Introducing MoveSmart.org

Facilitated by Justin Massa, MoveSmart.org

MoveSmart.org is a Chicago-based neighborhood opportunity search engine and housing knowledge base designed to reduce racial and ethnic segregation. The core maps of the site - the Neighborhood Finder system - are launching in early November. Justin will discuss the technical and practical challenges of building the site as well as solicit community feedback and discussion on how to improve the tool, expand its use, and implement it in other regions.

Session Notes

moves smart -- built in drupal -- rebecca white (from old chicago tech) is the lead developer

chicago demolished public housing and sent folks out with a voucher to go find housing. this created hell where 90% of these folks moved into another set of poor neighborhoods. this created a huge legal storm to create programs to start trying to create new places to live etc.

there was a discussion about why segregation still exists in chicago as badly as during the birth of the civil rights

there are three reasons we are segregated -economics -discrimination -individual behavior/choice

move smart asks you what your requirements and needs in a neighborhood are and tries to show you neighborhoods you might not be familiar with and how they meet that criteria.

the site has to have other information included in it -- so there is resouces and guides

the neighborhood finder is new and is a way to check against criteria schools, transit, car share, facilities etc.

you set your criteria and search, you then create an account and search and it shows you the results by zip code. they only give zip codes so you can't pre-judge on the neighborhood name.

then you click through to find out what the details of the neighborhood are.

they zoom in so you can't see where in the layout of the city this appears and judge based on that.

there is a suggested cost of living information around transportation budget number.

now it's all about adding new data to this model, digging deeper, and then getting the feedback and connections stuff.

funded by field foundation so far with a 10 k outright and 10 grand challenge grant -- Housing and Urban development but there is alot of focus on foreclosures and folks are funding that more so there is some strain.

how can this be used elsewhere whats the motive to use it as a thing worth funding. example would be the mayor of sf wanting to know why african americans are leaving sf and not returning.

research for 10 neighbourhoods who moves and why by urban institute. different kinds of movers and motivators, there is great research about that, with particular emphasis on churning movers who are the movers who don't put down roots.

folks suggest a way to explore related or near neighborhoods.

looking to connect this to housing sites but also looking for aways to say what part of the neighborhood you should be interested in.

how can folks contribute about their own neighbor hood. they have two things with that they are running with the extaordianaries to get information about bulletin boards and to get folks to tell us why they like their neighborhood.

they are reaching out to housing counselors to find a way to get them to use the system.

how can we integrate the human opinion without feeding the stereotypes, people in the neighborhood ready to take you on tours and contacts, relationships with local service providers.

they are trying not to be a data creation project, they are a data visualization system, with the exception of the bulletin board thing where they are asking folks to collect pictures of bulletin boards so that they can see where a bulletin board in the hood is to look for housing.

we checked out living baltimore and talked about healthy city site.

searching is the real tech challenge and matching and weighting.