One of the major aspects of the Digital Revolution
that has long intrigued us is how it is driving a
shift in power away from institutions and people of
traditional authortiy to the individual.

A great example of how this is happening was reported
in today's (1 Oct. 2006) NYTimes. "A Town’s
Architectural Shift, Chronicled Online"
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/nyregion/01tear.html)
was started by Montclair, New Jersey resident Liz
George. She is managing editor of Baristanet
(http://www.baristanetnj.com/), a community Web site
and forum, added an interactive map to the site to
keep a record of teardowns in her town. The NYT
reports:

"On Sept. 22, the Web site started a new feature to
chart the town’s changing architectural landscape — an
interactive map that shows teardowns, homes with
historic designations and recent construction.

“'Maybe something like this will give people pause,'
said Ms. George, 39, in her office at her gracious
100-year-old home. 'Knowing you’re having your house
on the teardown map, knowing it will be part of this
trend, I don’t think it has a positive implication.'

'The teardown issue has taken on a sense of urgency
here after a developer bought the blue-shuttered
Colonial-style house, on North Mountain Avenue, for
$870,000 last fall and demolished it this summer with
plans to build six town homes. The action led town
officials to rezone about 200 lots — including the
North Mountain Avenue property — from a designation
that allows up to eight units on a single lot to a
designation that allows only two. The developer has
since dropped his plans and has put the empty lot up
for sale.

Of course, a newspaper could have done the same thing,
but so far as we know, none has. So the least the
industry could do is supply the software apps, and
maybe some instruction, to let citizens build their
local databases.

-tj


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J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com tom@...

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
-- Buckminster Fuller
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