The Laboratory for Civic Technology is on a mission to harness the internet to revitalize local community in America. We are deploying our decade of experience in civic tech design to revive CommonPlace , a modern town bulletin that has proven to be the best not-for-profit, open source web platform for local community engagement.
CommonPlace, the Civic Tech Lab’s flagship project, is a civic-minded, not-for-profit, and open source web platform for local community engagement.
Local community matters. Interactions between neighbors, participation in civic life, collective trust, and norms of reciprocity are key to the prosperity of American towns. Unfortunately, as Robert Putnam explained in his seminal book Bowling Alone, over the past fifty years, there has been a steep decline in local community engagement in America. Unless we develop new civic institutions to re-connect us to our neighbors and our towns, we will lose that civic spirit that makes our democracy work.