Today as I made my way through the Ecotone site, I found my way to Derek Powazek’s The City Stories Project and subsequently to the Boston Stories site. The Boston site is organized by neighborhood, so I visited the Allston section, only to find no-one had posted anything. An excuse for me to write something, I suppose…

The Cities Stories Project strikes me as similar to the other Derek’s– Derek Owens– 21st-Century Neighborhoods project, and may serve as one possible model for how to build a nationwide collection of student writing about place.

Derek Powazek describes the project this way:

What’s the big idea here?

I have this idea. There is a thing that I call city-based storytelling. It’s somewhere in between a personal journal and a city guide. It’s a series of personal stories where the city itself becomes a character in your story. SF Stories is basically my long love letter to San Francisco. What city do you love?

What is The City Stories Project?

It’s a network of city-based storytelling sites, tying real people in real cities all over the world together with a thread of personal stories.

What is city-based storytelling?

It’s halfway between a personal journal and a travel book. It’s when you tell the stories of your life, and the city itself becomes a key character. It’s a long, winding love story to the city you live in. It’s personal, true stories about what it’s like to be who you are, and live where you live.