectos de crowdfunding urbano:

• The sheer cost of urban and infrastructural projects means that they are often in a different order of magnitude from even the highest earning projects on current platforms.
• An infinite number of novels can be simultaneously funded, but when it comes to proposals that occupy physical space there is an opportunity cost associated with the fact that uses for the same piece of physical ground are often mutually exclusive.
• Whereas items that can be transmitted or shipped may potentially attract a global group of funders, things situated in one particular place generally cannot. Their ‘catchment area’ is smaller.
• Just because a project is funded does not mean that it has passed all of the permitting and regulatory hurdles that it may need to clear.
• When a project is successful and something is built, who is responsible for it? Who bears responsibility in 60 years? Whereas consumer products can be recycled or discarded, it’s not as simple to do the same with pieces of the city.

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Week picks #2

URBAN PROTOTYPING

UP: San Francisco 2012 is a festival centered around Placemaking Through Prototyping: How Citizen Experiments Reimagine the Public Realm. The festival will foster a wide array of new creative projects which blend the digital and physical to explore new possibilities in public space. Every project produced will be open source, publicly documented, and replicable in any city in the world.

Urban Prototyping is a global movement exploring how participatory design, art, and technology can improve cities. Each UP Festival uses its own strategy to uniquely address that city’s specific circumstances – soliciting, testing, and deploying digital and physical projects with high potential for impact.
UP is an initiative of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA), the San Francisco nonprofit dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture, in partnership with Rebar, IDEO, and strong local partners in cities around the globe.

MEANWHILE SPACE

Meanwhile Space works with landlords, landowners, developers and local authorities to advise and deliver projects that relieve them temporarily of liabilities (insurance, rates, security etc.) associated with holding redundant shops, offices, cleared land etc. whilst an  appropriate commercial solution is being sought. By working with local communities and other stakeholders, interim or 'Meanwhile,' uses are deployed to reanimate the space and provide opportunities for community benefit and social enterprise.

Meanwhile Space are a Community Interest Company that incorporated in July 2009, stimulated by a combination of the directors' track record for project delivery and  a central government grant to the Development Trusts Association to deliver a  nationwide initiative called the Meanwhile Project. The CIC was the delivery arm  of the Meanwhile Project which aimed to boost community uses of empty properties and sites. The project has built a 'library' of ideas and information as a resource to make it easier for both the landlord and the project sides to realise Meanwhile opportunities, including the Meanwhile Manual, Lease and Insurance policies.

BRICKSTARTER

Brickstarter is about 21st century social services. We are sketching a system that would enable everyday people, using everyday technology and culture, to articulate and progress sustainable ideas about their community. The Brickstarter project explores the ideas behind these systems, and will provide the blueprints for a platform that can turn possibilities into proposals into projects. By creating its prototype, we aim to stimulate more productive debates about 21st century governance and local decision-making.

The core of Brickstarter is a prototype for a web service that provides a shared platform for citizens to suggest and build possibilities into proposals into projects. Brickstarter is a:

• Forum for citizens to articulate possibilities, and start aggregating attention
• Public story-telling platform, capturing the ebb and flow of debate around proposals
• Community fundraising tool for shared initiatives
• ‘Real-time dashboard‘ displaying  the collective desires of a community that can be mapped against institutional strategies and legislative frameworks, enabling bureaucracy to work more effectively

Read also: Brickstarter prototype v0.1, and using sketches to ask questions

RENEW AUSTRALIA

Renew Australia is a new national social enterprise designed to catalyse community renewal, economic development, the arts and creative industries across Australia. It works with communities and property owners to take otherwise empty shops, offices, commercial and public buildings and make them available to incubate short term use by artists, creative projects and community initiatives.

Renew Australia is based on the intellectual property, experience, and case study pioneered by Renew Newcastle. In 2008 Renew Newcastle was established as a low cost, low budget DIY urban renewal scheme that has proved highly successful and generated significant media and community interest locally, nationally and internationally. Through a simple strategy based on the temporary and low cost creative activation of some of the more than 150 empty buildings in the Newcastle CBD significant parts of Newcastle have been transformed.

Week pick series features every Friday some initiatives and projects I found or want to highlight on this blog. It will help me to track new findings from community groups, startups or local governments working and delivering solutions relevant to the issues of this blog. I often bookmark them or save them on Tumblr while I wait to use them. Maybe this a good way.