Past
Hometown Projects @ City Lab
”Never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
it is the only thing that ever has”.
Margaret Mead, The Utne Reader, 1992
In 2004-2005, Prof. Carrera inaugurated a series of
studies entitled the "Hometown Projects" to give students who are not
participating in the Global Perspectives Program a chance to carry out an IQP
that will benefit their own home towns.
It is hoped that the local flavor of these projects will also engage
faculty advisors who live in these towns, so that both students and faculty can
be equally motivated by the desire to contribute to a place that holds personal
significance to them. Initially, we have
focused on towns around the Worcester metro area,
but we will expand this initiative to other locales as needed. So far, 8 Hometown projects have been initiated
in 6 towns in the vicinity of Worcester: Spencer, Paxton, West Boylston,
Shrewsbury, Boylston and Boxborough.
City Lab provides Urban
Technologies to facilitate the collection of urban data and will incubate
town Urban Information
Systems in its servers before migrating them to final providers. City Lab is cooperating with MassGIS on the
development of LOUIS, the Local Online Urban Information System, which is an
enhanced municipal version of Oliver, the
Massachusetts OnLIne data ViewER. City
Knowledge principles will pervade most of the hometown projects so that a
cumulative accrual of urban information can emerge over time to make WPI’s
contribution to these towns more and more tangible as time passes.
The first project in Spencer (2005) consisted of a
thorough inventory of the Downtown
District and aimed at a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)
application to promote its revitalization. The next project (2006)
focused on the town’s roadways, with the goal of helping the Utilities and
Facilities department in their maintenance, while also providing a firm basis
for the estimation of the current value of all road infrastructure with respect
to the GASB-34 accounting standards. The
current project (2007) will be focused on land-use and planning issues.
The
first project in Paxton (2005) evaluated the pros and cons of the creation of a
local Historic District in
the village center.
The first project in
West Boylston (2005) focused on the assets of the local Water District in the
context of the district’s compliance with the GASB-34 accounting
requirements. The follow-up project (2006) looked at individual hookups to
the water system, as well as at issues of maintenance for pump stations and
hydrants.
The first project in Boxborough (2005) focused on the roads and related assets also in the
context of the town’s compliance with the GASB-34 accounting requirements.
The first project in Shrewsbury (2005-06) focused on the
management of the town’s cemetery. The next
project (2006)
focused on the maintenance and management of the town’s parks and athletic
fields.
The first project in
Boylston is going to focus on the management of the Boylston Water
District. The current project (2007)
will similarly deal with the Boylston Electric Company.
There are two ongoing projects in Grafton.
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