LABGOV
Projects
As part of the Co-Cities Project, LabGov investigates and applies new forms of city-making that are pushing the boundaries of collaborative urban governance, inclusive economic growth and social innovation. LabGov researchers explore the creative, nuanced, and multi-faceted ways that communities, local governments, civil society organizations, knowledge institutions and certain private actors collaborate together to govern and utilize their city and its many resources as a "commons" or shared resource.
Active Co-City projects are underway in a number of cities around the world, including in the United States. These projects are developing and testing institutionalized processes and project prototypes to govern resources in cities as a collaborative commons. Below are two ongoing projects in the United States.
CO-CITY BATON ROUGE
LabGov, in coordination with the Marron Institute of Urban Management at NYU, launched a new urban regeneration project in Baton Rouge using the Co-City Methodology, which requires community input along every step of the regeneration process. The project, which is expected to span three years, began in the fall of 2019, but the planning process is already well under way. The project’s focus will be on the impoverished Plank Road Corridor, one of the most blighted and depleted areas in all of Baton Rouge.
The Project blog can be found at LabGovGeorgetown
HARLEM E-PROJECT
The LabGov Harlem project is focused on improving access to fast, high quality digital resources, notably including broadband internet, to neighborhoods in Harlem where such access remains lacking. The project will be an example of a constructed commons, bringing together residents and other local stakeholders in an iterative process to design and develop a co-governed, community-based high speed network. The Harlem project is supported by a National Science Foundation grant and is in the early stages of development. A combination of private and public actors, as well as community members and scholars, are collaborating together to bring about the project’s goal of ending the digital divide in Harlem.
More information on the project can be found at LabGovGeorgetown