OpenPlans | Community engagement that works

For over ten years, OpenPlans has been an amazing incubator of people, ideas and projects. Maintaining our deeply-held belief in better cities thanks to technology and participation, we’ve built impactful, well-crafted software – with occasional organizational...

During my fall fellowship at OpenPlans, I spent time exploring many different tools for digital engagement. Today’s my last day, so I want to share some thoughts about what the planner’s toolbox will look like in the future.
Choosing from a rich selection of great online tools, planners will be able to pick the right tool from their toolbox for the task at hand. Working this way requires a different mindset. It’s about approaching the problem in front of you with both traditional...

Back in September, Community Matters featured a blog post listing 50 tools for Online Public Engagement. They gathered tools for digital outreach, ‘in no particular order (and with no implied endorsement)’.
I figured the list could be even more helpful if the tools were grouped by purpose and who uses them. Basically, what can the public do with the tool to engage in a project? And why might planners use it? Here are the groups:...

For anyone who wants to set up their own self-hosted Shareabouts map, life gets easier today with our new Deploy to Heroku button.
Click the button, and have a standalone Shareabouts map set up for you on Heroku, our preferred hosting choice. This single button click is much easier than running the deploy commands. Once your map is up, you’ll still need some web development enthusiasm...