Ecosystems for cities . . tooling-up smart citizens

not doing so much coding ... but doing a lot more guidance on how to weave apps into the fabric of practice.

... describes a large part of the work I do as a community developer. For example, the work I did with permaculture.org.nz

I am involved in a urban programme based on the development of a digital ledger technology to favour interactions and transactions between citizen. As a sociologist i have still difficulties to understand which is the best choice at this level, but i wonder if anyone is interested to discuss this topic in this blog.

Is anyone suggesting that cities could be self-sufficient in food? Probably difficult... and given that, I guess my interest is the more complete ecosystem involving a city and its surrounding food producing area...

I have a hunch that the region will be pivotal. As distinct, for example, from the nation-state. Of course, a very large city (and its surrounding food producing/travel-to-work/leisure area) is a region. Pretty much the scope envisioned by Chris Alexander, in his Pattern Language approach to 'timeless' urban design.

Thanks @mikeh8 and @gregorycassel for opening this human geography discussion. Mike, would it be fair to sum up your question as; how can local groups (both formal and informal), organizing in neighbourhoods, towns, and cities, make use of the software developed for open app ecosystems? That is to say, much of the same software used in coop organizing will also be useful in local organizing (eg for decision-making, event calendars, newsletters), but how will local groups
* find out about the software?
* obtain and deploy the software?
* find out how to customize the software to specific local needs?

Is this the question you're asking, or am I missing the mark?

@vincenzogiorgino

I am involved in a urban programme based on the development of a digital ledger technology to favour interactions and transactions between citizen.

Fantastic, welcome! Discussing your project sounds like a great way to explore possible answers to the questions above. Can you tell us more about the kinds of "interactions and transactions" you have in mind, and what kinds of software might facilitate them?

@strypey That's almost all of it. The other bit is . . working in cities involves relationships with municipalities - as user communities, as funders, as policy-framework builders, as 'political' formations of a particular and different kind. So I was also inviting comments on 'Is anybody in this group developing that kind of project expertise and perspective in that kind of 'local State' culture, as distinct from working with (smallish?) bounded organisations (coops?) or close-knit communities of free-code anarcho anti-State ppl? Which are different kettles of fish?

@mikeh8 @vincenzogiorgino is the Indienet project that the folks from ind.ie are developing for the City of Ghent relevant to this discussion of applying open app ecosystem concepts to geo-local governance? From the Indienet homepage:

We don’t want the City and our industry partners to become smarter about our citizens; we want our citizens to become smarter about themselves. Our goal is to empower our citizens with technology that they own and control. Instead of a “smart city”, we want smart citizens.

I stole 'smart citizens' and pasted it into this thread's title. That's the core notion?

This discussion of cities also seems relevant to the folks from the Communecter project, is it still in active development? Is this the latest code:
https://github.com/pixelhumain/communecter
@tiborkatelbach @julienlecaille

thanks for the ping @strypey , more than ever , things are going crazy in france as you might have seen, there a real social transformations going on. We are trying to get cities working in a real democratic and efficient way. We've been recognized (by the people and by the institutions ) as part of the solution as an opensource Terriorial Information System that helps local ecosystems show their presence, make proposals, be resilient and keep independance while continuing local development.
What is going on in France, in Spain, in Italy is amazing in this shity global political contexts. What you describe @mikeh8 is what Communecter is made for , we about territories more than just cities , we also have a new program we are deploying on a large scale territory, here in Reunion, called SMARTERRE, for smart territory. it's not only online tools but also IRL methods for animating and getting things moving towards on all thematics of society taking into consideration respect, cost efficiency and more interaction between people, organizations, projects, events and the decision makers. It seems they've reached some sort of consience of the need to interconnect everything massively and not in a Facebook way, but in a wikipedia way.
sorry for the long text, There's a lot going on and to be said, maybe you guys would like to understand more and deploy SMARTERRE on your own territories ?
we could make it a call or a presentation if you like