Neighbourhoods Online: 10 Great Local Community Websites

I’ve been following a number of neighbourhood website projects for a while now and thought it might be time to list a few that I think are particularly good examples.

[Inidentally, there's been some good discussion on the topic lately by William Perrin, Kevin Harris and David Wilcox, who are all worth following if you're interested in this kind of thing.]

Personally, I think there’s great potential for simple online tools to bring local communities more closely together. It may be a struggle at the start to get together a critical mass of neighbours, and it may need a liberal dash of coaxing, but once you’ve got the ball rolling, people’s natural desire to communicate with others should take care of the rest. Good stuff will happen. ‘Good’ won’t always mean that people get along well or that arguments won’t take place. Far from it. When people are talking about stuff that matters, conversations are bound to get heated at times, and that’s where the delicate job of moderation comes in. But generally, I think, more communication between local people can be a very positive thing.

People have been experimenting with lots of different approaches to local community websites. Some started a number of years ago, others are much more recent. Some are blog based, some are static, others still are like mini versions of Facebook. Whatever the choices people have made so far, it’s clear that it’s becoming easier and easier for even the less-technically-inclined to set up an effective hub for their chosen local area.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s a round-up of 10 (nearly all UK-based) local community websites that I think are doing a great job and are really interesting for different reasons:

1. Front Porch Forum – a U.S. site started in 2000 and now with over 11,000 households on board. Based in the leafy Five Sisters suburb of Burlington, Vermont (but now covering a wider area), each neighbourhood of 200 or so houses has its own private forum (based on proprietary software, as far as I can tell) that works like a moderated email list. Residents’ messages include their full, real names, email addresses and streets (although not house numbers). According to the site, an impressive 90% of all households in its pilot area are signed up. Front Porch Forum is free to residents and makes some money by through sponsorship and charging local council departments to use its network to communicate with residents. [Michael Wood-Lewis, the site's founder, also writes a fascinating blog at Ghost of Midnight.]
2. Harringay Online – a not-for-profit Ning-based social network launched in July 2007 for the residents of Harringay in London. It has grown rapidly and now has well over 600 nearly 1100 members participating in some vibrant discussions about their local area.
3. London-SE1 – loads of local news as well as a thorough guide to the local area, this site is more journalistic than others on the list. It’s been running for 10 years now and makes money through ads and affiliates. The site owners also run a weekly email newsletter for the same area.
4. Kings Cross Environment – this free, not-for-profit, blog-based site provides news, views, events and grumbles about London’s Kings Cross area. It features articles contributed by a handful of local volunteer authors and seems to have plenty of fresh content.
5. ChiswickW4 – quite a general site about Chiswick in West London, providing a discussion forum, business directory, local news and events calendar. The discussion forum, in particular, seems to be thriving (100 messages on the day I checked). It’s advertising-funded and publishes a weekly e-mail newsletter which, according to the site, has a distribution of over 10,900. It’s one of eight sites based on the same template and covering other neighbouring areas of London.
6. Virtual Norwood – a long-running site (started in 1998) that brings together a moderated forum, an unmoderated email list and a local wiki. The site claims over 20,000 visitors per month.
7. Richmond Online – a non-profit, news-based site that collects stories about the area from a variety of publications. Snippets of articles are provided, along with links back to their sources for the full stories. The site is one of a network of four sites covering nearby areas of south-west London.
8. Caithness Online – to the other end of the country for this ad-supported site. Perhaps slightly unfair to call Caithness a ‘neighbourhood’, but some great local info and popular forums prove that you don’t have to live in a big city to run a great community website.
9. Cranleigh Village Community Website – what I love about this site is its simplicity. It’s incredibly clear and easy to use. Great for a small community.
10. Aldbourne Community Website – another village website. Aldbourne have put together a particularly good local events listing and a well-used forum.

Inevitably there will be plenty of great sites that I’ve missed.

I’d love to hear about more good examples, so do tell me and I may put together a follow-up list.

Photo by dominicspics