The Organic City

I'd like to gradually make some connections here between our project here at reelate and other projects that have things in common with what we're up to.

The first one I'm profiling here is The Organic City. This project makes a direct connection between a place and its stories -- and that's exactly one of the most important features of reelate.

Several things about Organic City are a bit more fluid than reelate -- stories on their site may be written, audio & video -- ours are focused simply on multimedia stories. Organic City encourages all kinds of stories -- fiction and fancy just as frequently as documentary and journalism. While reelate will include elements of fictionalizing and flights of fancy -- our stories will all fall within the (wide, and often inventive) genre of documentary.

The commonalities of the program are more worthy of consideration of the differences. The Organic City is such an admirable project because it is so multi-vocal, because it personalizes the public sphere in a way that opens up place to possibility.

Once I feel the memories and impressions and histories that a place has been for someone else -- my own destiny here feels wider and more promising...