EngagingCities

Ethan Zuckerman: “I am concerned that we’ve not had a robust conversation about what we want social media to do for us. We know what social media does for platform companies like Facebook and Twitter: it generates enormous masses of user-generated content that can be monetized with advertising, and reams of behavioral data that make …

Learn how dozens of smart cities applications can perform in different types of urban settings, including a snapshot of technology deployment in 50 cities around the world.

London has set out a vision to transform core services for the digital age. The city wants to reform its disparate governing bodies so they can share data better and collaborate more effectively on service design. The Smarter London Together roadmap, a plan to make the British capital the “world’s smartest city” published on 11 June, announces a common set of standards and design principle

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

With a dramatic increase in the use of drones among public safety agencies, the varying use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) ranges widely across the country. From traffic and crowd control to whale rescue and pest control, state and local smart city planners are discovering the benefits of drone technology, while facing privacy and security challenges.

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. 

Chi Hack Night has become a national model for sustainable and successful volunteer civic technology projects.

This interview with Eric Gordon, Professor, Department of Visual and Media Arts, Emerson College; Founding Executive Director, Engagement Lab, is the fifteenth in the Center for Urban Innovation's Listening to Inclusive Innovators series.

Schools that traded history and government for more science and technology are rethinking the calculation, hoping to create a new generation of activists.

Two studies show where bike-share ridership in the U.S. might be headed.

Utilizing the IoT and edge computing can help governments prepare for and mitigate natural disasters.

In exclusive interviews, former directors tell how the world's first innovation lab ended

How do we shift our mindsets? How do we think about our urban historical past? Mayors, thought leaders, and practitioners weigh in.

Starbucks’s new policy brands the stores as a "third place." But the most effective third places come from the community.

Civic tech startups are sprouting up with increasing frequency. But what makes a quality civic tech startup? Connecting citizens and governments; improving public services; amplifying the public's voice; and increasing transparency and accountability, are all key.

This January, we kicked off City Bureau’s City Scrapers Project, an open-source coding community that collects, standardizes and shares information on local public meetings (i.e., City Council…

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

“It’s like actual people who have been oppressed or marginalized and really have no access to the dominant economy at all, are just like, ‘Ok then. We’re going to create our our autonomous economy and system of governance,’” she says. “Which is, I feel, how it should be … absolute direct democracy to the point of people making the decisions and implementing them directly.”

Blockchain has become one of those buzzwords that commands attention and carries a powerful social glow, yet in the likes of similar buzzwords that have attained such a prized status, it has lost much of its meaning. Blockchain has become a catchall term for just about any digital ledger system regardless of crucial variations in its design. With so many blockchain projects ranging from social impact initiatives to opportunistic marketing ploys, it can be difficult to discern which projects hold real potential.

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.

Plus, 18F details efforts to improve state government RFP process, Code for Tampa Bay launches a second monthly meetup in nearby St. Petersburg, Fla., and Syracuse, N.Y., CDO shares the benefits of hosting civic hackathons.

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 precipitous drop in public trust in government over the past decade has been unsettling, but engaging citizens directly may help reverse this trend.

In Oakland, Mayor Libby Schaaf is leading the exceptionally diverse city through a period of unprecedented growth and investment–while trying to create an ethos of inclusion.

Executive Director Jennifer Pahlka says the event gives the group a chance to "assess the landscape and reset the bar."