Crowd-Sourced Urban Planning Leads to Statue of Robocop in Downtown Detroit

It all started this February, when a flippant remark on Twitter about the city needing a statue of the android police character spurred a response from the city's mayor Dave Bing, who stated that the city had no such plans. But almost instantly, those plans organically emerged. A Facebook page gathered more than 9,000 fans within a day, and that overwhelming interest inspired a few locals to start the fundraising campaign.

The money was successfully raised, and the project is now a reality. “Philanthrodorks” from all over the world have joined up to help get a piece of urban art installed in the decaying city. It probably won’t reverse the woes of Detroit on its own, but it can’t hurt!

The real story here is about the potential for online crowd-sourced participation in matters of urban life. If every project put forward by local planners received this level of interest, planning would be in a different place today.

Domus goes into more detail on ideas of Open Source Urbanism in this op-ed.