Embracing Hackability

This week I had a visit from a fellow in Atlanta who is struggling to create positive change and a more engaged society in his own city. He's a frequent visitor to Providence, and marveled at our manageable scale, overlapping social networks, and cool groups and organizations. He loved the idea of a hackable city, where the citizens could co-create and re-invent their communities, sharing the best building blocks.

While we talked, I was half agitated, and half excited. Excited because we really do have a chance to do city-building differently in Providence. I've been to a lot of cities, and we have a rare combination of elements that make hackability possible, in a way that will never be true for Atlanta (trust me, I've lived there). Agitated because there is so much being left on the table. Every minute that a high school student, a new immigrant, a small business owner, a retiree is not engaged in co-creating their city is potential wasted. Every time we choose not to "share the code" of our neighborhoods, organizations, and city government - too much effort, too uncomfortable - is a missed opportunity to turn the virtuous circle faster.

A big part of the challenge is that we have no common language for sharing this stuff, and no place to go look for it. Before the 80's, our common language was built and shared in old style social institutions - churches, elks clubs, knitting circles, bowling teams. These thick threads of social fabric were the keepers of the local code, though their open source was highly localized.

Today: mobile, dispersed, distracted, digital. Our localized social institutions haven't kept up, so in our scarce leisure time we've retreated to home-and-hearth, or taken our social life virtual. Unfortunately, this has allowed our civic government to retreat within itself and harden its edges - for the past 20 years, no one really wanted to plug in anyway.

"Yeah", you say, "we've heard this social deconstruction riff before." True, but I don't think anyone's asking the next question. How do we move social and civic engagement to what's next? Not the incremental stuff, run a charette,have an open meeting policy, put a citizen services portal online. What will truly energize people to plug in, and to create new social environments with each other that are authentic?

Old and young are creating their own social structures that work for them. Retirees are moving to active senior communities. Mothers are using online discussion groups for support and self-expression. 40 year old guys are forming custom (dare I say - hackable) Harley clubs.

Our neighborhoods and cities must keep up, and leapfrog to what's next.