PassGo

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  PassGo Class UML Design

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  PassGo UML Sequence Diagram

Inspiration

XtraMedium was founded in 2002 with the charter to find disruptors to socioeconomic issues of areas like Chicago’s south and west sides. PassGo is one such disruptor that was requested by retailers on the south and west sides of Chicago. They asked that if they were to invest in improvements in their stores, who would invest in the vacant or abandoned properties on the left and right of their establishments.

Decades of growing disinvestment resulted in economic void and:

**Deserts of Vacant and Abandoned buildings

**Glacial Business momentum

**An Unattractive brand to invest in or visit

**Cyclical Lowered Socieoconomic Expectations

PassGo began as an app prototype in 2013 based on the input of over 60 local retailers seeking a solution to help repopulate vacant and abandoned parcel sites on Chicago's South and West sides. As the economic distressed of our urban areas grows, the need for PassGo and tools like it are greatly needed.

What it does

PassGo is intended to accelerate economic development of retail corridors by:

**Turning Economic Development into an online Game

**Illustrating the pipeline of active entrepreneurs and concepts

**Connecting new business deployment and available real estate

**Offering area analytics for Buyers, Builders, and Brokers

**Attracting Residents to the Development & Investment Process

**Offering Visual indicators of Entrepreneurial Activities and Success

How I built it

The current PassGo minimally viable prototype (MVP) is a set of user interfaces consuming Open Gov data to illustrate the availability of Vacant and Abandoned Properties in a given city ward. Alongside the Alderman's picture, corresponding heat maps drill down to GIS-represented properties and the associated parcel information - from ward view to individual blocks and properties. This version of PassGo shown in the intro video, mocks up the intended result;

A LOCATION and PROPOSED PROJECTS/S and FUNDING REQUIREMENTS for that specific parcel and development of the planned business.

Challenges I ran into

As with all technology, PassGo had the inherent potential of rapidly displacing the residents of target neighborhoods. We had to discover and or design methods where the technology would become a preventative mechanism against an enhanced form of gentrification. Fortunately, we received a ton of great input from residents, at times during workshops or in individual discussion, and ongoing insights and development support from experts like:

**Brian Bernadoni - Senior Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Chicago Association of REALTORS

**Brenna Berman - Executive Director, City Digital @ UI Labs

**Danielle Demurrer - CIO & Commissioner at City of Chicago

**Matt Gee - Co-Founder and Principal at The Impact Lab / Senior Research Fellow at the University of Chicago

**Rayid Ghani, Data Science, Public Policy, Social Good @ UChicago. Chief Data Scientist - Obama 2012 Campaign

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am proud to have PassGo be a member of the first Colony 5 Accelerator Cohort - designated C518. PassGo demonstrates the benefits, both process and social, of leveraging blockchain design principles for each C518 newcos. Above all, this methodology enables an element of economic development that has been missing for decades - speed.

Additionally, PassGo is a catalyst for our development company Civilocity and Colony 5 accelerator partners to seed and startups in otherwise overlook areas to help expand their economic bases and job opportunities.

What I learned

There is a confluence of civic tech and hope driving the growth of startups for and from distressed communities. There is an associated economic benefit to those companies that can thrive in these markets, the markets themselves, and certainly for those providing the resources to get these businesses moving. PassGo is merely the conduit between that activity.

What's next for PassGo

In February 2018 as part of the Colony 5 Accelerator Cohort at UI Labs, PassGo will be developed into the enhanced product versioning to include:

Gamification of the process: **selection of properties **participation as operators **participation as investors in selected parcels **participation as investors in selected companies

We expect to complete a simple state version in June with regression and user testing through August 2018. In January 2019 PassGo will produce a soft launch using the Englewood and Austin neighborhoods as pilot test beds.

In 2019, PassGo will offer equity in the company via Title iii public offering as part of a full market launch.

Built With

• blockchain
• ensemble-algorithms-comprised-of-retail-sentiment-and-open-gov-data