Greetings!
For several decades, Santa Rosans have talked annexing the
lands to their south. Mostly, it
was about gaining sales tax from businesses which operate in County territory,
or vacant land which could be developed.
They did the former, and were opposed by environmentalists like me when
they tried to do the latter. Urban
sprawl, you all. Left out of
the conversation was the housing there built under county standards. Cheap enough for lower rents, nothing
there for the City to covet. The
island of poor residents fighting for their survival is now called Roseland.
Last night, I attended a meeting on the future of Roseland’s
defunct shopping center, held at Roseland Elementary School. Against the background of plans by the
City to finally discuss annexation, the ghost of redevelopment past is rising
up to work its magic on a dying business property. Those in attendance represented a cross-section of residents
and involved city and county organizational staff. Supervisor Efren Carillo and Kirsten Larsen (County Comm
Development Commission) hosted the discussion, which attempted to elicit the
insights of participants around the current and immediate future uses of the
Roseland Shopping Center as demolition continues.
After providing background and an update on the demolition,
the group divided into five tables in front of large display photos of the
site. Their assignment was to
agree on the current use of the site, what they thought the activities would
become once the buildings were demolished, and what they see as the most useful
activity design might be for the interim period while the long-term design of
the site is being developed. Post-It
notes were used to reflect the ideas, and each group then reported out at the
end of the meeting on their results.
I’ve been to many meetings like this, and have groaned about
how few ever learn what was offered, and how quickly the guidance info
disappears into bureaucratic files.
But I had an idea.
I used my IPod Touch to take photos of the Post-It covered display
photos. When I got home, I used
Google’s latest map development tool to overlay the info onto an online Google
Map. This morning, I sent the internet
address of the map to the County staff with permission to use it as this
wish. If the microphones they were using for amplification and
translation had digital audio recorders in them, it would have been even more cool
to link participant voices to the map.
Friends ask what drives my passion for technology improvements. The usual answer is that I see it
helping us work more effectively together. Like this.
