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Figure 3.21: Mowtown – example of a successful Kickstarter campaign run by Detroit’s Mower Gang
Note the use of video and the social media links.
(source: screenshot taken by author)
One extremely innovative Kickstarter asset project worth mentioning here is the +Pool (PlusPool), an initiative
by a New York design trio to bring a cross-shaped floating public swimming pool to that city’s East River. The
proposed pool would be filled with water filtered from the river that it floats in. $250,000 was recently raised on
Kickstarter to move the development work forward.
Two other new sites — Citizenvestor (http://www.citizinvestor.com) and Neighbor.ly (http://neighbor.ly) —
explicitly attempt to fund local civic projects. With Citizenvestor, the focus is just local government projects,
while Neighbor.ly includes non-governmental entities that are concerned with civic infrastructure. Both will
accept suggestions for projects from citizens to suggest ideas for their city to adopt a project; with Citizenvestor
they can do it through an online petition. The most relevant example is a successful effort to raise the $2,100
needed to create a youth garden at the city of Philadelphia’s Rivera Recreation Center via Citizenvestor (with 50
percent coming from outside Philadelphia).
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