Transparency note: The author of the LOCUTERRA concept (Lukas Geiger) is also the publisher of Um:bruch. LOCUTERRA is a non-commercial open-source concept under the MIT licence. There is no monetisation.
The problem
Local civic life barely exists online. If you want to know what is happening in your municipality, who in the neighbourhood is offering help, who runs the garden club, or whether the library is closed next week — you have no good option today.
There are Facebook groups where ads sit between posts. There are municipal websites nobody visits. There are notices pinned to community-centre boards, unstructured WhatsApp groups, and a handful of civic-engagement platforms that vanish after six months because their business model does not hold up or their data protection does not pass muster.
What does not exist: a tool that maps local civic life digitally without monetising it at the same time.
The idea
LOCUTERRA is a concept for a public-interest, location-based social network. The name comes from locus (place) and terra (earth, land). The core idea: think about communication spatially — from the village to the world.
In concrete terms:
- Citizens can share resources, start groups, discover places, and connect directly — without advertising, without algorithmic feeds, without mandatory real names.
- Initiatives can organise as groups, announce meetings, and find volunteers.
- Municipalities can operate information channels, offer citizen contact points, and — in later versions — issue location-based alerts.
- Resources (tools, skills, offers of help, requests) remain non-commercial. As soon as money changes hands, it becomes a marketplace — a deliberately separate module.
The system thinks in reach levels: private, group, place, village, municipality, region, country. An offer can be visible to a neighbourhood without being discoverable across the entire region. Visibility does not equal contact — anyone who sees a resource may only reach the provider via direct message, not automatically view their location or identity.
What has been specified
LOCUTERRA is not a pitch deck or a slide presentation. It is a fully specified product concept:
- MVP scope: citizen account, places, groups, resources, direct messages, information channels
- Data model: 13 core entities with relationships, status fields, and extension logic
- Data-protection concept: pseudonymity by default, purpose-bound consent, revocation, deletion, export
- Roles and permissions model: actor, account, object role, and system role cleanly separated
- Reach model: hierarchical discoverability from private to transnational
- Governance: stewardship, moderation, reporting, objection, second review — with three fully worked-through conflict scenarios
- Security: spam, fake alerts, stalking, location-data misuse, political manipulation — risks documented and protective boundaries defined
- Technical stack: Next.js, TypeScript, React, PostgreSQL, Prisma — webapp/PWA-first
- Financing concept: arena model (location-based sponsoring via auction, 50/50 revenue split), marketplace fees, public stewardship — no in-feed ads, no data sales, no premium accounts
There is also a clickable demonstrator that shows the fictional municipality of Grüntal with synthetic data: 9 places, 5 groups, 8 resources, 2 channels, and direct messages between fictional citizens.
Why we are giving it away
LOCUTERRA does not belong to us. It belongs to the idea that local civic life deserves a digital tool that does not depend on advertising, growth pressure, or data trading.
That is why we are releasing the entire concept under the MIT licence on GitHub:
Any municipality, any association, any foundation, any public-sector institution can pick it up, adapt it, and implement it. There is no licence fee, no usage restriction, no commercial intent.
What is missing
LOCUTERRA does not need another specification sprint. It needs three things:
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A steward. A public-sector or non-profit organisation that takes responsibility for operations. Not us — the concept deliberately calls for public-interest stewardship, not solo operation.
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A small team. Developers to take the web core from demonstrator to product. Designers to ensure accessibility. One person for moderation and community building.
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A pilot municipality. A place willing to test LOCUTERRA with real citizens — starting with one district, a handful of groups, and a manageable number of users.
What we offer
At Um:bruch we developed the concept, built the demonstrator, and published the specification. We are available for questions and happy to support the transition — but we will not be the operator.
We built the concept. You just need to build the product.
Anyone interested can start directly on GitHub — or get in touch with us.
Companion article: A Day in Gruental — a fictional reportage showing how LOCUTERRA could work in everyday life.