Open Plans for an Open Society

A trend is on the rise where citizens are starting to demand better access to information in their communities. The new era of technology and information is creating the tools and, with the possibility of creating new green solutions as a motivation, cities and governments all over the world are starting to respond. The responses today often come in forms of Smart City solutions, where technology is used to create better solutions and innovations to create green growth. There is a win-win situation to acknowledge here, where citizens gain influence and awareness, and cities can make use of the knowledge of their citizens in creating new and forward-thinking solutions; possibly creating a more efficient, sustainable, transparent and open society.

OpenPlans.org is one of the responses to the new information-era. Started already in 1999, OpenPlans existed long before Smart City thinking was on the agenda. OpenPlans is a New York based non-profit organization that is now one of the largest organizations in the world dedicated to producing open source software. OpenPlans´ focus is urban planning and transportation, and the team running the organization consists of 60 “transit nerds, journalists and engineers”, according to their website.

OpenPlans´ theory is that cities work better if they use the capacity and knowledge of their citizens, as well as the experience and knowledge of other cities. The aim is therefore to open up the civic process to the citizens and encourage engagement and information sharing. OpenPlans argue that this can help creating an engaged society that is more attentive to how cities could be better planned around people instead of around cars.

OpenPlans therefore develop open source software, create online information sharing communities and help agencies in opening up their data to the public. The enterprise has been very successful in initiating, producing and help establishing projects and initiatives, most of them linked to transportation and democracy. Here is a pick of some of the projects:

NYC Summer Street, Image by Nicholas Whitaker, Flickr, Creative Commons

StreetFilms, is a site intending to inspire communities and governments by producing films showing good street planning in action. An example of a film that has inspired many is that of NYC Summer Street, an event where the streets of New York City is closed for cars and opened up for people, bicycles and a vast array of events.

Streets Blog, is a news-site reporting daily on sustainable transport and livable communities. The site has thousands of readers, and has under-sites specifying on news from New York City, Capitol Hill, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Open Geo, is the geospatial division of OpenPlans. They produce open source data, and act as consultants to companies that want to become more effective and transparent. Some of the clients include MassGIS, Landgate and Google.

Fix City, is an example of a very specific project that is designed to help cities create better incentives when implementing new bike racks. The solution is an application where crowd sourcing is used to create better knowledge on where bike racks exist, and where there is a need for new ones.

OpenPlans shows that it is both possible and desirable to steer the development in a direction where technology helps creating more inclusive governing. There are many initiatives like OpenPlans in the world, producing open data, open source software, implementing it into apps. The trend of cities and governments being more open to using technology to involve their citizens could be the step that is needed to take these technologies from the high-tech professionals to the ordinary citizen. The hope is that cities become aware that it is not so hard to create a smarter city today; the technology is available and there are many successful examples to learn from.