Improving Downtown Durham One Click at a Time

Last Updated on Friday, December 31 2010 12:04

[Updated Fri 12/31 for wordsmithing]

(Skip right to using SeeClickFix in Durham)

If you're an observer of web startups and all things digipreneurial, you know and love the geek's version of "People Magazine," Fast Company.

Calling FastCo a magazine is like calling the Idea Greenhouse "just a cubefarm." FastCo is a multi-channel publishing empire, member site, and events company. It describes itself as "the world's leading progressive business media brand, with a unique editorial focus on innovation in technology, ethonomics (ethical economics), leadership, and design." Sounds boasty, but after subscribing for 4+ years, I can vouch for the claim.

Fast Company delivers must-know, eclectic, and "just plain cool" content for the tech/social/designerpreneur. If you join the Idea Greenhouse, you'll be guaranteed to find some copies of their gorgeous dead tree edition laying around.

But I digress, out of appreciation for Fast Company's recent profile of the compelling SeeClickFix. (SCF for short.)

SCF is a website and mobile app that does the obvious but ingenius task of helping citizens report problems, offer ideas, and engage in an issue-based discussion about a street-level concern. SCF self-describes:

Take a government run 3-1-1 system, put it on the web and democratize it. Put the issues on a map and allow the community to manage it like Wikipedia... In a world where too many people ignore too many problems or feel powerless to address them, it is important to have concrete tools to turn complaints into action. SeeClickFix allows citizens to act to make their neighborhoods better.

SCF is the brainchild of New Haven, CT resident Ben Berkowitz. Frustrated by the deterioration of downtown New Haven through grafitti and other street crime, Berkowitz decided to build a tool that would allow residents to instantly report problems to city officials.

As the story goes, a prototype was thrown together using the Google Maps API in four hours. A few iterations later, Berkowitz had a game-changer on his hands. Here's how FastCo described the city's response:

This open 311 has transformed the dialogue between residents and government in New Haven. That spray paint on State Street is gone -- and 2,700 other user-submitted community problems have been dealt with as well. New Haven's mayor, John DeStefano Jr., notes that the system reduces departmental redundancies in tracking and fixing a problem... DeStefano is such a fan that he sent letters to 100 U.S. mayors, urging them to consider the system.

Berkowitz had problem-solved his way into a business model (and some free marketing from the Mayor!) and put together a team to relaunch as a business in late 2009. Another story claims that Berkowitz was still working out a coffee shop until mid-2010. (Sounds like they need IGH-New Haven!)

Also notable is SeeClickFix's decision to pre-sell the service to the City of Houston as a way to help fund the company, always a smart play if you can pull it off. Now SCF has north of 50 paying cities using the service, has logged 65,000 reports in 10,000 communities, and are the darlings of Inc Magazine and Huffington Post, to name a few covering media outlets.

Noteworthy: the rest of the FastCo article, titled "How an Army of Techies Is Taking on City Hall," offers other great examples of social entrepreneurs leveraging the web to make (and in some cases, force) change in local government. If you're into "doing well by doing good," it's a great read.

So What About SeeClickFix for Downtown Durham?

Before this became a blog post, I'd already spent half an hour exploring SCF to see how it could aid my adopted hometown of Durham NH, a small college town in New Hampshire. Among my many hats, I serve as the volunteer chair of our town's Economic Development Committee and a proponent for downtown revitalization.

I really dig the idea of mobile phone-wielding do-gooders reporting in real time the "cracks in the window" that accumulate in our well-used town core. With +6,000 students roaming the streets on weekend nights and New England weather always attacking, the daily accumulation of glass, trash, and broken etcetera can mount quickly.

Once I had a SCF account for the Idea Greenhouse, I set up a special "Watch Area" and a created a widget to promote and collect reports. Here's the widget, which you can embed in any website (hint hint, Durham webbie friends):

We invite the Idea Greenhouse community to use SCF to report things that they experience when working and enjoying Downtown Durham. As data collects, we'll share it with town officials and others who can take action.

After a few months I'll share some second impressions here on the Founder's Blog and on our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN pages. Considering the responsive nature of Durham's town staff and civic leaders, I have high hopes that these reports will help nurture a cleaner, more welcoming downtown, one click at a time.

What do you think of SeeClickFix? Comment below and get the discussion started!