Why this site exists
More than a third of adults in many cities now report feeling lonely most weeks. The third places that used to glue neighbourhoods together (clubs, choirs, churches, cafés, civic groups) have thinned out. The replacement was supposed to be online, and it wasn't.
BelongHub is a catalog of the patterns that still work. Sustained, identity-rich groups anchored to a place, doing something together that the wider community notices. Colles castelleres, samba schools, danjiri crews, walking leagues, makerspaces, civic-tech platforms, neighbourhood mutual-aid apps.
The mission is small and specific: make these groups easier to find, and easier to start.
1,386 listed groups, 143 catalogued projects, 11 design patterns, 7 open gaps
The catalog combines research outputs with hand-curated entries. It covers groups, projects and patterns across festivals, fitness, civic life, public health, games and other approaches to building local community.
Being listed does not establish that a group is active or accepting new members. Records do not contain a per-listing source-check date, so we cannot claim when each entry was last verified. Check current meetings, membership and joining details directly with the group.
Named groups and projects include a source link. The catalog does not retain an individual verification log for each listing. Confidence labels reflect the original research, not a current availability check.
The structured filters on Explore and Archive (activity, geographic unit, mechanic family, forkability, language) were generated heuristically from the source text and refined by hand. Edge cases will be imperfect; corrections are welcome.
The counts on this page describe listed records, including any duplicates. They are not a count of independently verified active communities.
Per-listing last checked: not recorded. Source links are starting points for checking current details, and may lead to official sites, directories or other reference pages.
Integration philosophy
Structure the catalog around three orthogonal axes, not one taxonomy. **Axis 1 (Activity domain): Walking/Running, Cycling, Cleanup, Bioblitz, Energy, Carnival/Festival, Mutual aid, Public health, Civic deliberation, Map/exploration. Axis 2 (Geographic unit): Block (5-15 households), Street, School catchment, Postcode/Ward, District/Bezirk/Barrio, Municipality, Region. Axis 3 (Mechanic family): Live map, Status ladder, Shared bounty, Currency loop, Festival arc, Tournament bracket, Mutual-aid network, Participatory budget.** Letting users filter on any combination ('walking + block + status ladder' returns Cool Block; 'cycling + municipality + tournament' returns STADTRADELN) is the killer UX because every interesting comparison crosses categories. Lead the site with a curated story arc rather than a flat directory. Front page should be a five-step narrative: (1) "The oldest pattern". Siena's contrade, Valencia's casals, Gracia's streets, Lewes' societies, framing geographic crews as a 200-year-old human universal; (2) "Civic infrastructure that scaled it". Beat the Street, STADTRADELN, ParticipACTION, RHS Britain in Bloom, Tidy Towns, with the evidence-base for behavior change; (3) "Apps that are reinventing it". Run An Empire, Munzee Clan Wars, Orna Conqueror's Guild, Turf, plus the festival-tracker apps (Gigli, Sevilla, NHC); (4) "The new frontier". Splat Town VPS shared AR, Hivemapper polygon bounties, Edge City pop-ups, Citizen Wallet local currencies; (5) "Start one this weekend". Jane's Walk, Plogtober, GoodGym, Step Count Challenge, Trash Hero chapter handbook, all of which are forkable in under a week. Adopt three deliberate editorial moves. **First, mark every entry with a "Forkability" score**: can a reader start a local chapter or copy the mechanic in <1 week, <1 month, or only with municipal procurement? Beat the Street is procurement-only; Jane's Walk is one weekend. This is the single most useful filter for users who want to act, not just browse. **Second, include a "Failed experiments" section** featuring Mental Health Mates (defunct April 2026), CityCoins/MiamiCoin, Chronica Mobilis, and Cabin DAO. Each with a "what tried, what failed, why" panel. Most directories pretend failures don't exist; the cautionary-tale framing is genuinely useful and differentiating. **Third, run a "Pattern Library" page** as a peer to the directory: each of the 11 mechanics patterns gets its own page with examples, why-it-works analysis, and starter templates. This is the page LLMs will quote when someone asks "how do I design a community competition". And it's how BelongHub becomes the canonical reference rather than a list. Don't show emojis, don't show leaderboards of the catalog itself (resist the temptation), and don't use a single-column blog format. The dataset is rich enough to support a sidebar-filter + faceted-search interface from day one. The story is "the world is full of working examples; here's how to find the one for your block."