Neighborhoods on the Blockchain: A Proposal (Rough Draft)
My school's engineering department is hosting our first ever Dean's challenge:
to produce a research poster that explains an idea to help Arlington, TX become a "Smart City," such as how to incorporate Internet of Things and streamline transportation.
When I heard the challenge I immediately thought of blockchain technology and how it could be used to make better neighborhoods. Below is a rough draft of my preliminary research findings. The first two main premises come from Christopher Alexander's classic book on architecture, A Pattern Language.
The following is a very rough draft published early in hopes of your feedback!
PROBLEMS WITH NEIGHBORHOODS IN ARLINGTON AND SUBURBIA IN GENERAL:
#1
"Individuals have no effective voice in any community of more than 5000-10,000 persons." (The city of Arlington comprises almost 400k people!)
Read more from A Pattern Language
SOLUTION: COMMUNITY OF 7000: "Decentralize city governments in a way that gives local control to communities of 5,000 to 10,000 persons. As nearly as possible, use natural geographic and historical boundaries to mark these communities. Give each community the power to initiate, decide, and execute the affairs that concern it closely: land use, housing, maintenance, streets, parks, police, schooling, welfare, neighborhood services."
#2
"People will not feel comfortable in their houses unless a group of houses forms a cluster, with the public land between them jointly owned by all the householders."
Read more from A Pattern Language.
SOLUTION: HOUSE CLUSTERS: "Arrange houses to form very rough, but identifiable clusters of 8 to 12 households around some common land and paths. Arrange the clusters so that anyone can walk through them, without feeling like a trespasser."
WHAT STANDS IN THE WAY OF MAKING THESE SOLUTIONS A REALITY FOR ARLINGTON?
I. SPECULATION AND FOR-PROFIT LAND DEVELOPMENT
Big-time investors usually do not share the interests of the communities in which they invest
II. SMALL NEIGHBORHOODS USUALLY HAVE NO LEGAL ENTITY OR CAPITAL TO FURTHER THEIR COMMON INTERESTS OR GAIN COMMON OWNERSHIP OF SURROUNDING LAND
III. CENTRALIZED MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT HANDLES DECISION-MAKING FOR TOO MANY NEIGHBORHOODS:
Attention to detail and the local needs of each neighborhoods is not possible on such a large scale.
“The process of city administration is invisible to the citizen who sees little evidence of its human components but feels the sharp pain of taxation.”
Read more from A Pattern Language
PROPOSED STRATEGY
I. Create a cryptocurrency and blockchain application that allows residents to take control of their neighborhood repair/improvement projects!
A. Each resident (renters and owners) are allocated proportional shares of a neighborhood-specific coin
The coin is funded in the same way as a municipal bond: investors buy into the neighborhood of interest and are guaranteed a return on their money in x number of years.
Residents can create project proposals and promote neighborhood improvement projects through online media (similar to GoFundMe, except residents/investors are literally buying a share of the neighborhood/project’s success).
Residents will use their crypto shares to ‘vote’ for the project proposals they believe will most benefit the neighborhood, and those crypto-coins will ultimately fund the actual project (in the same way a municipal bond funds public works).
Example: Online voting for neighborhood improvement proposals: Liquid Feedback
Example: Municipal Bonds on the blockchain in Berkeley:
“these coins will actually represent a real security issued for a specific purpose,” said Kiran Jain, COO of Neighborly. “In this case, municipal bonds for affordable housing or homelessness.”
The paper-based municipal bond issuance process as it exists now is complicated, and involves multiple stakeholders. By transferring the whole system to a digital platform, thereby creating a more efficient process, Berkeley is hoping to encourage more residents to invest in social impact projects. The city can create a public ledger that lays out the city’s financial statements transparently, and cuts out the middle man. This reduces the transaction costs normally associated with bond issuances.
Interesting! Are you at UTA? I just gave a talk there last week in the CSE department.
Thank you! I am indeed at UTA in my second semester and first semester in engineering after giving up on archi-torture. What were you talking about?
I was talking about my PhD research, which involves incentive design and game theory for infrastructure systems. "Smart cities" kinds of stuff for sure.
