October 22, 2009
Roxbury and Brookline are connected by the Route 66 bus line and separated by only 2.4 miles, but socially they are worlds apart. Roxbury is a poor, urban neighborhood in Boston proper and Brookline is a wealthy, suburban neighborhood just outside the city. As of today, the communities rarely interact. Thanks to an interesting project named Virtual Street Corners that is all about to change.
Scheduled to debut May 15th 2010, Virtual Street Corners takes a large storefront window located in front of a bus stop in each neighborhood and transforms it into a video screen. These video screens, which will stream a real-time feed 24/7, will literally provide a window into the other community in an effort to encourage the residents to interact. The screens will also serve as media centers for news collection and reporting, creating a ‘virtual town hall.”
In order to facilitate personal interaction and news reporting, Virtual Street Corners has organized three citizens from different areas of each town to report daily news on a scheduled basis. In addition, there will be a website that streams both live feeds and hosts podcasts/videocasts for download.
[via Kenji Summers]
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