Geographic Web Resources Hold Great Potential for Place Making

At the PlaceMatters06 fall conference, participants were treated to the first sneak preview of outside.in,
a spatially enabled hub for blogs and forums that adds location-based
information to online discussions. Steven Berlin Johnson, author of
several books including Emergence, and The Ghost Map, and the leading
inspiration behind outside.in’s conception, demonstrated the beta site
during his keynote session. It created a buzz with conference
participants quick to recognize its potential as a tool for encouraging
community dialogue and place making. Johnson’s team publicly
launched the site last week after making some great improvements. They
have already cultivated a large user base and information in an
impressive number of locations. Simply type your neighborhood name or
zip code (or any place of interest) and you’ll instantly gain access to
real-world issues, discussions and the latest news unfolding in that
location. The information found on the site feels very organic
as it provides access to much more than one might find through
community-sponsored sites. Beyond restaurant reviews and upcoming
events, you gain access to wide-ranging information through blogs and
forums. You can learn about the good, the bad and the ugly. Read
complaints about local schools and journal entries of a biker’s
experience with aggressive drivers. Outside.in helps bring knowledge of
all the best blogs and websites together.Two new features in
the version recently unveiled are Neighbors and Places. Neighbors lets
you create a profile page, which lets you add a bio and image, as well
as track all the stories you’ve contributed in the past to outside.in.
You can see Steven Johnson’s neighbor page here.
The Places feature allows users to add important place-specific
information, everything from local schools and restaurants to dangerous
road intersections as a means to help focus community conversations to
one particular place. These additions have transformed the
beta version of outside.in from a site of real local stories to a
community building site where people can cultivate a stronger sense of
place.