How can we encourage young adults - particularly those of color, an often underrepresented demographic - to engage in the election process?

Jennifer Pahlka founded Code for America 10 years ago, and as she recently announced plans to step down, it's time to look back (and forward) at its work.

This is the power of storytelling. It’s not the events you host or the broadcast of what the [insert local government here] is doing for its residents that generates this type of community experience and buy-in. It is the stories that we share, the personal connections made between individuals, that build communities where people want to live, work and play.

Over the past year, Sidewalk Labs conducted a detailed thought experiment on the future of cities. Here’s what we learned, and how we hope to accelerate urban innovation.

An abandoned mine shaft beneath the town of Mansfield, England is an unlikely place to shape the future of cities. But here, researchers from the nearby University of Nottingham are planning to launch a “deep farm” that could produce ten times as much food as farms above ground. Deep farms are an example of what the latest wave of smart cities look like: putting people first by focusing on solving urban problems and improving existing infrastructure, rather than opening shiny new buildings.

This week in New York, heads of state and government have come together at the UN headquarters for two dedicated Summits on climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As they gath…

Officials have long complained of companies that offer products in search of a problem. New procurement strategies are cropping up as a result.

The speed our society evolves has passed the speed of legislation, but it can catch up. The internet could be the facilitation, and AI could be the catalyst.

We chose Memphis to kick off the Strong America Tour for a reason: the city is both an object lesson in what has gone wrong in American cities, and what could go right. And Memphis’s example helps us see why in places that are going to experience a renaissance, it’s going to come from the grassroots

While Facebook and Twitter are the dominant platforms for public discourse, governments are grappling with how policy discussions may be kept from going wayward. Much like Mr. Toad’s wild ride, the…

Word. Microsoft Word. The wordprocessing software that’s been around longer than some of us have been alive. It’s the software government runs on. But it’s also the software holding back governments…

Artists are everywhere, on every block and in every community. Finding the opportunities for artists to share their creativity and …

We are at a point where climate chaos, economic inequity and social alienation are converging into an unprecedented catastrophe. People everywhere realize that current efforts to address these…

It is an exciting time to be an experience designer. With the recognition that human-centered design is necessary across multiple industries and thought-leaders pushing the urgent need for…

A UN report warns extreme weather events that historically happened about once in 100 years could hit coastal cities yearly by 2050. Cities need to prepare now.

Recent research paints a bleak picture of young people's participation in civil service.

Just 7 percent of federal government employees are younger than 30 — even though, according to some estimates, millennials will soon make up three-quarters of the country's workforce.

The German company Siemens is launching an ambitious adaptive reuse project to revitalize its historic corporate campus, with a very modern data-collecting twist.

Lessons on delivery-driven government from Jennifer Pahlka at Code for America Summit

Sunlight’s Open Cities team helps cities develop open data policies and effectively engage communities with open data through our flagship Tactical Data Engagement (TDE) method, but, inevitably, most engagement methods for open data attract data users with experience reading or using data on their o

When I grow up, I want to run an NGO and spend my day dealing with admin, finance, and HR. I want to spend time worrying about how to pay employee salaries, writing funding proposals and narrative…

Electric scooters draw a lot of hate, but if supported well by cities, they have the potential to provide a widespread and beneficial mode of transportation.

A fresh approach to environmental design after dark aims to increase social and physical activity in public space—addressing both day and night workers. The intended outcome is better health, in part, through walkability and economic vitality. Nighttime design is a time-based discipline that addresses complex conditions, from dusk to dawn, through education, research pilots and …

New innovations are forcing citizens to revisit some foundational questions of governance about who should be shaping the future of the country.

"My friends and family all think this is insane," said one parent of life without a car. "They are right."