What do you want Shareabouts to do? How might you use it? Please let us know.

If you’re a developer, check out the pipeline of work we’ve got planned, and join our developer mailing list. Please kick the tires on our dev server, and dig into the project on Github.

We have some core design concepts in mind for Shareabouts:

• Mobile is important, especially in lower-income and under-represented communities. Shareabouts needs to have a terrific experience on a mobile device.
• Your crowdsourced mapping website should look great, tweaked just how you like it. Skinnability matters.
• Open311 standards will be in Shareabouts’ DNA, so you can use it as a front-end for all sorts of civic apps.
• Translations should be easy. Shareabouts will be a good fit, whether you want to say “Suggest a bike rack location” or “共有自転車置場がどこにあったらいいかな” .

Like many projects in their early days, there’s not much to look at yet. But as you know if you’re a follower of the open source way, being completely open from day zero is the Right Approach. We’re just getting going on something that we hope will be a pretty exciting project, and we want you on board from the very start of the journey. Here’s a list of ways you can get involved.

The Bike Share Map builds on the existing open source foundation used for NYCDOT’s transportation feedback portals, using WordPress and the Google Maps API. The site is an example of a simple, straight-forward tool, complementing an existing public participation process.

To continue the conversations, we convened a bi-weekly online seminar series in Fall 2011, featuring a diversity of contributions exploring urban systems from all angles. Presentations include general introductions of firms and research projects, demos of software and tools, discussions and Q&As. Find out more about each seminar on the group blog, The Dashboard.

SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra, O'Reilly Media CEO Tim O'Reilly and SF CIO Chris Vein announcing support for open 311 services.

In many cities, 311 services offer a quick way to request or provide information. From questions about permitting to complaints about potholes, 311 provides a direct connection with civic authorities.

And even though 311 offers largely the same information service in Chicago as it does in San Francisco, there are nearly as many one-off 311 technology solutions as there are cities with 311 services. Many cities run their 311 systems using closed, proprietary formats. The results are expensive and limiting, and new cities that want to offer 311 to their citizens are stuck reinventing the wheel.

In 2009, as Washington DC began to open up their 311 API, OpenPlans began work to help create what is now the Open 311 standard. We convened and coordinated efforts in multiple cities, and that fall we convened the Open311 DevCamp, an unconference where more than a dozen city agencies . The event and subsequent coordinating work have moved the open API specification forward.

The resulting GeoReport v2 API is now used in more than two dozen cities, including Washington DC, Boston, Baltimore and San Francisco.  By adopting an open API, these cities are no longer tied to single vendors for technology solutions, and they have empowered third-party developers and other citizens to build novel applications, such as visualization tools, hyper-local alert tools, and issue-reporting applications.

OpenPlans has lead the development and deployment of Open311 by working with cities to adopt the standards, building a community to maintain them, and encouraging developers to use and  incorporate the API in  public-facing apps like SeeClickFix, Ushahidi, and Connected Bits.

This initiative helped seed OpenPlans’ wider Civic Commons initiative, which coordinates an array of multi-city technology collaborations in partnership with Code for America.

Learn more

Open311 (project site)

Open311 is a Specification for an Open Platform

Civic Commons

PlanningPress makes it straightforward to apply these opportunities to community transportation planning. Everyone involved can review and engage in dialog on ideas and proposals, using maps and a user-friendly interface.

Intended for use by transportation agencies or community groups, PlanningPress complements and extends the reach of an existing planning process. It enables regular, non-technical team members to publish updates. The simple content management system is built on WordPress, a widely-used publishing platform. We’re working to make PlanningPress really useful: we hope you will join our open source development community.

PlanningPress powers NYCDOT’s Transportation Feedback portals.

The NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide has a few things going for it that existing guides don’t. Namely, a more extensive focus on highly-developed urban areas where biking, walking, and public transit are more prevalent.

As an online, ‘living’ document, the guide can easily be updated as best practices change and evolve. Other bikeway design references—such as AASHTO‘s Guide to Bikeway Facilities and the MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices)—focus more on motor vehicles and only exist in forms that are difficult to update. And with 48 real-world city projects (and more to come), the new NACTO Guide shows awesome examples of treatments in practice around the world.

The TransportationCamp website has extensive coverage of both events, including some enlightening conversations. Check out this StreetFilm for a flavor of the event in San Francisco:

Discussions continue on the group blog, Open Transportation. Interested in helping stage future TransportationCamp events? Get in touch.

In 2009, OpenPlans created The Community Almanac with support from the Orton Family Foundation, as a place on the web where residents can share text, photos, videos about the place they live. Unlike all-purpose, “placeless” interest groups found on photo sharing sites or blogs, Community Almanacs are intended to be all about one place: that particular community and the self-told stories, values and vision of the people who make it their home.

New York City has seen a dramatic increase in bicycling, but the lack of secure, legal bike parking is still a deterrent to many.

The city invites citizen input into the placement of streetscape improvements of all kinds. Citizens, for example, can request a bike rack for any location where they see a need. But the request process requires that officials spend a huge amount of time checking the request locations, and setting location priorities is difficult. What’s more, the city can place dozens of racks far more quickly as a ‘bulk order’ than in response to one-by-one suggestions.

The bulk order process is, well, bulky. To help, OpenPlans developed FixCity, a social mapping application designed to “crowdsource” the information that’s needed for placing racks.

The bulk order process involves surveying the area, noting locations and gathering support. All this is done with more accuracy and efficiency by harnessing the power of the local residents, community groups and businesses.

FixCity encourages residents and community organizations to suggest new bike racks, verify suggested locations, gather statements of support from the broader community, and finally submit a “shovel-ready” bulk order to the Department of Transportation. Information can be submitted directly on the project site, via email, or by way of tools like Twitter and SeeClickFix.

The application is designed to use web technology to support an existing public process that isn’t always easy to engage with.

Adaptable Software

FixCity is built using Django, a powerful and popular web framework.

The FixCity software is open source, so it’s available for use, improvement, and adaptation to any number of civic applications.

Press Coverage

• Our Bike Racks, Ourselves: Crowdsourceing Two-Wheeled Parking – WIRED Autopia
• City Prepares for Law Allowing Bikes in Buildings – New York Times CityRoom

Built using our open source content management template, PlanningPress, the sites complement DOT’s existing outreach and provide new ways for communities to find out what’s happening. The templates and publishing system built with NYCDOT are available for use by other agencies. Built-in tools include mapping features, calendar, resource center and social network integration. Everything is wrapped in an easy to use admin interface.

NYCDOT currently use the portal sites for three projects:

• Jackson Heights Neighborhood Transportation Study
• Brooklyn Greenway Initiative: Neighborhood Transportation Study
• Chinatown Curbside Management Study