Necklace Of Community Projects

from Alexander Patterns...

*The Local Town Hall will not be an honest part of the community which lives around it, unless it is itself surrounded by all kinds of small community activities and projects, generated by the people for themselves... We derive the geometry of this pattern from 5 requirements:

• Small, grass roots movements, unpopular at their inception, play a vital role in society...
• But as a rule these groups are small and have very little money. To nourish this kind of activity, the community must provide minimal space to any group of this sort, rent free, with some limit on the duration of the lease...
• to encourage the atmosphere of honest debate, these store-front spaces must be near the Local Town Hall...
• The space must be highly visible.
• finally, to bring these groups into natural contact with the community, the fabric of storefronts should be built to include some of the stable shops and services that the community needs - barbershop, cafe, laundromat.* (MarketOfManyShops)

(This feels a little retro to me, implying that groups need full-time space for physical infrastructure ("typewriters, duplicating machines"!). How should this change for the Internet?)

Consider how space and other physical resources (e.g. tools) might be shared across: Shopfront Schools, Community College; Public Library; Hacker Spaces; Work Community....

Oct'2011: Dave Winer on how Occupy Wall Street protests could be a Pop Up Store for new political groups.