civic gardens: evolution of community and internet
I am one among many Chicagoans who were deeply inspired by the success of the Minneapolis grassroots digital inclusion effort that attained a Community Benefits Agreement as a part of their city-wide wireless agreement. Among the concepts promoted in Minneapolis was a provision of a “walled garden” … a space of community identified and city content that would be freely accessible to anyone able to receive the wireless signal. Some resources were also to go towards community portals for up to 90 neighborhoods in Minneapolis. Presumably, the content of those portals would be included in the walled garden? A committee was formed to flesh out those details of the contract.
The Minneapolis Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) served for us as a starting point in the Chicago campaign (still under way and in need of support) and led to the formation of the Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA). We began by taking a positive but critical look at the Minneapolis model, considering it an evolutionary step in public connectivity.
With each item on the Minneapolis CBA we asked: did they get enough? what does Chicago want? what does Chicago need? These are all preparatory to the wider dialog: what kind of Chicago do we want to be?
Chicago’s a bigger city … in terms of population and geography. Scale matters, and local political culture does too. But aside from those particulars, the principles of the movement for digital excellence and civic engagement allow for a wider dialog between and within communities. Communications policy as an object of public deliberation requires that we step up the discourse to a new level. We’re addressing topics that are multilayered and cross-cutting with all of our social needs and aspirations.
The “Walled Garden” appeared to be one of those concepts that required much further deliberation, not to mention some work on the language and framing.
A “walled garden” has some negative connotations in Internet parlance. A gated community doesn’t truly serve it’s residents well, nor our wider society, but we understand what motivates people to create them. This dissatisfaction with the terminology was not a minor part in desiring something more, something better.
But let’s start with the specifics of the original framing of Minneapolis’ walled garden concept: some community identified content and some city provided content would be freely available to anyone within range of the wireless signal. This ties to the basic questions of ownership of Wireless Internet Real Estate: splash pages and portals. Communities and Cities need a mechanism for local content and local identity and it needs to be front and center. We should view this space from a civic perspective. In Chicago we ask: what is the character of the network we want? Is’nt the splash page… the landing page as you join the network a critical aspect of that? What will the network encourage?
Some city content. Public convenience, utility and necessity. Branding for the city on the network. Lot’s of motivations there. But though we may be citizens and residents of a particular city, are we not also citizens and residents of the state in which we live, and of the nation? In other words, if there is a logic to having public access to city government resources online, in a free “walled garden” area, would this same logic not extend to state government sites, and federal sites? This broke open the concept and the idea of the Civic Garden emerged. Why not make all .gov sites available under these terms? The airwaves belong to the public anyway. We only license them out (or make them available for unlicensed use). Wireless providers need access to the right of way, pole attachments etc., you get the point.
If we accept the premise that leads to “some city content” being made available in this way, all .Gov is a step away.
Now, let us build on this case. Promotion of educational institutions and resources serves the public interest. Let’s make the content of school and higher learning available under this framework. Hence our call to make .edu a part of the Civic Garden. Now, .edu is a shorthand here: we intend this to cover the concept of education broadly.
An interesting aspect of this differentiation of select top level domains (TLDs) is in how the brands allowed themselves to be diluted. A fair number of government sites have been established under .com, with a supposition that people can’t type .gov. The different TLDs have meaning, and this is a means of opening the discourse on the relevance of the public sphere. We have an interest in opening up spaces for the commons.
The third leg of the Civic Garden pertains to community content produced locally, outside of government or government funded institutional channels. The Minneapolis walled garden and support of community portals establishes the basic principle. Communities have a right to create their own identity and to shape the character and flavor of the local network.
I expect the model of the Civic Garden to continue to evolve… word is that Minneapolis is adopting use of the term in association with their effort.
May 13th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Michael, thanks for this post and for the further exploration of the civic garden space.
The plan in Minneapolis if to provide location-based portals, up to 90 but starting with five or six. The five or six represent communities, the 90 represents neighborhoods.
Our city and our state use .us as the TLD preceded by .mn so we got .mn.us. That should cover city and state very well.
The email issue: Email is a critical application on the Web and often various info sites or sites that require a registration require an email address. The current walled/civic garden plans don’t address this.
So I think we should consider a basic email account for text communications only. No attachments. Maybe a low limit on number of messages although this bridges into the area of email literacy in deleting messages.
May 13th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Is it the case that all MN.us sites will be freely availably over the network?
May 13th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Nothing has been decided yet. I think the first iteration may just have some info links.
May 14th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Peter has blogged an update from Minneapolis:
http://www.pfhyper.com/weblog/2007/05/minneapolis-wireless-city-plans-for.html
I’ve been cajoling him to do a graphic representation of who is involved. Paying attention to what is happening in other cities can be challenging. When it’s your field and your own town, you know who the players are and you can usually keep them straight.
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
FWIW - there’s some discussion of using Meraki units to create a community-wide wireless mesh networks. That’s the equivalent of a big city neighborhood. Meraki units, as you know, allow multiple networks to be created by one central entity, or, several entities can create multiple networks, or any combination of central, decentralized entity creation.
When a wireless device connects to available wireless networks, those are listed. There are also devices that utilize multiple networks to maximize connectivity. With all that in mind, your discussion of “walled gardens” is somewhat confusing to me.
Suppose I lived in a part of Chicago that did not presently have wireless capability, or the last mile as a wireless option. Suppose I wanted to connect my neighborhood network consisting of homes that were connected using Meraki units. Would the “walled gardens” restrict access, and would pricing vary, depending on which neighborhood network was attempting to access them? Please alert me with response: tompoe@fngi.net
June 27th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I have argued for a shift in language from Walled Garden to Civic Garden. Walled Garden was never satisfying to me, as it sends a message I would not want to promote.
Earlier notions of a walled garden were associated with providers like AOL who offered content in a space distinct from the Internet. It wasnt appealing to me then, and it has certain dangers.
However, the notion being applied here is that if the connectivity is being treated as a service and there will be a fee-for-service model (user pays for connectivity) - the dominant model, then provision for making “some” content freely available to anyone that can receive the signal has merit. This was the idea brought forth in Minneapolis as a s “walled garden”.
Civic Garden is intended to conceptually supplant that - with a more explicit reach to all content that promotes the commonweal. I have suggested that all .gov. all .edu and other community and civic institutions be granted free carriage on the network.
These networks depend upon a use of the Public Right of Way, and as such there should be a return to the Public Good, and that should be direct: in defining the character of our networks.
Please ask more questions.