Camden Makes a Better ‘Civic Hacking’ Event With Mapping
Camden, New Jersey
Rather than coding, youth hackers in the New Jersey city used story map software and HUD data to analyze pressing city issues.
Camden, New Jersey, spent National Day of Civic Hacking this past weekend teaching young, local developers how interactive mapping can use data to tell stories about the cities.
In 2013, President Obama named Camden a “promise zone” after the U.S. Census Bureau found it to be the poorest city in the country. The label represents the federal and local governments’ commitment to increasing economic and educational opportunities in the city.
Nonprofit Hopeworks N’ Camden strives to do just that by providing software workforce training to low-income residents ages 14 to 23, and on Saturday it partnered with GIS provider Esri for the first-ever Promise Zone Day of Civic Hacking.
“[T]hese hackers will build story maps to tell a story about Camden and what a promise zone can mean there and impact the community,” Lauri Dafner, Esri solution engineer, said in an interview. “These are just the building blocks for future projects.”
No coding was required to use the story map software’s configurable interface, which employs widgets to build out dynamic, geospatial narratives.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development promise zone data and videos were played with to draw population comparisons between the past and present of future. Hackers also analyzed ways to reduce violent crime and increase affordable housing.
Dafner would like to see search functionality added to the story maps related to health and wellness issues so users can find resources near them.
The White House suggested the Camden hackathon a few weeks ago, after seeing the success of easy-to-use story maps in Philadelphia with crime data and with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s annual report.
Plenty of other cities held their own events for National Day of Civic Hacking.
Civic Hack Athens began work on a polling tool for Athens-Clarke County commissioners at entrepreneurial firm RoundSphere in downtown Athens, Georgia. When finished, all 10 commissioners will be able to gauge constituents feelings on any public policy issue through a new city website.
Community members chose the subject of the hack.
“I think when you solicit comments, you get what you expect,” Jordan Burke, local tech entrepreneur, told the Athens Banner-Herald. “We’re going to start planning for next year in two months.”
Meanwhile, in Redding, California, more than 60 attendees to #Hackforchange at the Shasta Venture Hub worked on building the city a mobile app, boosting its social media presence or adding unlisted Shasta County locations to travel review sites.
The mobile app will map 311 issues residents report across Redding from homeless encampments to potholes to graffiti for law enforcement’s benefit.
"We do have a lot of broken themes in our community to fix," Vice Mayor Brent Weaver told Record Searchlight. "We also have great things. We want to push positive things we're working on."
Other National Day of Civic Hacking participants: Washington, D.C.; Cedar Falls, Iowa; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Orlando, Florida to name a few.
Dave Nyczepir is a News Editor at Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
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