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07 Oct 09

How Long is Your City's Tail? - O'Reilly Radar

Excellent article by John Geraci on how/why "the long tail" analogy has to come alive in cities, and what it would mean.
QUOTE
Most cities right now are models of closed, rigid systems, systems that rely on a few, top-performing agents to get civic tasks done and keep quality of life high for residents. Most of these agents are departments of the city itself, though some are outsourced. Either way, cities rely on one agent per issue, no more. (...)
...imagine instead a city that has totally open, unrestricted access to data (say, San Francisco or DC in 2011). What does it look like? It has all of the familiar city-run departments providing all of the services and assistance they've always provided - that's not going away. Then it also has public services offered by the mega companies, the Google Traffic, IBM's Smarter Cities, and so forth. Those are huge added value to these open cities - they're used by a large percentage of residents and make life in those cities better. But THEN, it also has an insane long tail of services set up and run by anyone with an interest in doing so, just by hooking into city data, distributing it in a new way, improving on it, mashing it up, giving it back to the city, etc. These services each individually get used by a small minority of people, but collectively they get used by more than any other single source in the city.
UNQUOTE
It's interesting to think about the differences between Canada and the US here. In the US, all government data is owned by the people - governments can't keep it back. But in Canada, all government data is owned by the Crown. That means, Canadians have to first get someone in authority to grant them access to it and they have to get permission to use it. #fail #deadendfeudalism

radar.oreilly.com/...w-long-is-your-citys-tail.html - Preview

john_geraci cities data open_source democracy long_tail o'reilly

When the cost of each individual transaction falls to nearly zero, marginal and low-performing items, grouped together, can account for a lot more of the overall value of a company than the top-performing ones.
Everybody gets that.

What almost nobody realizes yet is that the same is true for cities - or can be.
5 more annotations...
- Most cities right now are models of closed, rigid systems, systems that rely on a few, top-performing agents to get civic tasks done and keep quality of life high for residents. Most of these agents are departments of the city itself, though some are outsourced. Either way, cities rely on one agent per issue, no more.
- A good number of cites are beginning to do deals with mega companies like Google and IBM, giving them access to city data so that they can build excellent tools for residents to use.
- If we do that, of course, we're missing out on what is potentially the biggest piece of the pie - the tail. That's where a huge chunk of the value comes from.
- But THEN, it also has an insane long tail of services set up and run by anyone with an interest in doing so, just by hooking into city data, distributing it in a new way, improving on it, mashing it up, giving it back to the city, etc. These services each individually get used by a small minority of people, but collectively they get used by more than any other single source in the city.
- So it might be time to ask yourself: how long is your city's tail shaping up to be? The answer may determine, to a large degree, how much your city is a thriving place to live in decades to come.