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Old Posted Jul 11, 2014, 12:56 PM
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LMich LMich is offline
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Special smartphone app lets you help Detroit fight its blight problem

This is really something rather simple and unsophisticated, but plainly brilliant at the same time. With the pace that blight can move in the city, it's really about time that instead of just taking snapshots of the health of the city that leaders add to that up-to-the-minute measurements. This can be used to address problems before they get out of hand like they so often have (i.e. Robinwood, Brightmoor, etc...)

Quote:

Kathleen Galligan | Detroit Free Press

Special smartphone app lets you help Detroit fight its blight problem

By John Gallagher | Detroit Free Press

July 11, 2014

With a smartphone and special app, you can help the City of Detroit stay on top of its blight removal efforts by snapping shots of derelict properties and texting them to a public database.

The Motor City Mapping database, a comprehensive digital map of Detroit properties that Mayor Mike Duggan has likened to “Star Wars” wizardry, is going public next week.

By potentially enlisting thousands of Detroiters in the effort to keep the new database current, the developers hope to take a tool that’s already good and make it great. Staffers from the nonprofit Data Driven Detroit and the consulting firm Loveland Technologies, which created the database, will start training community activists and others to contribute new information about neighborhood properties.

The technology in effect launches an interactive conversation between city officials and citizens over the condition of neighborhoods down to individual houses and vacant lots.

“This is pretty awesome, because for the first time the residents of the city and the city itself are going to be using the same set of tools to solve these problems. We really are one community, one city trying to fight blight using these tools,” said Sean Jackson, an executive associate with Rock Ventures who is working on the database.

...

Once it gets rolling, the Motor City Mapping effort will allow every citizen to contribute to the database of roughly 380,000 parcels in the city and to search for detailed information on properties in his or her neighborhood. That means that everyone from home buyers and urban farmers to police officers and firefighters will be able to access and update detailed information on every parcel in the city, including the property’s condition, its most recent sale price, whether it is occupied or vacant, and more.

...

In addition to the thousands of updates that citizens may be blexting in each year, the data team itself hopes to conduct another citywide drive-by survey once each year to refresh the database.

The result, Jackson said, is that Detroit will possess the most detailed digital description of every parcel in the city that’s available in any American metro area.

“We’re going to be able to do things we’ve never been able to do before,” he said.
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Old Posted Jul 13, 2014, 6:36 PM
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Nice! I really like the proactive approach that the city is taking when it comes to tackling blight.
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