I dont know what any of that means! I will be researching tonight.
This is brilliant. It would definitely need some application of zero knowledge proofs regarding home owner ID to get buy in.
To make this type of system useful and drive adoption, you would have to ensure that the participants identity and/or votes could be verified, but not disclosed on the public ledger.
You need to be a part of the EOS Dallas group. These are the kinds of problems/solutions that keep us up at night.
We need people like you contributing ideas / presentations to the community so we can spread the good word about the positive impact distributed systems can have on society and the world around us.
You have no idea how excited I am reading your comment! I have been searching for people who can help me put some big ideas into action. I have very little know-how in the areas of software and blockchain stuff. My background is in construction.
I will look into the EOS Dallas group in the morning!
We are working on building a community of people who want to make the world a little better off than when we left it using decentralized systems like EOS.
It doesn't matter if you can't code, you can think - and you are thinking about the right things.
I implore you to be a part of EOS Dallas. As you look into what EOS is all about, it's very much aligned with your thinking. This software will change the world in the coming years, make no mistake.
You should attend my presentation on the 22nd of this month A Basic Introduction to EOS at WeWork Legacy West (Frisco). We kick up around 6:30pm, try to make it if you can.
We will also be having Thomas Cox out April 18th. Spread the word, RSVP and bring some like minded friends.
I will try my best to be there and bring people. Thanks again.
If projects like this were where you spent the currency that is your life - making the world around you "more accessible equitable and prosperous for all..." as @robrigo of @eos.detroit puts it, you would get a lot closer to the center of this chart...
And that's a big part of what we are trying to create in Dallas. This is a cynical, hyper-competitive, often judgemental (and really, really hot) place to chase your dreams.
You have to create a bubble of trust and align with people who share a similar vision of the world if you ever want to be lifted up - because it is in most people's nature here in business and academia to keep you down (which is why most people leave for the coasts).
Dallas is much like any other metropolis. Unfortunately, people in cities usually lack a physical place to which they belong.
A Pattern Language asserts that the needs for belonging and identity can only be met under certain physical configurations, which I hope to address in the next version of my proposal.
What if your passion is making bubbles?
I want to be part of the EOS Dallas Group. The link didn't work.
I want to be part
Of the EOS Dallas Group.
The link didn't work.
- cryptroppel
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
While cute, this superfluous comment is considered to be spam, harms the blockchain, and is the reason why we will soon have to pay for comments like this with Resource Credits. The servers that maintain the blockchain are extremely expensive because of comments like this seeking low effort upvotes, so please do not reward this behavior.
Please consider using this link to give a small downvote of 15% or so to discourage these comments.
Any bot like this should respect the community by providing a whitelist to prevent the post in the first place and then provide a way to delete the comment for those who find this intrusive.
I don't know that the content is spam for certain.
I LOVE the idea! If I were to add my $0.02, I would say to geographically allot a specific value (average city-wide per-acre) to each acre that gets divided based on the land area of the specific lot, the left-over, streets, parks and such, controlled by the city, back to the city all for voting power. So the city will have the biggest "vote" but the cumulative owner vote would be the most powerful. This would put power back into the hands of the people, you might not want to mention that, lol. Since it is a blockchain, it will log ALL of the votes, publicly, through bond ownership, so no corruption could be used to sway the peoples power. It would also give power to every vote, since the biggest land owners may agree, the vast majority of smaller owners may not. Balance!
The bonds, attached to the specific property, could be based on the intrinsic value of that specific parcel. Buy into the bond in order to own the land. That bond then gives the owner specific voting rights for city-wide or local issues, that of course, would effect the value of that bond. The communities will be able, at that point, to have direct input into the over growth of their community. It would also allow the residents to be able to allot funds to the DPW and such in order to keep infrastructure to be maintained! My God, the opportunities would be overwhelming and community specific. They could also use the crypto to interact with other communities, county, state and federal.
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STOPI like your work. I'd like to see more beneficial possibilities before getting to the challenges.
There are implications that could lower crime, regulate soliciting, increase child safety, and provide collective landscaping agreements.
But your idea is brilliant. It never occurred to me before to have a neighborhood on the block-chain!