ll! a b t o o F r o f e c a l P The e college
orit AGE v fa r u o y r fo r e e h C our y jo n e d n a s m a e t OF and NFL and drinks great foodACCESS
thisweek on the cover Much ado about data Want to know if your landlord has a clean slate or a host of complaints? Looking for data about the number of traffic accidents at an intersection in your neighborhood? If the city of Asheville keeps moving forward with plans to open its digital data trove to the public, this and other information could be at your fingertips.
ASHEVILLE’S BUDDING OPEN-DATA PUSH BY DAVID FORBES
Cover design by John Zara
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ARDEN!
14 ElEction 2012: nEw facEs, contEstEd racEs
E BIER G H T t a E M A G Y R E V W E SEE aiting for a bus, you consult an app that tells you exactly where the vehicle is at that moment. Apartment-hunting, you check how many people have complained about your prospective landlord. After finding your dream home, you look at whether crime in the area is rising. Fighting a proposed development in your neighborhood, you monitor city staffers’ emails concerning the project. Looking to start a business, you can immediately access zoning and neighborhood rules for that location, along with population estimates, population change and nearby transit stops. None of these scenarios is feasible just yet, but all of them depend on free, ready access to local-government data, whether it’s crime statistics, bus routes, infrastructure, complaints, fire-safety records or even salaries. A collaborative effort involving the city of Asheville, area businesses and nonprofits is working to make such outcomes possible. All these ideas were discussed during Asheville’s Oct. 16 Open Data Day, when government officials, entrepreneurs, residents and media reps came together to brainstorm ways to make such information more accessible. (Full disclosure: I spoke briefly at the event about the role of the press.) Although local governments have a huge amount of useful information that’s theoretically “public,” actually getting ahold of it can prove challenging, time-consuming
The GOP gains ground in Democrat stronghold Buncombe County
30 wEllnEss: frEE for all
Changing the world 40 days at a time
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“SOMETIMES I THINK I.T. PEOPLE ARE SO BUSY RUNNING AROUND PATCHING THE SERVER THAT WE CAN FORGET THE SERVER IS ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO BE HELPFUL TO SOMEBODY.” ASHEVILLE I.T. DIRECTOR JONATHAN FELDMAN
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34 plan your MEal around a local bird
Area farmers offer Thanksgiving turkeys you can feel good about
arts&entertainment
44 things that MattEr nEEd to bE said
Angel Olsen gets direct and raw on Half Way Home
45 burning bright
Guitar whiz Kaki King shines on her own after a string of collaborations “THERE and expensive. The idea is to bypass formal data requests (and the resulting demands on staff time to compile it) by enabling anyone with a computer or a smartphone to find out instantly what’s available — and access it, for free, anytime. Open Data Day coincided with the city’s releasing a provisional version of an online open-data catalog. Meanwhile, Code for America, a national nonprofit that’s been described as a Peace Corps for geeks, has
WAS 46 A hE’s got a naME NEED”
A.J. JONATHAN Croce’s FELDMAN, eclectic catalog includes songs by his famous father THE CITY’S INFORMATION
DIRECTOR, 47 TECHNOLOGY onE big aMbiguity HAS LAID THE GROUNDWORK
FOR MORE OPEN DATA the faces of war SkipSINCE Rohde sketches TAKING THE JOB SEVEN YEARS AGO. PHOTOS BY MAX COOPER
features 5 6 8 9 18 22 27 28 29 38 48 50 57 60 61 62 63
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