There is an interesting startup that is about trying to turn cities into villages by trying to make neighbors help each other. You need to verify your address via a scanned document, a neighbor or a a code on a postcard they send you. I think the primary reason they find that verification important is that people are allowed to see the full name, picture and address of people in their own neighborhood. And probably they don't want to share that with people who are not actually neighbors. This seems to be key selling point of this startup - this is how it differs from any basic neighboor based Facebook group, that you really get to see each others face, name and address and people outside your hood really don't get to see it so you can be fairly comfortable about sharing it. Besides you can choose a few categories how you can help others e.g. babysitting, petsitting etc. and what kind of common activities you would be interested in.

Here is the bad news: the startup is currently only available in German and only in the city of Vienna, probably due to the postcard thing. They managed to find investors so it is likely they will have an English version and extend it all over the world, in that case they will probably change the name as well, currently the name is fragnebenan.com But I have no idea when will this happen.

Anyway, I was thinking primarily that Rationalists in Berlin may take an interest in this and help them extend fragnebenan.com to Berlin?