StreetShape Civic
The people who use a street should be able to draw it.
Not describe it in a comment box. Draw it — at real scale, on the real map, in a form a planning department can actually read.
StreetShape Civic is the layer that connects the two: residents and campaigns making designs, municipalities running consultations that ask for them, and a way to read four hundred answers as one picture.
“Do you support Proposal A?” is the wrong question.
It is asked because it is the only question a form can carry. It produces a yes-or-no on a scheme somebody else already designed, from the small number of people willing to read a PDF, and it tells you nothing about what those people would have built instead.
The question worth asking is “how would you change this street?” Nobody asks it, because until now there was no way to receive the answer.
A consultation that cannot receive a drawing is a consultation that has already decided.
How it goes round.
A municipality asks
Publishes a street, a budget and the constraints that are real — the bus route that has to stay, the trees that cannot be moved, the width that exists.
Residents draw
On the actual map, inside the actual site, with the actual constraints applied. What comes back is a design, not an opinion.
The answers aggregate
Four hundred plans become one picture: where people agree, where they split, what almost everybody kept.
The municipality answers back
Publishes what it took, what it could not take, and why. Which is the step that decides whether anybody bothers next time.
Where do you come into this?
I live here
Draw your own street. If your municipality subscribes, your account is free and unlimited inside it. If it does not, draw it anyway and send them the picture.
Start drawingI am running a campaign
Turn a complaint into a proposal a council has to answer, and give your supporters something specific to get behind.
Create an organisationI work for a municipality
Run a consultation that asks people to design rather than agree, and read the results as data. Priced on population, published openly, waivable.
Claim your municipalityI want to read what people are proposing
Every board is public. The designs, the arguments and the municipality's answers are all on the record, whether or not you have an account.
Explore the boardsFour things this will not become.
Not a popularity contest
The design with the most support is not automatically the best one, and a platform that ranks proposals by votes turns a planning question into a campaign to get your friends to click. Support is a signal, shown alongside everything else, not a leaderboard.
Not a political identity check
We do not ask your age, your address, your nationality or your politics to let you draw a street. A consultation that profiles the people answering it gets different answers.
Not a replacement for engineering
Nothing drawn here is an engineering document, and we will not pretend otherwise to anybody. Designs go to a planning team, not to a contractor.
Not a decision-maker
Municipalities decide. We are the place the conversation happens and the record of what was said. Anyone selling software that decides is selling something else.
Start with one street.
Everything above is what happens when enough people draw. It begins with one person drawing one street, which is free and takes about ten minutes.