IBM team helping Providence improve building-permit process | The Providence Journal

In this city celebrating its 375th anniversary, the process of getting a building permit has become complicated over the centuries, involving multiple offices and multiple approvals.

“Cities are struggling with how to streamline this process,” says Tracy J. McNairn, an IBM employee who is part of a company team that has descended on Providence for three weeks to help the city make one part of its bureaucracy run better.

McNairn adds that a Google search turned up about a million hits related to cities trying to improve their own processes for handling building permits. Plus, she says, “they’re all under financial constraints and pressures and always looking to save money.”

The IBM team wants to make sure that people seeking building permits don’t need to walk in one door to get one piece of a project done only to walk in and out of many other doors before taking care of all the necessary steps, says Cathleen Finn, IBM’s New England manager for corporate citizenship and affairs.

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lktypeblog:

Type: big, slabby, delicious Ziggurat for the logo.

Logo project for adaptive reuse bus system. The premise is that the bus always makes a loop and makes stops based on a narrative or theme. Our first iteration is the grocery loop. The bus stops at grocery stores. Do you really care if it’s on the 51 line or the 19? Probably you just want to get to the grocery store and buy your food. This bus will take you to the spice shop, ethnic grocery store, major chain, and farmer’s market. A week’s shopping all on one line.

Collaborative project by Lindsay Kinkade, Erika Tarte, and Beth Weaver of RISD’s Graphic Design MFA program. Created in a workshop by Jake Barton, one of the creators of StoryCorps and principal at Local Projects.

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The Better World by Design Challenge: Urban Food Deserts

A Better World by Design, the internationally acclaimed student-run conference on reshaping the built environment, wants to your ideas for eliminating urban food deserts.

What is a food desert? Quite simply, it is a geographic area with limited access to fresh, nutritious, or locally-sourced food. Obstacles to the elimination of food deserts include availability, price, proximity of sources, transportation and preservation of goods, poor environment for local farming, and lack of awareness or education.

Smart and healthy cities need accessible nutrition. How is your city addressing food deserts? What innovations have you seen in sourcing and distributing food? A Better World by Design, in partnership with IBM’s Smarter Cities Scan, is searching for practical, efficient, and visionary solutions to various aspects of the food desert problem. You can submit a post right on this Tumblr site, send it via email to smartercities@tumblr.com, or if you have a Tumblr site, just tag your post “bxdfood” and we’ll reblog it from your site to the Smarter Cities Scan.


This effort is part of the 2010 Better World Challenge, an international design competition in which the top ideas will be implemented locally in Providence, RI with the support of the municipal government.

The three most popular posts, based on the number of “likes” and “reblogs” received, will be shown in front of our audience of hundreds of global innovators and broadcast live on the web on the afternoon of October 3, just before we reveal the winner of the Better World Challenge!

A Better World by Design is an annual conference at Brown University and RISD that connects students, professionals, and individuals from a variety of disciplines to build a global community of socially conscious and passionate innovators. Find out how you can attend or watch our live stream October 1-3 at www.abetterworldbydesign.com.

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smarterplanet: GoLocalProv | Health | National Implications for Rhode Island’s Focus on Primary Care Physicians Rhode Island is at the epicenter of a powerful new concept in patient care garnering attention from Washington D.C. and across the country Anthony Morettini, IBM Senior Location Executive

smarterplanet:

GoLocalProv | Health | National Implications for Rhode Island’s Focus on Primary Care Physicians

Rhode Island is at the epicenter of a powerful new concept in patient care garnering attention from Washington D.C. and across the country

Anthony Morettini, IBM Senior Location Executive

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