The Rise of the Pro-Am (Part I)

Part of developing a hackable society is having a community of users who also feel willing to engage and capable to contribute. In the past, this has not been the pattern of cities. Experts - politicians, technocrats, and their close associates in law or business - made decisions in small circles where knowledge and power were highly circumscribed. Citizens - residents and employees - lived with these decisions, or they could push back against them in elections, pickets, protests, or strikes. Co-creation was impossible in a world where only one group had all the knowledge and power.

Today we are witnessing something much different - the rise of the Pro-Am Citizen. Pro-Am stands for "Professional Amateur", and it was coined by Charles Leadbetter, a social scientist in Britain in a 2004 white paper. Leadbetter's thesis, that a fundamental shift in knowledge and power from centralized to diffuse and distributed was allowing amateurs, who had the enthusiasm to work to professional standards, to play an increasingly important role in shaping our societies and economies.

I'm not going to restate Leadbetter's ideas here, but they are a good read, and his group and others have documented the Pro-Am revolution around the world. What I love is seeing the emergence of Pro-Am cultures here in Providence, because they are hackability at work.

Here's a few recent examples:

The Urban Planet Discussion Board: filled with urbanist fan-boys and powered by a core of pro-am urban planners, this group more exhaustively and publicly documents new buildings, restorations, parks, and other planning developments than any official forum ever could. Using low-barrier internet tools like Google Earth, Map mashups and photo sites, they offer and discuss alternatives for development projects in ways that were previously the purview of architects and city planners.

Witness the unfolding tackling of the Vista Della Toro, a planned luxury hi-rise in Federal Hill. Planned on vacant lots, this big-ticket project would historically have been unveiled to the city when it broke ground, way past critical city meetings and design reviews. UP's pro-am's spotted up the early signs of the developer clearing critical and controversial city zoning hurdles, showed up at the city meetings, found and publicized the planned design. UP's pro-am core of "plan-atics" ably critiqued the project's fit with Providence's comprehensive plan, and proposed alternate design options with visuals on the UP website.

The East Side Public Education Coalition: what started as a traditional protest movement has become a highly influential pro-am education reform group. In 2006, a group of residents, parents and teachers on the East Side of Providence who are passionate about public education and neighborhood schools got together to protest the closing of Nathan Bishop Middle School, the only middle school on the East Side. Since a mutual abandonment between East Side parents and Nathan Bishop had decimated neighborhood attendance in the 70's and 80's, the Providence Public School district was right to ask whether East Siders would show up to recommit to a public middle school if Nathan Bishop was reinvented and reinvigorated.

What followed was a fascinating evolution, as ESPEC realized the "experts" didn't have all the answers, and needed someone on the other end of the line to co-create a new school. ESPEC's pro-ams have engaged and held accountable the City and school district, held open forum debates on the structure and organization of a new Nathan Bishop, advocated at the policy and state education funding levels, and worked with the district-hired architectural firm on new school design options. Their blog and use of internet advocacy tools like CitizenSpeak have made them the go-to resource for other local groups looking to shape their local education environment.

In Part II I'll look at what these pro-am groups have in common, and how the city could embrace these pro-am citizens to co-create the next version of Providence.