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Brian G. Dowling

New Community Paradigms / Gardens of Democracy - 3 views

    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      Metaphors matter, foundationally, in creating communities. Democratic governance is not best done through the machine of government but through a garden of governance by a community.
    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      Changing the relationship of citizens to government as called for by Code for America means changing the relationship of members of civil society to community and of community to government. Community needs to take over a greater role in governance from governance. Code for America provides some of the tools but not the craftsmanship.
    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      Code for America is networked across the USA but grounded in local communities. It is, however, too often leveraged through city councils and city management which is great for cities more in the fashion of Innovatatown than Parochialville. In some cases, it will need to be implemented from outside of city hall.
    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      A need to redefine the notion of self-interest. Human nature stays the same, what changes is human understanding from fatalistic to mechanistic to hopefully organic.
    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      The world is complex and networked not simple and add-on, systems are non-linear and non-equilibrium. Systems should not be described as efficient or inefficient but effective or ineffective. We are interdependent, cooperation drives prosperity and we are emotional approximators. Our systems are impacted positively or negatively by contagion.
    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      Viewing the world in a new way redefines your approach to politics. The mechanistic model of citizenship "atomizes" individuals according to Eric Liu. Under a Gardens of Democracy model, individuals are networked and citizenship can be redefined accordingly making true self-interest mutual interest as understood by Tocqueville http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch2_08.htm
    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      Understanding the new reality. You are not stuck in traffic. You are traffic. We need to be more than simple spectators to the political process. In my view, it means being more than simple participants in the existing system but redefining that system. We need to be more than customers and consumers of a system of community management and become co-creators of the system.
    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      We also use mechanistic metaphors in defining our economy, including "efficient markets". The economy is an ecosystem. Economies prosper best from the middle out not from the top down.
    • Brian G. Dowling
       
      Big government versus small government misses the point. According to Eric Liu government should be big on the what and small on the how. Government should strive to set great goals, does invest resources making them available at scale but the innovation to achieve those goals should come from the bottom up in networked ways.
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    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. 
Brian G. Dowling

Welcoming + Economic Development - 1 views

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    A growing number of places recognize that being welcoming leads to prosperity. Welcoming America provides the roadmap and support they need to become more inclusive toward immigrants and all residents. Launched in 2009, Welcoming America has spurred a growing movement across the United States, with one in eight Americans living in a Welcoming Community. Our award-winning, social entrepreneurship model is beginning to scale globally. A non-profit, non-partisan organization, Welcoming America is proud to support the many diverse communities and partners who are leading efforts to make their communities more vibrant places for all.
Brian G. Dowling

Who Rules America? Power, Politics, & Social Change - 0 views

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    Welcome to WhoRulesAmerica.net, a site about how power is distributed and wielded in the United States. It both builds upon and greatly supplements the book Who Rules America?, now in its 7th edition. The book's new subtitle, "The Triumph of the Corporate Rich," reflects the success of the wealthy few in defeating all of their rivals (e.g., organized labor, liberals, environmentalists) over the course of the past 35 years. The story of how the corporate rich won all the big battles is complicated, but most of the answers are in the new Who Rules America? and/or this Web site; you can also watch some videos of Bill giving invited lectures on the topic.
Brian G. Dowling

LocalData - A digital toolkit for communities - 1 views

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    LocalData is a new digital toolkit designed to help community groups, professional planners and government agencies modernize community-led data collection of place-based information. THE NEED Across the country, community groups, planners and government agencies collect parcel-level information about communities. Typically, the process for collecting, transcribing and cleaning this data can be confusing, lengthy and disempowering. LocalData transforms this process with technology. LocalData began as a 2012 Code for America project with the City of Detroit. Three Code for America fellows (Matt, Alicia and Prashant) identified a need for local data in Detroit. Though community groups were actively surveying neighborhoods and using this data - neighborhood level surveys took a long time and further stressed the under-resourced technical assistance providers that were assisting this effort. Additionally, comprehensive city-wide surveys were taken infrequently, often involving multiple partners, with months of surveying and transcription.
Brian G. Dowling

STATS America - 0 views

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    STATS America is a service of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. We obtain thousands of data items from hundreds of data sets from a dozens of federal and state sources, along with some commercial or private source data.  While STATS America adds value to these data through easy access and functionality, we acknowledge the direct agency source of the data on every table, profile or map.
Brian G. Dowling

Results for America: Federal Agencies Are Ready for the Next Phase of Evidence-based Po... - 0 views

