The practice of crowdfunding real estate is spreading from South America — where Prodigy Network recently raised around $239 million from 3,100 Colombians to build a 66-story skyscraper in Bogotá — to New York, where the developer Urban Muse is hoping to offer a slice of a Brooklyn Bridge Park project to the public.

Taking a page from Web sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, real estate upstarts like Fundrise, Property Peers, Realty Mogul and Prodigy Network, which is based in New York, are transforming the way real estate projects are built and who profits from them, by allowing the public to invest in an asset class that has traditionally been the exclusive domain of wealthy investors and private equity firms.

“It’s a very simple concept,” said Daniel Miller, co-founder of Fundrise. “You should be able to invest in your neighborhood.”