Talk given to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, November 3 2010, outlining social media, online community involvement and physical place-making of real estate/renewal development sites.
8. What is social media?
“the peer-to-peer communication
and user-generated content made
possible through the advent of
participatory web tools…”
Source: Kanter, B. & Fine, A.H., The Networked Nonprofit (2010)
9. social media ‘tools’
• Conversation starters like blogs,
YouTube and Twitter
• Collaboration tools including wikis and
Google Groups
• Network builders like social
networking websites such as Facebook,
MySpace and Twitter
Source: Kanter, B. & Fine, A.H., The Networked Nonprofit (2010)
10. But why use social media
when our lives are
increasingly trapped in
in a closed circle…
15. • 82% of the population in the U.K. are on the internet
• 1 in every 4.5mins spent by people online is on social
networks
• A new member joins the business-orientated site
LinkedIn.com every second
• The largest living generation is young people born
between the years of 1978 and 1992
• 25% of people who play video and other screen
games in the USA are over 50
Sources: BBC, Neilsen, Kanter/Fine, Knight Foundation
19. we need to
• encourage citizen activism
• design local plans “bottom up”
• support “collaborative local platforms”
• give communities more powers
• “cut demand for the state”
• enable low-cost “soft” regeneration
21. • failing local markets (empty shops)
• end of edge-of-centre, residential-led
urban renewal
• growth of outsourced public services
• rise of social enterprise & “social
productivity”
• appetite for mashed-up timelines (Lost)
& interactive narrative (Seven Days)
30. …sharing knowledge…
• Geographically-linked news -
http://foursquare.com/ -
http://www.everyblock.com/
• Geographically-linked games -
http://bit.ly/akEDPl
• Oral history -
http://tellingyourstory.wordpress.com/
31. And some uses to date that
link to the renewal of cities,
places and communities:
32. • Fix my street - http://www.fixmystreet.com/
• You Choose: Redbridge Conversation 2010:
http://www.redbridge.gov.uk/cms/redbridge_conversation_2010.
aspx
• Boston Redevelopment Authority - http://hub2.org/
• Friends of Redcar Cemetary - http://www.forcem.co.uk/
• Heeley Millennium Park - http://millenniumpark.wordpress.com/
• Wake Green Park - http://wakegreenpark.blogspot.com/
• Talk about Local - http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/how-set-
wordpress/
33.
34. Different types of
local websites:
• Civil society networks
• Local discussion sites
• Placeblogs
• Local blogazines
• Public social spaces
• Local action groups
Source: Nick Booth, Exploring Hyperlocal, BBC Wesbite, http://bbc.in/aUurhp (2010)
35. As in urban renewal, social
media is populated by certain
kinds of individual:
40. And the most active or
interested users,
people who are…
41. • interested in making new friends
• keeping up friendships
• open to succumbing to social pressure
from existing friends
• believe in “paying it forward”
42.
43. Does all of this have
implications for place-making?
47. • A relationship economy
• Temporary ties
• Multiple independent groups of friends
• Loyalty to experience and data, not platform
• Physical places as passing scenery
• Physical places that allow you to fulfill a task
• ‘Swarming & switching’
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54. Three channels of work
• Strategic entrepreneurship
• Social entrepreneurship
• Community entrepreneurship
55.
56. 8 actions
1 - Form a Speirs Locks Cultural Improvement District
2 - Review administrative contexts of site
3 - Turn disused adhesives factory in to low-cost shared workspace
4 - Create ‘making’ and ‘doing’ light-manufacturing workshops
5 - Support urban agriculture in leftover spaces
6 - Open up existing premises through programmes of community
education and involvement
7 - Create and run a public use/entertainment programme
8 - Create community spaces adjacent to built structures on site
62. • Physical space as ‘sovereign real estate’
• Events as ‘transient interrupts’
• Maximise opportunities for users to make
their own spaces and relationships
• Theme of ‘doing’ and ‘making’ = popular
idiomatic understanding of site
• Open-ended occupation
• Site as catalyst to making markets, rather
than centre of a battle plan