EngagingCities

In order for open data to be integrated within a culture of civic engagement, open data programs need to meet residents where they are. This can be achieved by using human-centered design techniques like developing user personas. In addition to collecting all the user personas we could find in use in the public sector, we came up with some useful tips for those looking to create user personas.

How the arts gets us to turn on, tune in, and help out

The breadth and scope of possible engagement resources outlined by Public Agenda underscored the importance of clarifying the intent, scope, timeline and available resourcing to support a public engagement effort.

As a general rule the school holidays are best avoided when planning community engagement activities because people are generally harder to reach and disengaged from reality during holiday periods.…

Love your Block is a high-impact service strategy that connects city leaders with community residents to help revitalize their neighborhoods one block at a time. Typically, city officials provide small grants that support volunteer-fueled solutions developed by the community. Whether turning vacant lots into community gardens, removing graffiti, or helping elderly neighbors with simple home repairs that allow them to keep their homes, citizen volunteers are making their neighborhoods — and their cities — better places to live.

Facebook live, citizen surveys, virtual meetings, oh my! From the newsroom to YouTube, jurisdictions face a maze of social media when they want to engage with the community. The Institute for Local Government explains that cities and counties are trying to connect with residents through nontraditional methods in order to reach community members where they are.

You may have heard that online surveys are dead. Even though you’re constantly being bombarded with emails and website pop ups requesting your valuable input in the form of an online survey. How ma…

In the new book Mismatch, designer Kat Holmes demystifies the buzzy design process embraced by companies

President Obama and his presidential campaign made history in 2008 by employing community organizing tactics to engage large numbers of voters, building complex organizing structures which helped…

Protected bike lanes. Protected intersections. They’re all included in the draft version of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ new engineering manua…

If food be the tool of the Gods, then engage on! Ok ok so the title of the blog is a bastardised Shakespearean quote and in its literal sense totally lost but hey artistic licence ok! What I’m trying…

There is no such thing as the “general public”.
Know who your community is (demographics, stakeholders, networks) and how they get their information

Technology, when combined with the human spirit, has the ability to revolutionize entire industries and the world as a whole — indeed, it already has countless times over. When it comes to…

For the country dwellers of the past, moving from whichever rural hamlet they lived in to the big city was a way to escape a life on the farm. But nowadays, if you move to the city, you might end up on the farm regardless. On the rooftops of tower blocks, floating on waterways or even underground in former air raid shelters, urbanites ar

No-cost app development and rampant replication sounds like a civic tech pipe dream, but one organization is making it a reality.

Data Day event highlights organizations’ data-driven change efforts.

This week is National Gardening Week, and at first glance, you might think gardening has little to do with local government. There are initiatives like community gardens. However, that can serve an important culture and economic role for local governments. 

Technological literacy is key to turn a city into a smart city which is well connected, sustainable and resilient.

Free instructional videos for you to use with your group, team or organisation.  Great for preparing a group for a facilitated process (Such as a community engagement workshop or activity), for training purposes or to enhance your internal presentation to your team.

Editorial by Prof Ares Kalandides In the history of urban planning, we have seen regular paradigm shifts that often reflect broader societal developments as much as disciplinary trends and fashions. Few feuds in the discipline have reached the emblematic status that had the one between Robert Moses

The role of the chief data officer continues to expand and become more entrenched in local and state government, prompting CDOs to share their experiences and expertise with one another.

A philosophy regarding the creation of websites, forms and services seeks to simplify and improve constituent interactions with government.

Public parks share dynamic relationships with the communities they serve. The way we design parks can either promote or hinder their diversity of use, exclude or empower neighborhoods, resemble anywhere or reflect the history and collective values of the place. To create parks that enable residents to feel more connected to place, community development project leaders are choosing to partner with artists, designers, and cultural organizations.

Urban residents have long practiced a form of tactical urbanism: repurposing underutilized places using temporary materials and transforming them into more dynamic public spaces. But in the past several years, tactical urbanism has become a movement.