Build the Australian city of the future

rdkallman's picture
Submitted by rdkallman on 18 October 2009 - 9:19pm
What's this idea about?
In less than 100 words, what is your idea?: 
Build an online site that allows Australians to work together to locate, design, plan and cost the building of an entirely new city to house our growing population. It will bring together technologies virtual 3d technologies, collaborative discussion spaces, online project planning and accounting tools. Real architecture, building products and property development firms can contribute alongside individual citizens. The design must be based on current or planned building materials, designs and technologies.
What is the social need or challenge your idea could address?: 
Imagine alternatives to solving the housing and sustainable living crisis in Australia. Provide opportunities for individuals and small firms to showcase their products. It will provide an interest way for Australians to learn about the challenges involved in establishing a city.
What’s really new about your idea?: 
Trying to solve a big problem by a crowd sourcing approach. Generally such visions are produced by hiring a single consultancy firm that engages only a relatively small number of experts and run of the mill focus groups and balances interest group submissions.
Stage of development
What inspired you to come up with your idea in the first place?: 
The governments policy of growing the population at between 300k and 500k a year whilst making no provision for long term infrastructure and housing that provides the basis for both sustainable living and worlds best lifestyles. Also inspired by Google Sketch-up and a discussion with Californian businessmen about their issue with an excess of expert building workers, shortage of unemployment funds and multi-year surplus of homes.
From 1-5, what stage of development would you say your idea is in? - Explain further: 
1
What can we do for you?
Select which are the one or two most important things that you need to help the development of your idea: 
Developer - to help you create your software
Funder - to give you some initial cash
If Social Innovation Camp is able to help push your idea forward, do you have the time or desire to take ownership of it?: 
Yes
0 individuals signed up
2.916665
Your rating: None Average: 2.9 (12 votes)

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
jensquad23's picture

Re: Build the Australian city of the future

by jensquad23 - 28 Jan 2010 - 10:58am
This is a very interesting use of crowdsourcing, I'd say. This could probably be accomplished if it's carried out the right way, and with better ideas (and cheaper) than a single source. Crowdsourcing is moving forward in every industry possible and will only continue to grow. From social change, to business, to online media and help to find domain names.
Ozziemedes's picture

Re: Build the Australian city of the future

by Ozziemedes - 27 Jan 2010 - 7:26pm
This is a great concept, but I'd focus efforts on achievable urban renewal strategies for our existing cities rather than trying to build some sort of utopian future-ready paradise from scratch. I'm interested in this from a number of perspectives - urban planning, green architecture, green infrastructure and legislative for demand-based urban renewal should all be topics discussed with respect to this idea. It will also be important to define metrics for measuring demand, green benefit, lifestyle benefits, etc.
rdkallman's picture

Re: Build the Australian city of the future

by rdkallman - 7 Nov 2009 - 5:35pm
In response to fxl. You make some interesting points around the role of experts vs. laypeople in the design and build process. However, i view overcoming that issue as a design goal of the idea, rather than an issue. We witness today many examples of 'elitist' planning specialists vs. politicians and market oriented developers. This idea was meant to create richer data on what type of communities people really want to live in (with the majority of content provided by experts), and move 'market choice' beyond an individuals house to the broader community. It always struck me that we value higher atheistically attractive suburbs with similar types of properties and community facilities, yet have limited approaches for individuals to co-ordinate their design choices and community requirements outside of the rare 'visionary' developer. The controversy over the 'infrastructure' tax for new communities is an example of this broader debate. I would hope we have 'simple' ways to blend the ideas and perspectives of laypeople, with the content contributions of a broad section of 'experts' both in industry, academia and government.
fxl's picture

Re: Build the Australian city of the future

by fxl - 22 Oct 2009 - 11:38pm
I have used software that allows me to plan the internals of a house, and all its furnishings. I have used simcity to play-build a city. Both of these systems took sometime to master. Lots of rules, like not building too close to the water, because of sea monsters. I think the real world has experts that do this, because they're the only ones who can keep all the legislation in their heads. The consultancies can get opinions from experts in usability and green space, and urban waste water design, and air pollution, and all sorts of other design specialities. In my day-to-day life, I work with a whole lot of software people (scoping, design, fixing, paying for maintenance, and components, etc, etc). One of my biggest issues is that specifications are very hard to write and elucidate. I find that many people with a problem often can't tell me what the solution should be, oh yes, they're full of advice, but really, what I really really want, and where they can add the most value, is if they can precisely describe the problem that they need fixed. Leave web interfaces to people who build web interfaces, leave databases design and tuning to the people who know how to do that.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.