User:CQ/Paducah2020

Sunrise across the Ohio River in Paducah, Kentucky USA

Paducah2020 (#PaducahBoot) is an urban engineering project for building social capital in the US city of Paducah. The project is designed to return economic situations back to a more normal, natural and sustainable state. The multidimensional strategy draws upon local talent, grassroots organizing and advanced social media for "bootstrapping" a new social ecology independently from the juggernaut forces currently in power. The local plan is based on new principles of peer production, consensus-driven governance, and alternative interpretations of property rights, business ethics and inclusive participation.

Introduction

The notion of well-being comes from many dimensions. Some folks rely on what they can see. Others are capable of vision into things that could be. What we want to do here is brainstorm and catalog some ideas that could transform our local community into a more solid network of projects with goals and resources both potential and existing. We want to move Paducah and McCracken County forward in terms of collective well-being characterized by positive steps toward community health, to which we attach the term "Social capital".

Paducah2020 is, more than anything, a "meme" of sorts that focuses, not on a particular "plan" but on a set of factors, trends and possibilities that may or may not exist in the near future. The year 2020 isn't that far off. In terms of vision, 20/20 refers to sightedness as in "Hindsight is 20/20". It is important to build a sense of community upon our sense of place and our sense of history.

The factors may include economic conditions such as an increase or decrease in the population, plant closings or other factors that impact the region. Some trends may be tracked locally, such as sharp or subtle changes in fuel prices or in local or global attitudes brought about by the reaction to terrorism or political change. Of the possibilities, the most important is probably that of a major earthquake along the New Madrid Seismic Zone. As an inland city, the threat of terrorist attack is a remote possibility, but in the minds of many credible scientists, a deadly quake is a certainty in the near future. Will Paducah survive? How can a small city prepare for such a thing?

Mapping the region

The city of Paducah was built at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers because of economically desirable geographic features which made it an ideal inland river port. What we now call Island Creek was at first navigated extensively to prime Paducah's economic pump, allowing a way to move goods to and from stations upstream toward the Tennessee Valley Ridge. The Purchase Area Watershed Mapping Project will be an effort to build a comprehensive map to augment the existing geophysical survey. This map will become a multi-dimensional model that can aid in understanding both the existing built environment and the natural environment we inhabit. Hopefully, the map will provide insight into better ways to cooperate with nature shifting Human capital toward more sustainable and ecologically sound usage of our physical substrate.

Paducah2020 shared map (Google maps)

Reconstructing the past

Many questions about the future roll around in our collective mind. As a community, we seem to have left our future in the hands of a proverbial "they" who will figure out the future. Many have resigned from a sense of both the past and the future . Paducah2020 is designed, first, to map out where we are and where we've been. Then perhaps we can gain some insight into where we're going. Kentucky Historian Laureate, the late Thomas D. Clark said, "Without a sense of History, you can't possibly have a sense of community." Our goal is to look at a timeless version of our locale as a dynamic place for life to happen.

Before European and African Americans settled this valley, Native Americans used the confluence areas quite differently. The new Confluence History and Archaeology Task force (CHAT) will probe deeply into regional history. The effort will be to locate and research primary sources within the public records, newspapers and other archives to supplement and verify existing library resources and perhaps even fill in some gaps providing freely available digests.

CHAT Field work, aided by PAWMP will be conducted to locate and document actual sites of historical activities, focusing on water courses like Island and Perkins creek and the Tennessee Valley Divide.

Integrating the Arts

Paducah's Musical heritage is an important dimension, as well. Blues, Jazz, Country, and Rock all have representation in the region's past and its present. There is no reason why this aspect can't be capitalized upon in the near future.

SYZYGY17

SYZYGY17 here at Wikiversity will bring together science enthusiasts from all around the world. We are using the solar eclipse of August 21 as a catalysing framework to combine skills with needs, interests with capabilities and people with ... other people .. in a massive collaboration to fully document this very unique celestial event. We are also planning to incorporate live media streaming experiments through the Wiki Campus Radio

The path of the 2017 eclipse crosses the path of a future one on April 8, 2024, with the intersection of the two paths being in Southern Illinois in Makanda Township at Cedar Lake just south of Carbondale. A small land area, including the cities of Makanda, Carbondale, Cape Girardeau, and Paducah, will thus experience two total solar eclipses within a span of fewer than seven years.

The Instrumentation Age

Computer Programming and Computer Science are important to both Paducah's past and future. The Information Age Park failed to attract the Silicon Valley industries that the naive country people of the region thought it would. True naivety is a rare commodity in the business world these days. Find out why here.

