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"This remarkable equation is why people move to the big city," West says. "Because you can take the same person, and if you just move them to a city that's twice as big, then all of a sudden they'll do 15 percent more of everything that we can measure." While Jacobs could only speculate on the value of our urban interactions, West insists that he has found a way to "scientifically confirm" her conjectures. "One of my favorite compliments is when people come up to me and say, 'You have done what Jane Jacobs would have done, if only she could do mathematics,' " West says. "What the data clearly shows, and what she was clever enough to anticipate, is that when people come together, they become much more productive."

Two weeks ago, we announced a crowdsourced database project in collaboration with Urban3 that aims to collect information on tax productivity of big box stores in comparison with other, more compact developments. We invited your submissions from towns, suburbs and cities across the country. Below is a preliminary map of that data, created by Josh McCarty.

We are a newly formed Social Enterprise established to improve the way that service providers stimulate and support the development of the Big Society concept. By Big Society we mean everything from building the capacity of volunteers to supporting organisations to work better together with the community. We have a strong history in participatory democracy and have developed out of a commitment to 'practice what we preach'. Our raisen d'etre is to empower organisations and communities to reconnect within the social space that lies between the state and the individual. Ultimately, we aim to promote participatory democracy and increase social capital, for the mutual benefit of all.

While bullshit may reach its apogee in the political domain, this is not a course on political bullshit. Instead, we will focus on bullshit that comes clad in the trappings of scholarly discourse. Traditionally, such highbrow nonsense has come couched in big words and fancy rhetoric, but more and more we see it presented instead in the guise of big data and fancy algorithms - and these quantitative, statistical, and computational forms of bullshit are those that we will be addressing in the present course.

Everyone knows about the big global challenges like economic instability, loss of nature, poverty, waste, conflict and climate disruption. Even after decades of efforts these monstrous problems are not being tackled so much as tickled! Many of these problems are getting out of hand yet even now the possibility of rapidly reversing all of them is within our grasp. This goal looks unrealistic to many people, given the struggle for meaningful change so far. Yet this is the key; the scale of our ambitions must match the scale of the problems as a whole. This is society's blindspot - see this and civilisation gets the chance to go on. This article is the introduction to an 'advanced research workshop' paper, Seven Policy Switches for Global Security, for the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme

The Health Inequality Project uses big data to measure differences in life expectancy by income across areas and identify strategies to improve health outcomes for low-income Americans.

There's been no shortage of hype about the relationship between cities and data, especially so-called big data. For large numbers of tech companies, cities, and even a growing number of urbanists, data promises to solve all manner of urban problems, from predictive policing to improving traffic flow to promoting energy efficiency.

The Big Ideas for Jobs project compiles ideas about programs and policies that help to create jobs. As a starting point, we have established the following criteria for the ideas. The proposed programs should be designed for implementation by cities and/or states (with or without federal support) and should lead to net new job creation in a short-term framework (one to three years).

The slow implosion of the Republican Party - along with the growing strength of a Democratic coalition dominated by low-to-middle-income voters - threatens the power of the corporate establishment and will force big business to find new ways to reassert control of the policy-making process.

Results Based Community Planning implements RBA™ population accountability within a local community. It is ….. - Working with a cross section of members of a local community (eg Maitland or Coonamble) - To decide what are the big picture results or outcomes they want for their local community (eg People Belong and are Connected to their Community) - Then work out how they would measure if they had achieved that result (eg Percentage of People with an Effective Neighbourhood Network) - To consider what factors effect that measure and how the local community is going against that measure at the moment - And brainstorm potential partners and potential strategies that could be undertaken to "improve" this measure (eg increase the percentage of people with an effective neighbourhood network) - With some of the strategies having to be Low Cost or No Cost, and some of them Off the Wall because who knows what just might be possible!! - And it is not just about planning, but then getting on and doing it!

Code for America hosted Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu for a discussion of their recent book, "Gardens of the Democracy." In it, they challenge Americans to approach the world not as a machinery that needs to be perfected but as a garden that needs constant attention, discretion, and periodic weeding. The book argues that since society and technology have fundamentally changed, so must our notions of citizenship and democracy: turning "the machine" into a garden. 

Reinvent gathers top innovators in important conversations about how to fundamentally reinvent our world. We connect up a mix of smart, knowledgeable, innovative people from a wide range of fields to work on solving the big challenges of our time.

Informed by research, NICD's programs are designed to create safe spaces for elected officials, the media, and the public to engage different voices respectfully and take responsibility for the quality of our public discourse and effectiveness of our democratic institutions. NICD identifies opportunities to drive change across all three groups while deepening the networks among and between them. Our vision is of elected officials who work collaboratively to tackle the big issues facing our country, a media that accurately informs and involves citizens, and a public that engages a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

What is Public Comment? Public commenting is a process that allows individuals, organizations, agencies, and businesses to provide input on proposed environmental decisions. (From the Environmental Law Institute Ocean Program) Public comments are important for a variety of reasons. When it comes to environmental decisions, a good aim is to get as many people to submit comments as possible. Often the "other side" (ie: big industries) will comment asking for rules to be more lax -- the specific ask totally depends on what the issue is. The point of getting a lot of people involved and submitting comments is to balance out the "other side" requests -- if more people ask an agency for better protections, then it gives them the support they need to make decisions that will better protect environmental resources.

Ours is a movement that understands the urgency of slowness, that believes small is the new big, that asserts that we are inextricably connected to each other, the food we eat and the ecology we move through, and that moves through us.

Bottom line, we want to do two big things better: Demystify congressional advocacy. We get hundreds of questions every day about what Congress is doing, how to organize locally (see the toolkit!), and how to advocate in different situations. We're going to start sending out timely updates and resources on what's going on in Congress and how you can best organize, make your voice heard, and influence your members of Congress.   Support the community of local groups putting the Indivisible Guide into action. We want to provide shared tools to help groups organize events, communicate with each other, and share best practices and resources. This also means spotlighting local successes and supporting a sense of a shared purpose. You can see that shared purpose already forming-just look at this beautiful movement on Rachel Maddow.

Californians know that the time to fix our state's economy is now. People from every region are standing up and demanding change. We must create real and intelligent remedies that will attract capital, generate jobs and encourage sustainable communities all over California.

Government Reform The government should serve voters, not corporate special interests. Public Citizen works to empower ordinary citizens, reduce the influence of big corporations on government, open the government to public scrutiny, and hold public officials accountable for their misdeeds.

California Forward's mission is to work with Californians to help create a "smart" government - one that's small enough to listen, big enough to tackle real problems, smart enough to spend our money wisely in good times and bad, and honest enough to be held accountable for results. We're different from other efforts to reform our state, because we believe in the importance of working together and understand that only robust public discussion and the creation of broad coalitions can move solutions forward. California's state and local governments must work better together for everyone. If Californians can come together to restructure the relationships between state and local governments, the experience of other states indicates that in five to seven years, we will begin to see the benefits of better governance and renewed private investment.

Ready or not, decision time is upon us. Many of these highways were built to last between 40 and 50 years - they'll soon need to be either repaired or reinvented. "What's going to happen in the next 10 years when we need to make a big investment to prevent them from collapsing like the one in Minneapolis?" asks John Renne, professor of urban studies at the University of New Orleans.