Local Blocks: a Knowledge Platform with hyper local information blocks

Going local post-Covid

Covid forced and still forces us to go local. But what is happening two streets away from your own home? I think we collectively discovered: more than you know! But how could you have known this without accidentally bumping into that hidden park, that outdoor yoga session or that Lebanese place that makes their own bread?

Local information is often spread across multiple platforms and usually not that well maintained or up to date. Think of a local facebook group or a Hoplr community: once the question of a neighbor is answered, the generated information drops to the bottom of the list or disappears from the screen. Local Blocks could change this by structuring and linking local information, centralizing and visualizing it on a platform and making it easily available for anyone who needs it.

Local Blocks 

In a few words, Local Blocks are information templates filled with hyper local data. These templates should be easy to use, reusable and well designed. Non technical people like citizens, owners of local businesses and government employees should be able to use them without too much explanation. The templates should on one hand be flexible and high level enough to support any kind of information. On the other hand they should gently force the user to structure the information in a way that it can be linked and aggregated to form a bigger centralized Knowledge Platform on which a user can search, filter and share information.

Use case

In Bockstael, the weekly market is currently relocated and there are less stalls than other weeks. This is the result of Covid measurements and the roadworks on the Bockstael Square. This is valuable information for locals and it could be communicated easily via Local Blocks:

 The Blocks could exist off: 

• a list block: which (type of) stalls are still present 
• linked to a geo-spatial block: where to find the market now but also where to find a specific stall in the market

The Blocks could be linked to other useful Local Blocks on the Knowledge Platform

• selecting a type of stall in the list could link to a same type of shop in the neighborhood: what if a certain stall does not have what you are looking for, where could you find something similar close by?
• the Bockstael market can be linked to other markets in BXL: which other ones are close by? Or which markets are organized on a day that suits you better?

The relocation in itself could be subject for a Local Block: why is the market relocated?

• We could link to Bockstael Square plans: geo spatial blocks, calendar blocks, … explaining the scope of the project
• We could link to up-to-date Covid regulations: list block, timeline block,... explaining the latest state in measurements.

Why I think an OSOC team would be perfect to make a first proof of concept

There are still a lot of what-ifs and open questions in this idea proposal. That’s why I think OSOC could have a super valuable role as experimental setting. We could work out a first use case, focussing on one quartier, one theme, or even one data source. 

The team could:

• Research comparable initiatives across the world
• Experiment with the design of the templates: how granular should they go? Should we for example have a general list-template or a more specific opening hours-template? How do we decide what becomes a template? 
• Prototype a template page and a Local Blocks Knowledge Platform
• Experiment with the data structure in the backend: how do we make it structured and linked?
• Research data gathering and handling: For starters we could experiment with pouring already open data in the templates. How do we handle updating the data?
• Research the review process: how and at what point should we review the information that is published on the platform? How do we avoid misuse of the platform? How could we check the quality and accuracy of the data? Should there be a difference between data published by data owners (a restaurant providing data about itself) or data published by 3rd parties (a person who knows a lot about vegan restaurants).

If you think this idea seems worth looking into, I have attached a document describing in more detail what the templates and the platform could look like and how the three types of users (citizen, local business, government) could use it.

Thanks for reading!