Collaborative Community Builder: A Digital Platform for Crowd-Sourcing a Community Vision

Abstract

As our economy expands to the digital realm, rural communities are presented with unprecedented development opportunities, including the ability to participate in industries and sectors that would not otherwise be available. To effectively participate in the digital economy, rural communities need to develop a digital vision based on the preferences of the individuals in the community. Rather than considering only the preferences of select community members, we would ideally be able to develop a community vision that accounts for all the members' preferences. In practice, this goal poses many logistical and financial obstacles. To overcome this problem, we present the Collaborative Community Builder (CCB) -- an online system that enables community members to express their vision and view the aggregate community vision. CCB provides additional data analytic features to help community leaders and planners better understand the preferences of the members in their own community. This work suggests that CCB offers rural communities a feasible way of developing a community vision on a digital platform.