Wiki Community/Economic Asset Mapping

In 1993 John Kretzmann? and John McKnight? published Building Community from the Inside Out. It proposed a way of mapping the communities assets as a way of building the local community and economy.

The following links are documents that refer to and expand on there original work:

1. Canadian Rural Partnership -- Asset mapping: a handbook
2. Community Economic Mapping by Steven DeMeulenaere?

I believe that this form of mapping is a crucial and under-used tool for the success of any community or local currency. In the past we have seen a lot of systems fail, and I do not assume that this is the only reason for their failure, but they failed in part because there was not good understanding of how to maintain the flow of the currency when the economy that it circulates in is limited. Naturally the currency accumulated in the hands of a few who in turn did not know what to do with it all.

Any acupuncturist knows that you have to be very familiar with the map of the "maridians" of the body as well as the energy chanels before you perform acupuncture. Building a map of the economic and community assets would provide a way of mapping the flow and stagnation of the currency. It would also allow for the managers and participants to get a picture of how much does the community and community economy offer as far as meeting peoples needs. This would go hand in hand with a directory, of course, which has been a certain prerequesite for any currency system.

My idea is to put this asset map into an open/wiki based format where numerous people could contribute to the development of the map so it does not depend on a single indivndual to keep it up to date and so that it is ongoing and dynamic. So for instance there could be a team of volunteers contributing to different aspects of the currency.

My question is, is this feasable? I certainly don't have the technical knowledge at the time to do this. But if we could some how organize the collective will and interest, it would be a really profound and powerful project to take on.


Comments Welcome.

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I think that this kind of community economic asset mapping that Zippy proposed is quite similar to Pierre Levy's Tree of Knowledge?! Isn't it? — magius

You are raising a very important point! This is a keystone part in the work I am preparing on collective awareness and self-sustainability. You may want to check holopticism. — jf