corporate media example:

everyblock, recently sold to MSNBC - aggregates news, blogs, various data, on local neighborhoods. more on this here

local example:

wallyhood a neighborhood blog for walliford in Seattle - part community posting board, part personal blog...

I know, you have to be able to read French for this blog, but still: it is a community-participation-journalism project in one of the worst suburbs of Paris, helping the inhabitatants to activate themselves, to give them better and more varied chances in life...

I did a google search for "hyperlocal journalism, or neighborhood blogs" and found that the former mayor of seattle got ousted because the city and newspapers could not react fast enough to the concerns of the people. The article goes on to mention sfdata.org as a way to gather information and using that data in a more useful way.

username - do you know who set up the website? did it come from within the community or from outside?

L cage - that's interesting - do you have any more information?

Ironically enough, some Swiss journalists started Bondyblog in 2005, in search of a more effective way to cover the riots that were going on in the banlieus of Paris at that time (if I'm not mistaken)

toast,

Check this bit of news out
link

Everyblock seems to be exactly the short of thing you are interested in.

nam - thanks - everyblock seems to be more of an aggregator than an individual or group of people shaping the story and/or creating a dialog for a local community. as the article I posted earlier points out, everyblock might be more useful for municipalities to track residents' concerns and effectiveness of certain policies - and might even be useful for architects/planners to quickly assume what may be needed in a local community - however, my big concern is that the voices of certain segments of the population could be left out of an purely online dialog, and it requires active participation and reporting by community members...

additionally...

b3tadine[sutures] mentions in thread central:

community benefits agreements are something that neighborhoods are increasingly becoming involved in, and by extension these typically involve a lot of community interaction and reporting; to keep everyone focused on the goals.

CBA for Brooklyn

which seems like a great resource for encouraging participation in already proposed projects...

but, are there examples of neighborhood blogs where a project was envisioned/created due to community organizing that was facilitated online?

Also, the very phrase <<hyperlocal>> is a little perplexing. I get the intent but isn't "local" enough, truly local not just from the urban region?

How about this one covering the chicago area? http://www.windycitizen.com/
I agree with toasteroven that a "big concern is that the voices of certain segments of the population could be left out of an purely online dialog, and it requires active participation and reporting by community members..." My question is how do you get the people left out in? There are whole swaths of people in neighborhoods that lack the technological know how in accessing such sites.

L cage - I'm guessing good old-fashioned community organizing? I don't know...

I have the same complaint with "augmented reality" mapping - google earth is an example of this, interesting at first, but you quickly realize that it is the voice of certain people, and only becomes effective as a tool if enough people participate - it's like archinect doesn't really represent the voice of the entire architectural community.

msudon - "hyperlocal" I guess is an unfortunately named meme... Although I'm a little amazed it hasn't made its way into architectural discourse after being around for a few years...

and thanks for the links folks!

interesting article on social structures of neighborhoods in a recent issue of architecture Boston (warning - links to PDF) here

Robert J Sampson briefly mentions research on community blogs... and how the internet is a tool for people within a neighborhood to connect.

An interview with Holovaty, the founder of Every Block, long before he sold out to MSNBC.

just found this study disputing the correlation between use of the internet and increasing social isolation:

social isolation and new technology

They discovered that people who are active on social networking sites also tend to be more involved in their local communities.

I don't have the link, but there's also a study showing that those who start on social networking sites at a young age fail to develop a strong ability to empathize, due to the extremely superficial nature of such sites. So they may not be isolated, but they'll have no idea how to actually listen to other people.

bringing this thread back from the depths of archinect to see if anyone else has examples of good neighborhood blogs.