Quite coincidentally two friends of mine drew my attention to a couple of websites where local communities have onlined themselves. There have been quite vigorous protests in the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council area about the proposed Monkstown Ring Road and some locals have set up a site called Anti Monkstown Ring Road using Blogspot. It's full of information and chat and useful for anyone who wants to keep abreast of developments. (Full disclosure: I work for said County Council and, in the unlikely event of any of my senior colleagues reading this post, you should not take this as a personal endorsement of the protest!)
The other site is rather different. It seems to have been put together by local resident association activists in the Meadowbank Hill area of Ratoath in County Meath. It's a friendly site, full of useful local information. I presume it's part of Meath County Council's Estate Management programme, judging from the meath.ie element of its URL. I'd be interested in other examples of local communities using online communications for offline activities. As one of my friends remarked, anything to keep us from bowling alone...
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