It started small. One square inch, to be exact. Six years ago, Jerry Paffendorf and Mary Carter began a project that allowed anyone to purchase one square inch of land from a local lot the couple owned. Inches could be purchased for $1. Once you “bought” the land (sort of like naming a brick), you would receive a tiny deed, as well as some recommendations for how to manage the property. You could start a garden, a community space, or perhaps a business. Online, you could move about the land and see who your “neighbors” were, and even collaborate with them. Loveland referred to this adorable phenomenon as “Inchvesting” and created a cartoon character named Inchy to help inspire involvement from curious “Inchvestors." 

What may have seemed, simply, as a cute project actually paved the way for a tremendous undertaking. Flash forward a few years, and you would find the Loveland team mapping data on every single parcel of land in the City of Detroit. Now, they’re working to map every parcel in America. The Inchvesting concept showed them that a digital visual record of who-owned-what could transform access to real estate. 

Suddenly the team found themselves square in the middle of urban policy, providing a level of transparency sorely needed to shed light on the shadowy issue of local real estate ownership. With Detroit’s legacy of slum lords, foreclosures, and tax scandals, the Loveland team finally broke the public’s silence with a simple question: Why don’t we own this?  

Now, there is a whole team of staffers constantly collecting data on land parcels and updating the site regularly, and Loveland has been tapped by the City to produce the Motor City Mapping Project, which is helping to make a case for city-wide blight removal efforts as part of its master plan. 

We asked Loveland Technologies to be our speaker for the topic of Transparency because we believe that creative people and playful ideas can lead to deeply transitional work for the public good. Big change doesn’t have to come from the boardroom of a skyscraper. And as designers and creative types, we have incredible tools at our disposal for invoking transparency by shining a light on issues that may not get a closer look when not creatively visualized. 

Jerry and Mary will be sharing their story with us this Friday at the Urban Consulate. As always, doors open at 8:30 with the conversation kicking off at 9am! See you soon early birds.