(Annika Cline/ KJZZ News)

(Annika Cline/ KJZZ News)

(Annika Cline/ KJZZ News)

Let’s say you’ve got a great idea that would make your city a better place to live. What do you do to make your voice heard? You could attend a city council meeting, or you could tweet directly at the mayor. At least, that’s what the City of Mesa is hoping residents will do.

The City of Mesa is using social media to build community projects from the ground up.

The Mesa Urban Garden is filled with plants.

“They grow so much faster if you, you know, if you pick them," said Adero Safiri-Anderson who comes here about five times a week to tend to them. She walks me through the garden as she snips off greens.

“As long as we leave that turnip in the ground, he will keep giving me greens," she said.

The garden started two years ago. Back then, the 98 garden plots were just rectangles of dirt. But the idea for this community space was actually planted online.

“It was about two and a half years ago," said Ryan Winkle. That's when he had an idea.

Along with a few other interested people, Winkle pitched that idea to the city on a website called iMesa. 

Much like in an election, citizens voted on the ideas. But also like an election, turnout was weak.

“We had all of our friends and, since there wasn’t big usage of the site, well, there was decent usage but there wasn’t a whole lot," Winkle said. "So we pretty much got the votes.”

And the votes turned into support from the city, which Winkle said they couldn’t have succeeded without.

The renovations to Pioneer Park, which are slated for construction this spring, also came from the site.

When Mayor John Giles took office a few months ago, he realized the city needed to rethink its online strategy. The thing is, the crowd-sourcing model worked, but you had to visit the site to participate. Giles 

said it made more sense to get to users through their social media.

“And so it was kind of a ‘duh’ moment when we realized: Why are we working so hard to send people over to this corner of the internet," Giles said. "Why aren’t we just getting in the middle of where they’re at by using social media?”

So the city started by using the hashtag "#nextMesa" to get that dialogue going. It’s not trending yet, but the city hopes soon community-driven projects will be.