Today, the Memphis & Shelby County Office of Planning & Development will begin using Nextdoor, the social network for neighborhoods, to communicate with area residents.
The office is the first public agency in the city to partner with Nextdoor, the site where neighbors connect on private pages for their individual neighborhoods. The site is primarily used by neighbors to share information about crimes or suspicious activity, lost or found pets, housing repair and lawncare services, and other neighborhood concerns.
The planning and development office will use the platform to inform residents about community meetings, proposals, zoning cases, and ongoing planning projects. They’ll also use the site to solicit input from neighborhood residents.
“Memphis is one of the leading practitioners of the unitary approach to planning in the nation. With unitary planning, the zoning of a community represents its comprehensive master plan. As such, neighborhood participation in each zoning case is of the utmost importance,” said Josh Whitehead, planning director of the Office of Planning and Development. “With Nextdoor, we can work directly with residents to make sure they have the most up-to-date information about potential developments and proposals in their neighborhood and engage in the city’s site-specific, granular planning efforts.”
The office will have its private Nextdoor site, and it will not have access to private neighborhood pages.
