Communication for Communities
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More About Urbanistica

We built Urbanistica to do something simple: to make neighbourhoods places where communication could take place easily. Unlike some other social software, connections aren't made because of friendship links, but because you and other people share an interest in an area.

By creating an area, you determine how local the message you broadcast will be. The area corresponds to what you think is important. Different messages can use the same area, or you can create different areas for different messages.

Urbanistica Has Areas

Everything that happens happens somewhere. Somewhere in Urbanistica means, "in a particular area".

So when you want to send others a message in Urbanistica, you start by shaping an area the message will be found. You do this by pulling and pushing on the square handles on the area.

If you lose track of where your Listening Post is, there's an icon of him in the lower left of the Urbanistica map. Clicking on it will center your map wherever your Listening Post is.

You Have a Listening Post

This little guy represents your location, and you can drag him from place to place, click on the map where you want him to be, or enter an address to send him to.

Wherever you place him, Urbanistica will look for areas that he's inside. When he's inside an area, or several areas, what you see will reflect what the areas contain.

You can be in one, or many areas at the same time. Together, they add up to the "meta-neighbourhood" you're in. Urbanistica adds them together, and shows you the outline using light grey blue you can see at left. Any messages you see come from inside that area.

Urbanistica Knows What Areas You're In.

So wherever your Listening Post ends up, Urbanistica finds the areas you're in, and the messages associated with them.

This is what gives Urbanistica its unique, local character. What you see in Urbanistica is always contained by, and determined by what each user considers local, embodied in the size and shape of each area.

Shared Areas : some areas can be shared, so that more than one person can broadcast into it. An example might be a ward or electoral district, where many people might want to comment on the same area.

Broadcasts!

Folks like you exchange messages in local areas using Urbanistica. Those messages area attached to areas, so you see messages for the areas you're inside. We call them Broadcasts, because like an old-school TV signal, there's an area where they can be received.

Messages can be set up as Twitter-length (140 character) Questions – meaning other people can reply to them. Or, as Announcements, without length limits (but no replies). Either way you can attach a url and/or location to your message.

Auxiliary info

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