Cre­at­ive Cit­ies wants to shine a light on the eyes and ears of our cit­ies. They’re the people who notice the little things: walk­ing among us, doc­u­ment­ing human move­ment and trends on the street, noti­cing art and acci­dental moments of beauty, and put­ting names to the faces of local per­son­al­it­ies. They’re neigh­bour­hood blog­gers. Do you have one?

Doc­u­ment­ing urban life and the move­ment of our cites. Ebisub­ashi Bridge, Osaka. | Photo by Jess Scully

You might be sur­prised. There are a grow­ing num­ber of pas­sion­ate people provid­ing an insight into their worlds, through neigh­bour­hood blogs that cover local his­tory, some that doc­u­ment street art, oth­ers that con­nect neigh­bours around events and causes, and many that just share the won­der of life at street level. Neigh­bour­hood blogs allow people to show what’s spe­cial about a city, or a com­munity, to com­mu­nic­ate about issues res­id­ents and vis­it­ors face, and to help pro­mote — or put a shape to — the unique iden­tity of a place and it’s people.

We’re com­pil­ing a list of great local blog­gers to form the Local Blog­ger Net­work, and we need your help to cre­ate the list. If you’re on Twit­ter, tag your sug­ges­tions with #loc­al­b­log — if not, share your sug­ges­tions below.

We’ll be speak­ing to a few blog­gers to find out what it takes and what they want to share with us about their corners of the world. Here’s a few to get the ball rolling…

Screen­shot from http://www.mayorofnewtown.com/

News­town: Mayor of New­town (Aus­tralia)
The (un-elected) Mayor of New­town offers a valu­able pub­lic ser­vice. Along with the what’s-on guide to per­form­ances, shows and events in Sydney’s inner-west, the Mayor livens things up with a photo guess­ing com­pet­i­tion for keen-eyed res­id­ents, lists of the best pubs, and, more ser­i­ously, dis­cus­sion of devel­op­ment plans and updates on issues that fall out of the head­lines, such as on-going con­cerns about trans­port infra­struc­ture and water policy, that affect the city at large.

Screen­shot from http://www.seoul-man.blogspot.com/

Seoul Man (in Tokyo, Japan)
Don’t be deceived by the name — Seoul Man, ori­gin­ally from the UK, is now liv­ing in Tokyo and doc­u­ment­ing everything from bill­boards on his daily com­mute to the explo­sion of Star­bucks cof­fee shops in his area, from where to get great bread to his exper­i­ence of art exhib­i­tions and fest­ivals. On his blog, Seoul Man describes why he first decided to take up blogging:

“When I first told friends and fam­ily we were mov­ing to South Korea most people knew very little about the coun­try and the people. I had been fol­low­ing a num­ber of blogs at the time and had been cast­ing around for a good sub­ject for a blog. I real­ised that a blog on what life offers in Korea might make a good topic. My aim was not only to inform friends and fam­ily of our life in Korea, but also to provide detailed inform­a­tion for other expats and tour­ists com­ing to Korea.

“I soon dis­covered a healthy Korean Blo­go­sphere with a wide range of blog­gers from those fresh off the plane excited to taste their first Kim­chi to the seasoned long ter­mers like Robert at the Marmot’s Hole and Mike the Met­ro­pol­iti­cian.”

Screen­shot from http://darlinghurstnights.com/

Darlinghurst Nights (Australia)

This blog is ded­ic­ated to a broad swathe of Sydney’s inner east, from the cre­at­ive hub of Surry Hills to the red-light dis­trict of Kings Cross, to the water­fronts of Wool­loomoo­loo, Rush­cut­ters Bay, and rep­res­ents the most densely urban area in Aus­tralia. The Dar­los love unlock­ing the urban riddles of unknown street artists and intro­du­cing new stores or addi­tions to the land­scape, and now their fel­low city dwell­ers con­trib­ute by shar­ing their dis­cov­er­ies too. You can even fol­low them on Twit­ter: @darlonights

Do you have a blog to sug­gest? Would you like to find out how to become a neigh­bour­hood blog­ger — or find out if there’s one in your area? Join the dis­cus­sion and help us com­pile the list.