About Us

Welcome! E Komo Mai!

Yes, you are in the right place… this is “crowdsourced placemaking” for Downtown Hilo, a fun and exciting way you and your friends can help shape the kinds of downtown places you’re passionate about.

This is where you bring your enthusiasm, creative energy, ideas, and share it with other creatives to make Downtown Hilo the most awesome and revitalized place on the Island of Hawaii. This is where our EDH 2025 community vision comes to life; where we give form and physical shape to words, such as: character, design, sense of place, our hometown, special, unique, beauty – and more.

This is where our diverse community can gather to share our ideas, learn from each other, and how we encourage organizers and developers to move forward to make things happen – all in one place. This is placemaking and community building at its best!

For creative techies – you’ve probably got crowdsourcing down without your even realizing it. Maybe, not placemaking yet, so here’s your chance – it’s one of the fastest spreading phenomena on this planet – creating and building livable, healthy, and safe communities and public places that ‘uplift the spirit’. Something we are searching for, can feel, but can’t always quite describe it.

For those of you new to the world of online collaboration – it’s OK to make several visits to browse our home page before you feel comfortable about joining your new Downtown Hilo community, as many in other cities are doing for theirs. Don’t wait too long to register though, since there’s a lot behind those pictures that will inspire and excite you. You know the saying, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words…’ Well, once you join us, you can help create those thousand words.

Please read our triple-bottom-line philosophy and the EDH 2025 Overarching Vision and  Focus Areas before you click on a picture. This is the ‘hat‘ or ‘lens’ with which you join this circle of friends, when you submit an entry, ‘like’ it, or post a comment.

If you have any questions, or need assistance in registering or submitting an entry, please feel free to contact us. We’re here to help you. Don’t forget to tell your friends about this site and please visit with us again. Thank you for your time, energy, commitment, and talent – together, we will grow ‘OurDowntownHilo’.

Aloha,

BJ Leithead Todd, Planning Director
County of Hawaii Planning Department

Neil Takemoto, Founder
Cooltown Beta Communities

ourdowntownhilo.com is a one year pilot training project until August 25, 2012.
Community involvement and support will sustain this site in the future.
Contact us: edh2025@gmail.com