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.


Friday, October 21, 2016

New Community Paradigm Wiki Updates

The other component of New Community Paradigms or NCP, besides this blog, is the New Community Paradigms Wiki. The wiki though is updated on a more haphazard basis, often discoveries found when looking for something else but nonetheless providing markers for future explorations. NCP has a range of interests though focus is usually pretty narrow at any particular point in time. Below are a range of different additions and updates since the last time I did this. 


Healthy Cities California, along with the addition of Building Healthy Communities, Long Beach, was also provided its own wiki-page. Healthy Cities was updated with diversitydatakids.org.

New wiki-page Housing, and under it Homelessness - Seeking Solutions have been added as part of Livable Communities. The later includes the recent six part series on homelessness and the use of financial modeling to create viable programs. The former includes access to the Smart Growth America report Foot Traffic Ahead 2016 report which cautions that the high housing costs in communities threatens equity and must be addressed through “attainable housing programs.” Housing as a fundamental component of community, bridges to numerous other areas of concern. Community Place has added Revitalization Tools - Infill SCORE ROADMAP along with the recently added Revitalization Tools - Infill SCORE

A new addition was made to Community Arts with Hidden Voices which seeks to empower underrepresented populations to effectively tell their stories by engaging communities in dialogue and positive action. This is seen as being potentially connected to Community Place through the concept of Soul of a Community. Also included is A guide to Listening Matters | Community Organisers.


Community Governance was further broken down into Governance and Community Democracy and added Election Tools as well as the Local Government Commission which works to build livable communities and local leadership by connecting leaders via innovative programs and network opportunities, advancing policies through participation at the local and state level.


Transparency and Open Data in Governance has had a few updates, Open Government Partnership, Advancing Open and Citizen-Centered Government | whitehouse.gov and California piloting the first statewide open data portal, GreenGov.data.ca.gov , with data sets and results from the GreenGov Challenge, a code-a-thon built around sustainability data sets hosted on the pilot site. GovOps is now moving the open data portal to an open source platform (DKAN) to ensure the longevity of continuous efforts to make government more open and efficient.


Under Community Change Agencies, Organizational, Online and Technology Based was further delineated  into Business Oriented Organizational, Online and Technology Based adding Bloomberg Philanthropies, which focuses on five key areas for creating lasting change: public health, environment, education, government innovation, and arts & culture, along with the Unreasonable Institute, the SingularityHub, and Results for America featuring Moneyball for Government, a concept explained by the Bloomberg article, “How cities can ‘Moneyball’ government.”

The Organizational, Online and Technology Based wiki-page saw the addition of FII - Family Independence Initiative, a national nonprofit which leverages the power of information to illuminate and accelerate the initiative low-income families take to improve their lives. 

A brand new, perhaps new type, wiki-page New Economic Paradigms was created. Building for Sustainability, the Chicago Community Loan Fund was added to Community Financing. Under Participatory Budgeting was added Democratizing Tax Increment Financing Funds.pdf, PB-in-Schools-Guide.pdf  and PBinSchools - The Participatory Budgeting Project under Associated Documents, as well as a link to Public Spending, by the People.

Innovation in Governance saw the inclusion of Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation | The White House, which was actually discovered a year ago, just hadn’t gotten around to putting it into the wiki, still working to catch up.


It was decided to put Poplus, an open federation of people and organizations from many different countries with the joint mission to share knowledge and technology that can help citizens under Community Tech Tools.

Policy Creation wiki-page was updated with Public Agenda Home Page and Take-Charge.org being placed under Common Good.

New Urban Mechanics was placed under Planning the Urban Landscape but it is of a different nature than the links that were provided before. 

The Los Angeles City GeoHub was added to Policy Decisions by the Numbers with an explanatory video instead of text. 

Kumu has become a primary tool of the New Community Paradigm effort and there is now a collection of Kumu videos through Vimeo under the System Thinking Associated Programs section of the System Thinking wiki-chapter

This wiki goes through continual re-organization, especially to look for bridges across different sectors so more updates are likely to show up in the hopefully not too distant future and these updates will likely be included in this blog's future explorations of new community paradigms.

Past Posts