Browse Content: Software/Web Tool

MindMixer is a “virtual town hall,” providing a forum for communities to share ideas, discuss, and create plans for the future. Without the time and place constraints, citizens can share ideas online, and leaders can gain input from their communities

A start-up project in Vermont, FPF creates online communities for each city neighborhood, where residents can get to know each other, post requests for help or information, discuss neighborhood issues, and make announcements.

“CommunityViz is advanced yet easy-to-use GIS software designed to help people visualize, analyze, and communicate about important community planning decisions.”

INDEX is a powerful, interactive GIS-based planning support system that measures existing conditions, evaluates alternative plans, and supports implementation of adopted plans.

UrbanSim is a software-based simulation for urban areas, with tools for examining the interplay between land use, transportation, and policy.

Google Earth is the web’s most comprehensive set of maps, images and geographic data with an interface that allows users to zoom into detailed satellite images of nearly every corner of the globe and to layer on their own datasets.

Flickr is a popular online image and video hosting website that allows users to upload and share media. The site is also popular with bloggers as a way to host images that they embed in blogs and social media.

Community Almanac is a place on the web where communities can share stories about theirs towns. Community Almanac can host photographs, text stories, and videos; it allows users to map and comment on stories, organized into "almanaces" by place.

Priority Spend is web-based software to help groups of people prioritize decisions about proposed actions, spending, or other choices. It allows participants to assign weighted values to multiple choices, for more nuanced decisions than simple polls.

Socialight allows organizations and governments to create their own custom apps and communities around location-based content. Citizens can tag and share photos of local problems; governments can share map-based neighborhood plans, and more.