Civic Council game

In October 2022, Nick Sementelli shared a concept that he and Alex Baca had conceived for experimenting with city council committees. This was a follow-on from our previous project for exploring neighborhood representatives and their stances on various policies. We developed a “Fantasy Council” game. Anyone can design their own Committees, choosing a Chair, members […]

Professional Civic Engineering

“Unruly Nature” Roads are particular engineering feat that deeply affect our regular lives yet pass by largely unnoticed. So effectively designed and implemented, we typically only notice them through relative minor, but annoying, failures such as potholes or flooding. Periodically, a major catastrophe reminds us the nature and importance of these infrastructure components and the […]

Everyblock closes

In 2007 at the beginning of the popular emergence of local maps and amidst a changing journalism industry, an innovative platform was launched that provided a uniquely local and up to date view of cities. Everyblock, a news feed for your neighborhood, was built as an open-source platform that used government open data feeds to […]