Westside story on the Web

Neighborhood activist building Internet community

Using new technology to foster good, old-fashioned neighborliness, Harriet Marx recently launched sbwestside.org, an interactive Web site designed to promote community involvement.

Westside neighbors began holding community cleanup days over the summer, and Marx came home from one with such a good feeling that she wanted to find a way to build on and sustain that sense of neighborhood togetherness.

“It was a hot day, and yet all these people came out, and they were so enthusiastic,” she said. “There was just a really good feeling there and so when I came home from that I was just kind of high from it actually. … It was about the sense of community, and I thought you know if they had something to sustain that on a continual basis.”

Marx had seen the Scripps Ranch community come together via the Internet after being devastated by fires and wanted to develop a similar kind of site for her own neighborhood. Coincidentally, her husband, Henry, was developing an interactive Web site for students at Brooks Institute, so he had the technical skills to bring her vision to life.

The site features announcements about neighborhood events, helpful links, free classified ads and online discussion forums about community concerns. The forums already include threads such as a property owner seeking input on how to develop the site at 517 W. Figueroa St. as well as a wish list of neighborhood improvements such as landscaping the entrance to Bohnett Park and putting a coffee shop somewhere on San Andreas Street.

The site is free and open to the public. Marx encourages her neighbors to come check it out.

“We hope that it encourages people to think about ways they can connect in a positive way with their neighbors and just do good stuff,” she said.

“We think this is the future … the ability to have people connect so easily, communicate so easily. I think this is a step in the right direction, using technology for an old-fashioned purpose.”

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on April 11, 2004.

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