Modeling and Mapping

The initial goals of the project:

To collect and augment maps of various types
To discover the progression of the built environment
To collect data about the natural environment
To compile localized open-content educational resources
To augment existing plans emphasizing sustainability
To heighten the state of readiness for geophysical disaster
To foster a deeper sense of community

Transition Network

The global Transition Network is a charitable organisation whose role is to inspire, encourage, connect, support and train communities as they self-organize around the Transition model, creating initiatives that rebuild local resilience and reduce atmospheric carbon while helping to build community.

The site on the main (planet-wide) Transition Network is Paducah2020 - Transition Network (login required)

The following is an editable copy of the principle text.

Transition Network content for Paducah2020

Status: Muller
Approximate number of members: 3
Initiative type: Local Initiative
Community type: City/Urban
Last updated: Tuesday, 1 September 2015
Address: Irvin Cobb Hotel
- 601 Broadway [out front on the sidewalk for now]
- Paducah 42001
- United States

Contact Initiative About

Paducah has interesting geophysical properties within the Ohio Valley at the confluence of all the rivers. We are located at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers and just downstream from the Cumberland confluence with the Ohio and just upstream from the Ohio's confluence with the mighty Mississippi.

As we ramp down (or are thrown down) from dependence on oil and gasoline, river transport will become exponentially more important. Agriculture and food logistics are a central focus for most transition initiatives and Paducah has immense opportunity to become a leader right here from the core of the confluence region.

Paducah has a growing climate of cooperation and resilience thinking. The Lower Town artist colony is culturally connected with communities on the coasts, larger urban experiences and global contexts. This influx of people, skills and ideas finds Paducah already well into a transition toward self-relience and resilience.

UNESCO Creative City

As Creative City of Crafts and Folk Arts, Paducah envisages:

providing a platform for UCCN members to showcase their creativity in the United States. Since joining the Network in 2013, Paducah has arranged cultural exchanges with several UNESCO Creative Cities;
fostering national and international awareness of the UCCN through Paducah’s branding, public relations, marketing, speaking engagements and social media campaigns;
utilizing the UNESCO Creative Cities platform to take a leadership role in educating the tourism industry, the national arts community and government officials on the value of creativity, creative tourism and the UCCN;
emphasizing the role of Crafts and Folk Art, notably of fibre arts, in creative expression; and
championing partnerships with UCCN members in the United States to strengthen the Network’s collaborative impact.

From Creative Cities Network

Field Work

We have not yet determined why the UN is so jazzed about Paducah. An associate has indicated that the whole point of UNESCO is to sell outdated ideas to unsuspecting municipalities to promote itself as a "world government" of some kind. If the object is "to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the United Nations Charter" we're really screwed. Most people in Paducah are wondering how they are going to pay their bills or even to afford their next meal.

The National Quilt Museum

The people we've talked with so far at the National Quilt Museum deny that there is a connection between Antebellum quilting arts and the Underground Railroad.

See Quilts of the Underground Railroad.

Currently, members of the OzoneFarm eCommunity are gathering at the Riverfront in Paducah, camping outside the flood-wall across from the Iron Horse Memorial.

Public Perception and Perspective

Paducah's principle newspaper named The Paducah Sun is owned by the Paxton Media Group which also owns and operates the local NBC affiliate television station, WPSD-TV. Most of the residents are painfully aware of the crony capitalism going on. The Paducah Bank's Artist Relocation Program helped a little but was divisive as most gentrification projects go and did little to include a large swath of the ordinary folks. The entire city and it's surrounding region may remain under a cloud of censorship due to the remaining effects of the "Cold War" because of the strategic arms industry has long resided in the area. see Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant

Higher Contexts

The American Geographical Society looks at the future geography of economic exclusion and integration exploring how mechanisms of economic exclusion shape the geography of our cities, perpetuating and even magnifying poverty, inequality, and stunting development and stability. The Paducah2020 project is geared toward the under-served segments of this community and is heavily engaged in reaching into neighborhoods and distressed areas for both insight into specific problems and to recruit and support those who have been marginalized. The team we're assembling includes those excluded by those who manage things from monetized positions. ..onward we go..

Philosophy and Principles

Mentors

notes

User:CQ first began cataloging his ideas on Wikia on September 15, 2006 - The current version can be seen here. Wikia uses the same editing software (MediaWiki) as Wikipedia, Wikiversity and other WMF projects. Anyone may edit this work-space or the Wikia site. The PaducahDawn.jpg image file is available for use here.

w:UNESCO - Creative City
Paducah Moon - Video
City of Paducah - Public Information - My Paducah
TransitionStreets.org
CityFixer - Darcel Jackson
Open Government Partnership - OpenGovPartnership.org
PaducahBoot - Paducah: Because Ordinary Occupants Travel (Boots on the ground, indeed)
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