Hyperlocal & Lowtech Activities
On the nature of hyperlocal work:
This hyperlocal work intersects with what governmental departments, urban planning offices, investigative journalism, NGOs, and community organizations typically handle. But that intersection is where the gap lies. Hyperlocal initiatives experiment with approaches these larger bodies can’t easily test, and create bridges between formal institutions and lived community experience.
Our hackerhouse serves as a coordination hub where knowledge holders from various backgrounds, elders with traditional knowledge, neighbors who understand local patterns, researchers, organizers, practitioners; can gather to plan, strategize, and share what they know. While some prototyping and building happens at the space, its primary function is creating infrastructure for collaborative learning and coordinating hyperlocal activities that happen throughout the neighborhood.
Each real problem needs someone with relevant expertise to dive deep. When specialized knowledge, teams, or equipment are needed that we don’t have, the approach is connecting with people who do, acknowledging limitations openly, and seeing what useful things emerge when you create basic conditions for curiosity, connection, and collaborative experimentation.
We’re taking a neighborhood-scale approach to building community resilience, knowledge preservation, and experimental infrastructure through interconnected practices that center joy and social connection as foundational infrastructure. The initiative combines whimsical public experiments that aim to create emotional bonds and trust necessary for deeper collaboration, citizen science and data journalism projects that document local patterns and build understanding of neighborhood systems, tactical urbanism and low-tech lab-style appropriate technology development that creates useful, accessible, and sustainable solutions to local challenges, digital tool building for community information sharing and coordination, systematic preservation of traditional knowledge and cultural practices, community organizing and mutual aid network development, and environmental monitoring and sustainable living practice development. Operating through a seed-to-project progression model with experimental iteration, this approach transforms neighborhoods into self-organizing centers of research, mutual aid, cultural preservation, and appropriate technology innovation - essentially creating hyperlocal knowledge commons and community infrastructure for curiosity, creation, and connection.
This involves investigations, documentation, archival, curation, building and some advocacy in certain cases aswell.
To be specific:
- Exploratory urban anthropology: Document neighborhoods, subcultures, informal networks, and unwritten knowledge through guided walks, interviews, and observation (mapping local gathering spots, tracking how information flows through community networks)
- Data journalism & citizen science: Deploy DIY environmental sensors, map flooding patterns during monsoons, document waste streams, and create evidence-based advocacy tools that enable genuine community input into neighborhood development
- Digital etymology & algospeak research: Track real-time language evolution through social media, messaging apps, and digital platforms in Guwahati context; document how algorithms shape local language use, cross-platform term migration, and digital-physical language bridges; study generational digital language gaps and community-specific internet slang formation
- Whimsical joy installations: Create sidewalk libraries with books, neighborhood wishing trees, community story walls etc.
- Tactical urbanism coordination: Plan and deploy pop-up monsoon shelters, temporary lighting solutions, flexible public furniture, and community kitchen setups; test infrastructure solutions that could inform permanent improvements.
- Community knowledge/asset mapping: Document practical knowledge that longtime residents have about neighborhood patterns, seasonal changes, local food adaptations, and how families have adjusted traditional practices for urban living; map what useful knowledge exists in the community. Build searchable databases of neighborhood skills, businesses, gathering spaces, and informal support networks; connect skill-holders with learners for knowledge transfer and mutual aid coordination. Document cultural practices. Record traditional music, games, and festival practices; organize craft workshops teaching traditional techniques; support local artisans and connect cultural preservation to contemporary community celebration.
- Social media creator & organization ecosystem mapping: Document artists, makers, community organizers doing meaningful work in Northeast India in areas of our interests; create amplification mechanisms; facilitate cross-creator collaboration and resource sharing etc.
- Environmental documentation: Map native plant corridors, track pollinator patterns, document microclimate variations, coordinate air quality monitoring, and connect local ecological data to climate adaptation planning.
- Hyperlocal geographic mapping: Train residents in participatory mapping using basic GIS tools; document spatial transformations during festivals/seasons; create community-generated maps connecting geographic features to neighborhood stories and place-based memories.
- Digital tool building: Develop hyperlocal wiki platforms, community discussion tools (Polis-style), resource sharing apps, environmental monitoring dashboards, and offline-first mesh networking for emergency resilience.
- Community organizing facilitation: Host working groups around local issues, provide meeting space and documentation tools, train residents in conflict resolution and advocacy, coordinate mutual aid networks and emergency response systems.