Cellphone app being used to help fix “blighted homes” in Cambridge
Beginning on Saturday, Salisbury University students will hit the streets of Cambridge armed with cell phones. It’s a data collection effort with the aim of reducing the number of blighted properties in the area. They’re calling it a “blight study”.
This app will be loaded on the cell phones of students from SU’s planning and geography department. The app allows the students to walk around and check off things they see, like broken windows and other deterioration. They’re starting in an area of the city called “ward 3”. So, why Cambridge? Doctor Michael Scott, professor at Salisbury University says it started with the city.
Dr. Scott tells 47 ABC, “They’re the ones that drove the idea. We were just able to help them step up particularly to provide the labor for the students to go out.”
Salisbury University is working with the city’s planning and zoning department. Scott Shores with planning and zoning created the app. It started out as a request from the city manager to create a map of Cambridge. But it turned into the app the students are now using.
Shores tells 47 ABC, “This app really isn’t about locating individual houses that are blighted, it’s about navigating the neighborhood and determine what factors are leading to blight or are already blighted.”
Shores tells 47 ABC two students were out earlier on Thursday collecting data. he says, “It has exactly what we were looking for as far as conditions go from sidewalks and roofs and gutters and driveways and they did the survey very well.”
When asked about people living in the area who may be concerned about privacy, planning assistant LaSara Kinser tells 47 ABC, “We’re not trying to single anybody out, we’re not intending for example, publish you know, so and so lives in this house and we consider this blighted, we really are just collecting information.”
When asked how he feels about his students participating in this, Dr. Scott says he’s proud. Scott tells 47 ABC, “They’re very socially minded socially conscious folks, the fact that they can blend their education with technology with helping out a local government, that’s tremendous.”
As far as the next steps for Cambridge, Kinser tells 47 ABC, that’s still up in the air. Kinser says they plan to gather all the information Saturday and by the beginning of the year they hope to have all the data analyzed and a report generated. After that Kinser says they plan to create an interdisciplinary team of city staff, council people and stakeholders to figure out what the next step will be.
