It has been about since the end of May or the beginning of summer since this blog has been updated with a post. Part of that was spent in Europe as celebration for combination 20 year Wedding Anniversary, birthday and retirement celebration and part was working on some of the behind the scenes infrastructure for this effort.
Some new additions include a foray into mind-mapping using TheBrain.com. The link for the mind-map related to New Community Paradigms is located in the right hand column of this blog and is based upon the New Communities Paradigm Wiki which also has its link in the right hand column. Same data but the mind-map provides a new perspective on the information helping to come up with new insights. I am still experimenting but then I am always experimenting.
Before the summer, I had written a number of times about Strong Towns. As I said in the past, I believe that they are asking the right questions and raising the right issues for smaller communities. Don't always agree with them but still believe in their value. With this in mind and with approval of Executive Director: Charles L. Marohn, Jr. PE AICP, I set up the Strong Town Communities Group on LinkedIn. There is also a link in the right hand column.
"New Urbanism" is not really a new source of inspiration as this blog has basically been in line with its principles from the beginning but I am now learning far more about it than I ever did while working for cities. A new program from Congress for the New Urbanism is the CNU Public Square, again featured in the right hand column.
In addition to these changes, the entire right hand column of this blog was reformatted changing the priority of a number of resources.
Going forward I find that my intention of building a carefully crafted web platform regarding New Community Paradigms with each piece carefully placed is not going as smoothly as I had hoped. The world moves faster than that and I am finding a good deal of information that I want to share.
I still believe in putting far more time and effort into research and analysis prior to putting my perspectives on these pages so certain articles will take time. My work during the summer with the wiki and mind-mapping has provided me a great deal of material with which to work. Among those are new ways of approaching our problems of today. This will likely mean more jumping around regarding ideas and issues.
More often than not these are featured in Fast Company Magazine though there are other sources such as the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. These articles are geared usually to businesses but I have long supported using business ideas and discipline (though not necessarily business outcomes as the only metric for community governance) by community change-agents and if there is to be any hope of instilling New Community Paradigms to change the way we govern our local communities then we need new ideas outside of the old ways of thinking.
Discovering tools for community empowerment in local governance and economic development efforts.
This blog is part of an online learning platform which includes the Pathways to New Community Paradigms Wiki and a number of other Internet based resources to explore what is termed here 'new community paradigms' which are a transformational change brought about by members of a community.
It is intended to offer resources and explore ideas with the potential of purposefully directing the momentum needed for communities to create their own new community paradigms.
It seeks to help those interested in becoming active participants in the governance of their local communities rather than merely passive consumers of government service output. This blog seeks to assist individuals wanting to redefine their role in producing a more direct democratic form of governance by participating both in defining the political body and establishing the policies that will have an impact their community so that new paradigms for their community can be chosen rather than imposed.