The last step in the rise of the blog will be the connection of virtual and real space. Your favorite blogger might be in New York, but if you’re living in Oregon, chances are he’s not going to be covering local ordinances or missing dogs.

This is a crucial step for citizen journalism and the democratic process in general. When supporting local causes is as easy as checking your RSS reader, and when the paths of communication are transparent, the seemingly giant gap between an initial desire for change and actually seeing results evaporates.

So how do you find out who’s blogging in your neighborhood? Many hyperlocal blog directories are sprouting up and existing blog aggregators are growing local searches in order to fill this emerging demand. Here are a few of the better ones. (Don’t see your favorite local blog search here? Let us know in the comments of this post.)

Placeblogger.com: The most recent and promising site on the scene, to which Jay Rosen serves as an advisor, Placeblogger has a slick interface and enough buzz to draw a healthy amount of contributors. The success of any of these sites rests on the amount of participation, and Placeblogger seems to have a lot of momentum. Most of the towns I typed in - large or small - had enough blogs listed to keep me interested. The launch package also included a list of the top 10 placeblogs in the country.

Backfence.com: Though only available in a few cities at the moment, Backfence does a lot of things right. It’s easy to contribute to and navigate the site. The ‘Crime Log’ category and the photo gallery seemed particularly helpful. Backfence is currently in a state of transition, after losing , some of its original management team but is still attempting to expand into other cities as funding allows. If you like their format, you should write in and request they take a look at your city as a potential destination.

Feedmap.net: Feedmap is a little rough around the edges, but it gets the job done. Just type in the location you’re looking for and a map pops up with geotagged feeds from local blogs. It also has tools for adding a local blogroll to your own blog and a map image of your location.

Outside.in: This is my personal fave as far as design and content. It tends to only tap a few blogs in some of the more remote areas, but with more time I could see this becoming a great site. Started by Steven Johnson, co-creator of FEED magazine and Plastic.com, Outside.in is in good hands.

Metroblogging.com: Instead of aggregating other blogs in a particular area, Metroblogging hand-picks a few bloggers in a specific city and sets them up on one of their pre-formatted blogs. While this site doesn’t exactly fit perfectly into this list, the quality of its blogs are excellent and they encourage your participation. You may find other blogs in your area by following your town’s Metroblog.

Topix.net: This site is a great tool for narrowing in on any subject, whether it be local blogs or news stories on a specific subject. Topix works better as a local news aggregator than a blog finder, but I was able to find a few gems that weren’t listed elsewhere. Using their advanced search option you should be able to look up blogs by zip code, but the search results still produce local news sites in addition to great local blogs and the localized forums put you directly in touch with people from your neighborhood.

Blogdigger Local: This site feels a little ghetto, but shared some of the same buzz last year that Placeblogger is enjoying now. It definitely has some unique sites registered, and it could fill some crucial holes in your local blog web.

Technorati: Searching for local blogs is just one of the many features available at Technorati. If you’re specific enough, you can usually get excellent results, but it’s not explicitly geared towards that type of function, so the hits tend to not be as focused. A little work on your part could lead to a very local community of bloggers, but it’s not just sitting there for the taking.

AmericanTowns.com: Recently featured in a New York Times article, American Towns has a great interface, but not much more … yet. There’s a lot of potential here if a wide variety of people actively contribute, but when I looked up San Francisco, for example, the only events listed were religious events posted by local churches.

Miscellaneous: Micah Sifry at Personal Democracy Forum has a great post about this topic, specifically for political blogs. A couple directories he mentions are LeftyBlogs for Democrats and Blogatorium for Republicans. CitizenJournalist.net also has some great links related to this topic, although it’s not a blog directory.

There is a lot of potential in these sites that hasn’t really solidified into a standard function or practice. It reminds me of when e-mail and Internet were available on local BBS’s but no one really knew what to do with them. The localized blog movement needs a MySpace or Friendster to get it going. So far, only Placeblogger seems like it might be that type of site. You can help catalyze the movement by registering as many sites as you can with these services and geotagging your own blog. Happy hunting.

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Keith Axline is the photo editor at Wired News. He also moonlights as a tech and music writer in various places like the SF Guardian and his blog Hesitating.org.