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    WASHINGTON, DC - Today, at a virtual event co-hosted with the National Academy of Public Administration, Results for America will release the 2020 Invest in What Works Federal Standard of Excellence, an annual review of how federal agencies are using evidence and data to get better results for young people, their families, and communities.
Brian G. Dowling

Code of America | Civic Commons - 0 views

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    Civic technology experts have recognized the benefits of sharing technology among governments and institutions. However, instances of successful collaboration and sharing are still few and far between, in part because there is no easy, structured way to share knowledge about this software, let alone the software itself. There is no one place to go to look for civic software that cities need, and no roadmap to share what they have. Enter the Code for America Commons. As infrastructure for the open government movement, the CfA Commons is a community-edited resource to find out what's working, where.
Brian G. Dowling

The Code for America Brigade | Open Impact | Landing - 0 views

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    Open government is essential to the future of America. Let's work together to transform our cities. Let's create more efficient government services and a more engaged community. It's time to advocate for a better city. It's time to make an Open Impact.
Brian G. Dowling

Results for America - 0 views

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    Results for America is improving outcomes for young people, their families and communities by shifting public resources toward practices, policies, and programs that use evidence and data to improve quality and get better results. In a climate of constrained resources and mounting demands, we know that public funds must increasingly be invested in "what works."
Brian G. Dowling

Five evils: Multidimensional poverty and race in America | Brookings Institution - 0 views

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    Poverty is about a lack of money, but it's not only about that. As a lived experience, poverty is also characterized by ill health, insecurity, discomfort, isolation, and more. To put it another way: Poverty is multidimensional, and its dimensions often cluster together to intensify the negative effects of being poor.
Brian G. Dowling

National Complete Streets Coalition | Smart Growth America - 0 views

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    Smart Growth America advocates for people who want to live and work in great neighborhoods. We believe smart growth solutions support businesses and jobs, provide more options for how people get around and make it more affordable to live near work and the grocery store. Our coalition works with communities to fight sprawl and save money. We are making America's neighborhoods great together.
Brian G. Dowling

Streetmix - 0 views

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    About Streetmix. Design, remix, and share your street. Add bike paths, widen sidewalks or traffic lanes, learn how all of this can impact your community. A side project by Code for America 2013 fellows:
Brian G. Dowling

Code for America | A New Kind of Public Service - 0 views

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    Code for America enlists the talent of the web industry into public service to use their skills to solve core problems facing our communities. We help passionate technologists leverage the power of the internet to make governments more open and efficient, and become civic leaders able to realize transformational change with technology.
Brian G. Dowling

Imagining America | Artists & Scholars in Public Life - 0 views

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    Vision: Publicly engaged artists, designers, scholars, and community activists working toward the democratic transformation of higher education and civic life. Mission: Imagining America creates democratic spaces to foster and advance publicly engaged scholarship that draws on arts, humanities, and design. We catalyze change in campus practices, structures, and policies that enables artists and scholars to thrive and contribute to community action and revitalization.
Brian G. Dowling

New America - 0 views

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    New America is dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age. We carry out our mission as a nonprofit civic enterprise: an intellectual venture capital fund, think tank, technology laboratory, public forum, and media platform. Our hallmarks are big ideas, impartial analysis, pragmatic policy solutions, technological innovation, next generation politics, and creative engagement with broad audiences.
Brian G. Dowling

Open Streets Project | Opening Streets to People, Sharing Resources, Transforming Commu... - 0 views

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    The Open Streets Project is a collaboration between the Alliance for Biking & Walking and The Street Plans Collaborative. The goal of the project is to share information about open streets and increase the number, size, and frequency of initiatives occurring across North America.
Brian G. Dowling

Participatory Budgeting in the United States: What Is Its Role? - NPQ - Nonprofit Quart... - 0 views

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    "Participatory Budgeting is perhaps the greatest innovation in municipal governance in the United States in the last five years, and it has grown rapidly. Originating in Porto Alegre, Brazil-where 20 percent of the municipal budget is now allocated this way-PB has spread quickly throughout Brazil and Latin America over the past two decades. It's currently in place in roughly fifteen hundred municipalities throughout the world, but U.S. municipalities have been late adopters." This is one of the best community empowerment tools out there. Trouble is most communities aren't empowered enough to implement it.
Brian G. Dowling

The Obama Coalition vs. Corporate America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    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.
Brian G. Dowling

Interactive: The Unequal States of America | Economic Policy Institute - 0 views

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    Income trends have varied from state to state, and within states. But a pattern is apparent: the growth of top 1% incomes. Explore inequality in this interactive feature.
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