New Ideas CityHello Museum

Map-a-thon: NYC

OpenUrban is the first open source, user-generated web map and wiki focusing on current and proposed urban developments worldwide.

Not all information on urban development resides in one institution. Information and ideas are spread between governmental organizations, firms, private institutions, media outlets, and individuals who may not be willing or able to cooperate or communicate with each other.

OpenUrban sets out to change this, especially in cities where rapid, informal, or uncoordinated development is occurring. With the understanding that an informed population is a fundamental part of a functional and equitable global society, OpenUrban embraces crowd-sourcing technology as a means to inform and empower. By combining written media with spatial information, OpenUrban creates a powerful tool for people to understand how their cities are changing and to actively participate in that change.

In much the same way that Wikipedia unsettled “official” knowledge bases, and OpenStreetMap reconfigured the production and freedom of geographic information, OpenUrban’s mission is to subtly, but powerfully, transform how cities are conceived and created.