Wired high rise: constructing a virtual community in an inner city housing estate

This paper explores the evolving connections between information and social policy through the construction of ‘Reach for the Clouds’, a ‘networked community’ in Atherton Gardens, a high rise housing estate in Melbourne, Australia. The project was developed by the InfoXchange, an internet service provider with a ‘social entrepreneurial’ orientation. It also involves a consortium of government and community groups and draws on a combination of voluntary labour, commercial enterprise, government funding and donations of equipment by local businesses. We give a brief description of the project and its protagonists, consider the motivations behind the network, and the difficulties which lie in evaluating such a project. [Introduction]