We are honored to share a project showcase of the Fund for the City of New York’s Community Planning Fellows and NYC’s Civic Innovation Fellows hosted by the Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and BetaNYC.
Both programs are using geographic information system (GIS), civic technology, and open data to improve Community Board operations.
This post recaps our conversation — programs, projects, tools, and resources. IF you missed the showcase, we have uploaded the video to YouTube. The video recaps how the two programs are molding undergraduate and graduate talent into future civic leaders while surfacing projects/problems, and creating solutions.
Highlighted presentations:
- The Community Planning Fellows by Michael Levine
- The Civic Innovation Lab and BoardStat by Noel Hidalgo
- Introduction to BoardTrack and the Civic Innovation Fellows by Emily Goldman
- Recap of the Lab’s research and the launch of SLAM, a tool that helps identify noise eateries by Lindsay Poirier.
Our programs focus on building up the next generation of civic leaders — Community Planning Fellows are second year graduate students who provide professional level assistance with specific planning projects. Civic Innovation Fellows are undergraduate students from the CUNY Service Corps who assist in developing digital tools and trainings for community boards.
Currently, the Community Planning Fellows are looking for Community Board partners and projects. If you are interested in having a graduate urban planning student, please email Michael Levine.
At the event, BetaNYC announced a suite of tools and classes for Community Boards.
- BoardStat – https://beta.nyc/boardstat – a simple dashboard to navigate 311 service requests. (now, available for all 5 boroughs.)
- BoardTrack – https://beta.nyc/boardtrack – a simple tool to track public meeting attendance.
- SLAM – https://beta.nyc/slam – a tool that aggregates data that community boards often have to gather in order to review liquor license applications and sidewalk cafe applications.
- After Hours Variance Dashboard (beta) – https://beta.nyc/ahv-dashboard – a beta tool to track the location and saturation of after-hours variance permits.
- BetaNYC’s open data curriculum – < https://beta.nyc/products/nyc-opendata-classes/ > – BetaNYC’s, open and free curriculum on NYC’s open data.
Lastly, if your Community Board is interested in participating in DOITT’s user research on WordPress for Community Boards, please email Dominic Berg or Lois Last.
Here is a copy of our presentation slides. For more information on FCNY’s Community Planning Fellows visit < http://www.fcny.org/fcny/core/cpf/ > or more information on BetaNYC’s Civic Innovation Lab and Fellowship Program visit < https://beta.nyc/programs/civic-innovation-lab/ >.
If we can be of assistance, please contact us. We’d want to have in depth conversations about open data / tools, trainings, and potential partnerships!
Thank you,
Civic Innovation Lab & Fellows Program – Noel Hidalgo, Emily Goldman, & Lindsay Poirier – cif@beta.nyc
FCNY’s Community Planning Fellows – Michael Levine – mlevine@fcny.org