Online community is burying the totalism

PSFK lecture bring us with the 3C method in megatrend promotion, they are creator, community and company.
He showed some online communities such as Facebook, Etsy. These examples are about leisure and fun, but there are also lots of other online communities which actually formed by inhabitants in particular area of the city, this is grassroot power which would dramaticly influence the future of urban planning.

Especially in a totalitarian country like China where formal political gathering of citizens is regarded dangerous for national security.

Community forum of Qingdao, China
Nowadays there are lots of gated communities in Chinese cities, well, I think it’s not so good for integration of the whole city, but anyway it’s good for security control, which is very crucial in a society of unbalanced development. Lots of these communities are online now, according to a survey made in 2003, there were cver 1000 online communities and over 200,000 active user in Beijing, today even more. They discuss on various issues from cooking to carpooling. These internet forums are also used as a tool to unite the inhabitants to negotiate with developers and government. Compared with formal political appeal, government are much more tolerant to this kind of activities and regard it as people’s legal demand.

So together with other NGO and volunteer union, in the future they will grow into a power which will promote the democracy of society.

When it comes to urban planning, they will also be the main player in the decision making process. With the help of “dynamic Google earth” I imagined before, they can watch the simulation of planning proposal in their city and give their opinion directly, and also add information to update the virtual city. In return the “dynamic Google earth” will also provide them with lots of services ranging from GPS to yellow page searching.

All the communities of the world, unite!