imran*

Category: Cities

  • Advocating for a .leeds domain

    In late June, I wrote to the CEO and CIO of Leeds City Council, advocating that the city should invest in the creation of a top-level domain for Leeds. There’s nothing particularly sensitive or confidential, so I thought I’d share the letter publicly and whether it’s an idea that resonates with the city’s other residents…

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    ICANN, the global body that regulates the Internet’s global domain name infrastructure has just announced plans to allow the creation of new top-level domains, such as .google, .bbc and others. I’ve long been interested in the possibility of city-based domains such as .leeds as platforms for metropolitan culture and commerce… and indeed future revenue. Imagine for a moment…

    This possibility is now before us – for an application fee of £114000 (gulp!).

    However, I think there’s a strong possibility of creating a sustainable component in many future value chains here – for local, international and national brands and organisations – as well as ongoing revenue for the authority that operates .leeds.

    With LCC as governing registry, other registrars can be authorised to sell .leeds domains globally, with a portion of those revenues flowing back to LCC on an annual basis. With LCC’s position as a broadly-based and non-partisan representative of healthcare, communities, academia, business and government – a local council is a perfect host for governing a metropolitan domain that would be valuable to all parts of society that wish to be digitally addressable. Payroll administration services for small businesses cater specifically to their resource-saving needs. All organizations need to save costs, and that’s especially true for small businesses.

    I imagine this wouldn’t be a huge priority for LCC – given cutbacks and other more pressing civic priorities, but for a small investment, the city could accrue a valuable piece of digital real-estate and enable long term, broad-based revenue.

    Imagine the commercial and cultural value of a .barcelona or .milan domain to those cities… Do we believe that .leeds is worth something?

  • Hyperlocal/Microlotteries!

    I rarely watch much TV, but last Thursday I serendipitously flipped on the chattering cyclops to see a heartwarming episode of BBC's DIY SOS, focussing on the renovation of a young family's home in Haydock.

    What was striking this family's surrounding community, was not simply the degree to which neighbours, tradesmen and acquaintances freely contributed their time and skills, but more importantly their collective "pay it forward" spirit.

    This attitude was underlined by a local lottery,  administered by residents since 1985, where each resident pays 50p into a weekly fund that supports a community centre for children and the elderly. Half the proceeds are paid out as prize money and the other half pays for running the centre.

      DIY SOS (The Big Build - Haydock) 

    As presenter Nick Knowles interviewed community members and organisers about the lottery, the warmth with which it was regarded was both palpable and humbling. This is perhaps what David Cameron's Big Society should embody; rather than gimmicky parent-run schools or elected police chiefs, but engendering collective sense of responsibility for each other's wellbeing.

    I'd like to understand whether the lottery has been a catalyst for deepening and strengthening this community's cohesion or simply been the consequence of an already cohesive neighbourhood. If the lottery has indeed been a catalysing community agent, can local lotteries be transplanted to other communities that have collective goals they're unable to realise?

    LottoPress: A street-scale "lottery in a box"
    The notion of hyperlocal "street-scale" lotteries is intriguing. As it happens, establishing a local lottery is commonplace enough to warrant regulation, so it's not hard to picture a "lottery-in-a-box", consisting of web apps that help establish, administer and operate a lottery. Such tools could drive widespread adoption and help us understand where "social lotteries" could affect change.

    Modern Britain has recently been characterised by some as a broken society, yet a new generation of "grassroots financial instruments" – like Haydock's lottery, the Brixton Pound, Piedmont's PLENTY and the zero rupee note - illustrate – show that innovating money isn't just about enriching bankers, but also enriching and enabling broader cultures.

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    You can find out more about the show at BBC One and watch the segment about the local lottery at iPlayer (skip ahead to 18m 54s)

  • Ideas for Cities

    Ideasforcities In establishing CARBON:imagineering, a little over three years ago, one of our goals was to reinvigorate the technology ecosphere in Leeds and more broadly, Northern England.

    In the course of this journey, I've come to believe that cities, and our understanding of the concept of a city, are critical to this, and other wider projects. There's a subtext of anti-urbanism that lingers in British culture, yet cities as social and physical constructs carry within them the seeds of prosperity, happiness and almost counter-intuitively, the "green-ness" that most of us seek. Also, for Brits, we identify more closely with cities than city regions, counties or the home nations.

    Being involved in helping Old Broadcasting House flourish at the heard of a vibrant technology scene; engaging in free-form discussions with Leeds' civic architect John Thorp and chief economic officer Paul Stephens; visualising the rebirth of Temple Works; observing the civic passions of people like Matt Edgar, Emma Bearman and others; all illustrate a palpable exhilaration at shaping the future of an old city, with deep problems.

    Yesterday I was asked by the Renaissance Leeds team to comment on innovation strategies for the city; what is it, why it's important and how we ‘do’ innovation. I immediately though of GOOD magazine's series of Ideas for Cities, a 'continuing brainstorm on the future of cities'. Some of the more compelling ideas, particularly relevant to the tech industry, included…

    Tech
    Mission    ; working with a large tech company – say Google – to
    establish a location for startups, meetups, popup classes, new projects
    & lectures.

    Decentralised
    Design Hubs & Work Centers    ;     Neighborhoods become local
    “offices” and create workplaces to support and encourage employees
    to work in these hubs rather than driving or commuting.

    Incubation
    Infrastructure    ;
    Cities partner with property owners to outfit homes and workspaces with broadband, connectivity
    and computers as well as meeting rooms and to help nurture entrepreneurial activity.

    Talent Districts;
    Converting neighborhoods into districts for
    personal and civic development, encouraging residents to win residency, subject to meeting a developmental and goal.

    Free-agent Portfolio; Citizens collect "lifetime learning points" for skills and qualifications with civic administrations providing a "talent agency" and infrastructure to employ those earned credentials and progress people along a career path. I can almost envisage points as an augmented reality game 🙂

    Always-on Service; a civic "call centre" staffed to answer any question of concern at
    any time – like NYC's 311.

    Zooming out further into the future, Matt Jones' The
    City As A Battlesuit For Surviving The Future     underlines the
    powerful notion that cities are perhaps the eternal solution for humanity.

    I'm uncertain of the best courses of action to recommend – witness Leeds' calamitous Clarence Dock experiment – but I sense we're not even asking the the appropriate questions of ourselves as citizens, but offloading this responsibility onto civic leaders.