About this project

Update: Welcome everyone who came in from the NPR sory (listen here)! To get inches click the green "Back This Project" button on the right-hand side of the page. Your space will be claimed and all money goes towards working on the project. Thanks for your incherest, your inchvestment, and your support! ---

LOVELAND is a micro real estate project with superfunexcitementoffandonlineadventure: http://makeloveland.com . We've used Kickstarter in a series of 11 rounds so far. Hello again! :-)

What's micro real estate? Well, we're selling square inches of land in Detroit for $1 an inch (it's not a deed filed with the city, it's a new social ownership framework that's way funner than deeds with the city, because the land is yours to build on, and you don't have to pay taxes, etc).

What's superfunexcitementoffandonlineadventure? Well, we're building online maps and tools and crazy stories and activities and fun things that you can do with your micro real estate, and you're in a big social network of other micro land owners, *and* the whole thing is an adventure because it's impossible to predict what all sorts of wild stuff will happen!

So far we've sold out our first 10,000 square inch property named Plymouth. We're working on our season 2 which will launch in the spring with a grid in the ground and a new property up for sale. In between now and season 2 we've created this Kickstarter round for people to (in the LOVELAND parlance) inchvest in ghost inches.

What's a ghost inch? Well, it's like a regular inch in the LOVELAND project that hasn't materialized on any particular piece of land yet, but it will in the spring. Crazyspookycool!

Long story short: for every dollar you put into this project you'll get an inch of land in Detroit that's yours to have and love and build on from wherever you are in the world. All the money that comes in will be used to work on the project. We are wholly inchvestor funded!

Check out some of the press the project has gotten recently:

*Detroit Free Press, Inching Toward A Virtual Detroit At $1 A Square *Detroit News, Detroit Plot Sells At $1 Per Square Inch *WDET radio in Detroit, audio of a Craig Fahle Show interview *PSFK, LOVELAND Project Explores Micro Real Estate And Collective Land Use *Motherboard.TV (Vice Magazine's technology blog), LOVELAND Is Rebuilding Detroit Through The Internet, One Square Inch At A Time *NY Times via the AP, Web Designer Sells Detroit Lot for $1 Per Square Inch

One of the things we're doing in season 2 is giving grants out to other cool projects happening in the city. It's going to be rad.

So, inchvest here (by clicking that green "Back This Project" button up on the right-hand side), join the Facebook group or follow the Twitter for updates, and read the latest on the blog: 7 Billion Friends.

Never hesitate to email me at jerryp[at]gmail[dot]com or call me at 908-343-1981 with questions.

See you in Detroit, wherever you are!

Jerry Paffendorf

PS You can see a higher quality version of this video at http://www.vimeo.com/9607005 , and you can see two sort-of prequels at http://www.vimeo.com/7087012 and http://www.vimeo.com/7261689 , as well as some backstory on the bridge involving...well...just read it: http://7billionfriends.tumblr.com/post/347631504/the-plot-thickens-it-was-matty-moroun-who-snatched