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City Stories

City Stories is a chance for volunteer web designers and writers to share stories about the cities they live in, or places they have visited. It's easiest to understand by visiting the site.

In community cultural development, we define ‘community’ as a geographical locality. Online, ‘community’ denotes people gathered together in shared interests. City Stories then is an online community of interest; where the shared interest of the participants is their locality. The outcomes are stories about their location, giving a wider deeper picture of the places they live, colouring in maps and events listings with people, dialogue and moments from life in that place.

In practice, many of those who develop City Stories websites are closely related to voluntary arts. The Voluntary Arts Network defines voluntary arts “as those arts and crafts that people undertake for self-improvement, social networking and leisure, but not primarily for payment”

These designers who have undertaken to create a City Stories site are designers volunteering to give back to their community, rather than professional writers. This is in keeping with the altruistic nature of some of the best places on the internet. This can-do spirit is inspiring.

The founder of City Stories, Derek Powazek, believes “the more we blend the best aspects of virtual community (asynchronous communication, location-agnostic personal connections) with the best of the real world (location-specific content, real-time events), the richer each world gets.”1 He is passionate about bringing these worlds together. Another of his projects, The Fray, is a collection of stories submitted by both professional and amateur writers. It truly comes alive in Fray Days, where people come from all over the globe to gather and perform their stories and make connections.

Notes

  1. Getting real: Virtual communities that break the fourth wall
    Derek M. Powazek, Posted 2001.07.30

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