Mapping a Town : Creating a Community

A radical proposal which the Group is considering taking up in the medium term is the “map a town : build a community” project , which has been tried elsewhere, especially in Scandanavia. The idea is that, especially in a town like Newport, which has such a high proportion of houses occupied by their owners only for a part of the year, we can build a virtual community in the first instance, leading to a better and more integrated real community in future.

One begins by providing a place where a householder can, obviously only if they choose, set out a so-called ‘virtual shingle’ i.e. a posting on a Newport map on the website. In such a posting there would be a standard form to let them say for example their name, tel number, character of occupation, size of property, time in occupation etc. and then a larger box (or more) to allow them to say what they like best (and least) about Newport, and what they think needs to be done in their street/immediate area to improve the environment, services and the community in general.

This allows modern technology to assist with more of a return to the celtic/’gegin’ culture society, which would once have characterised the social dynamic of our community, rather than the noticeably more anglo-norman ‘home castle’ attitude more ‘at home’ in the commuter belt of Surrey.

To get things started the Group is happy to present the following very large scale map of our town, which is big enough to show individual houses and which in future we hope to make fully interactive to allow for the uploading of data.

Robbie Manson