Commentary about the answers to using crowdsourcing for a city.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer the question. It has been great for assessing some ideas and pointing in the direction of some considerations to have.

I believe everyone considered it a good idea in general, though most would agree that considerations need to be made. This I believe as well, in the sense that things that involve sensitive issues should be studied in order to be applied in a way that best serves the purpose it is designed to have.

Some said that the citizens of any given city (some even used their own cities as examples) are a good source of information and ideas to innovate the way some systems work in their locality.

Almost everyone agrees that the Internet is an important medium. That because of this, many people would get a voice in the discussion into what happens in the city, that the discussion would extend to a flexible time span (as opposed to a finite/scheduled town hall meeting) and that this way the discussion could be more thorough and productive.

Yet many of the respondents did make the case for a discussion to be made about the issues of representativity (who is actually involved), security (anonymity vs. exposing identity), capability and reach. These are, by no means, any smalls things to be obviated when desiging a project of this charachter. I plan to go into further lenght on these issues on a post tomorrow.

To end this intervention I would like to thank all who participated in helping me reaffirm the energy to continue ahead on the subject and align better the limitations that this could face. I’m looking forward to further participation, because it clearly makes everything better.

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