Evidence of Impact
how have ideas from this book influenced design practice?
Governments are looking beyond their walls to create better mechanisms to make decisions, newsrooms are rethinking extractive journalism and business models, and universities understand that they need to collaborate more effectively with community. Below are just a few examples of public institutions that have drawn on ideas from the book to influence their approach to civic design.
This is Meetr.
A tool that helps innovators measure the civic and social value of their work.
Building Capacity of Engagement Journalism
Meetr is an evaluation tool developed in collaboration between the Engagement Lab at Emerson College and the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon. The tool has been adopted in dozens of newsroom and government offices already and is free and easy to use. It measures progress along two axes: social infrastructure and objective, and it keeps track of the four practices of public centered design: network building, holding space, distributed ownership and persistent input. Find out more.
Citizen-Centered Smart City
BetaBlocks is a prototype of a community-centered smart city process in Boston, MA. In collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the BetaBlocks project created the conditions for community groups to define the problem, identify technologies, and determine the terms of exploration. Read the BetaBlocks report here.
Collaborative Governance Initiative
The Collaborative Governance Initiative is an effort in Boston, MA that is convening a network of stakeholders from community, government, academia and the private sector to imagine, create and explore possibilities of effective collaborative governance in the city.