Building A Smarter Community

Discover how GIS and location intelligence support state and local government decisions and civic inclusion in Building a Smarter Community: GIS for State and Local Government.

What's the point of creating a great Web site if no one goes there-or worse, if people come but never return? How do some sites, such as America Online, EBay, and GeoCities, develop into Internet communities with loyal followings and regular repeat traffic? How can Web page designers and developers create sites that are vibrant and rewarding? Amy Jo Kim, author of Community Building on the Web and consultant to some of the most successful Internet communities, is an expert at teaching how to design sites that succeed by making new visitors feel welcome, rewarding member participation, and building a sense of their own history. She discusses important design strategies, interviews influential Web community-builders, and provides the reader with templates and questionnaires to use in building their own communities.

The smart growth movement aims to combat urban and suburban sprawl by promoting livable communities based on pedestrian scale, diverse populations, and mixed land use. But, as this book documents, smart growth has largely failed to address issues of social equity and environmental justice. Smart growth sometimes results in gentrification and displacement of low- and moderate-income families in existing neighborhoods, or transportation policies that isolate low-income populations. Growing Smarter is one of the few books to view smart growth from an environmental justice perspective, examining the effect of the built environment on access to economic opportunity and quality of life in American cities and metropolitan regions. The contributors to Growing Smarter—urban planners, sociologists, economists, educators, lawyers, health professionals, and environmentalists—all place equity at the center of their analyses of "place, space, and race." They consider such topics as the social and environmental effects of sprawl, the relationship between sprawl and concentrated poverty, and community-based regionalism that can link cities and suburbs. They examine specific cases that illustrate opportunities for integrating environmental justice concerns into smart growth efforts, including the dynamics of sprawl in a South Carolina county, the debate over the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and transportation-related pollution in Northern Manhattan. Growing Smarter illuminates the growing racial and class divisions in metropolitan areas today—and suggests workable strategies to address them.

"Smarter Government: Governing for Results in the Information Age is about a more effective way to lead that is emerging, enabled by the Information Age. It provides real solutions to real problems using GIS technology and helps develop a management strategy using data that will profoundly change an organization, as successfully implemented by Gov. Martin O'Malley in the state of Maryland"--

The unique approaches proposed in this book are ‘glocal’ in character, as they draw on the experiences of South Africans to address the global issue of ‘smart communities’. The book blends together social and technical aspects, and presents the experiences from a range of community practitioners, academics, architects and engineers.

Driving value today requires information. Lots and lots of information. Most of us are becoming good at distilling the data within our own companies, but that’s not enough if we want a competitive advantage. In Smarter Together, Coupa Software CEO Rob Bernshteyn explains how we will soon be able to draw upon the intelligence of the community—collectively what we, and the organizations we work for, know—to benefit the community, our companies, and ourselves. For example, we’ll easily uncover: · Real-time best practices for virtually every element of our business. · The best way to offer our products and services. · Who delivers exactly what they say they will, on time, with the best price, quality and reliability. As Bernshteyn explains, the prescriptive insights gleaned from the massive amount of community data available worldwide will transform entire industries and break down long-standing barriers to value. All of us will grow smarter together. Commerce will never be the same again.

The new edition of the acclaimed guide to strategic decision-making in community planning, development, and collaboration Based on the results of more than a decade of research by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, Smart Communities provides directions for strategic decision-making and outlines the key strategies used by thousands of leaders who have worked to create successful communities. Outlining seven "leverage points" for decision-making used by thousands of leaders who have worked to create successful communities, this new Second Edition offers leaders from both the public and private sectors the tools they need to build a civic infrastructure and create a better future for all the community's citizens. Second Edition has been thoroughly updated with current knowledge and research Covers new developments from current design thinking and strategy literature to innovation and invention in communities Advises on how to create community readiness that will help avert problems before they begin All case vignettes have been revised to include more detailed information about the process and application of the seven leverage points Examples from communities around the country illustrate how these change agents' well-structured decision-making processes can be traced to their effective use of the seven key leverage points Smart Communities offers hope to those who are striving to improve their communities and addresses vital issues such as poverty, race relations, and children's health and welfare.