EngagingCities

Where once Downtown Vancouver residents and visitors could find free newspapers, they will now find books to share. 

This post is a summary of Matt Stempeck’s presentation at The Impacts of Civic Tech Conference (TICTEC) in Lisbon, Portugal, on April 18, 2018, which he developed in close consultation with Micah Sifry, and is part of the ongoing work they are doing developing the Civic Tech Field Guide. If you work in civic tech, …

The way to a stronger city is through its stomach.

PACE has released a new white paper, ‘Infogagement: Citizenship and Democracy in the Age of Connection’. The paper grew out of our ‘Information and Engagement Project’, a two year conversation at PACE that involved multiple convenings across the country and dozens of interviews with leading thinkers and practitioners in the fields of journalism, civic technology and public engagement

Readers of Revitalization News know that creating or expanding green infrastructure is often a core component of intelligent community redevelopment, revitalization and/or resilienc

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.

Remarks of Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, US Federal Communications Commission: “…But what we are facing now does not reflect what has come before.  Because it is apparent the civic infrastructure we have for accepting public comment in the rulemaking process is not built for the digital age.  As the Administrative Conference of the United States acknowledges, …

Rocky the Recycling Robot has arrived to make recycling in Summit County a breeze. The web app was launched by High Country Conservation Center (HC3) to give residents and

Here's how technologists Eleanor Tutt, Rachel McGrane and Ellie Newman view the region’s efforts to connect people with data.

Whether you are new to podcasts, or want to complete your collection if you are a frequent listener, here's the list of best podcasts about smart cities.

Code for America Summit is just around the corner — May 30th-June 1st at the Oakland Marriott City Center — and once again we’ll be bringing together public servants and civic technologists for three…

Hollie Russon-Gilman writes about the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation empowerment of citizens not only as data producers but also as data owners.

Architect and planner Jan Gehl looks back on how he helped transform Copenhagen into one of the world’s most livable cities and talks about how people can reclaim the streets.

Last year, we shared the very wonderful story of how Participatory Budgeting (PB) was introduced at P.S. 139, a local elementary school in Brooklyn where Miro (the son of our co-Executive Director Josh Lerner) goes to school.  PB addressed a sincere need at P.S. 139: a need to connect with families at a school of nearly…

One of the hallmarks of a great urban neighborhood is connectivity to other parts of the city via public transportation. We tend to think about this access in terms of specific trips: taking the…

In cities across the UK digital technology is changing how we live, but the planning system is struggling to keep up. Airbnb and co-housing are changing the structure of our housing markets, yet we assess housing need in the same way we did 20 years ago. New digital street furniture is offering unlimited WiFi in exchange for targeted advertising, yet we still give them planning permission in the same way we would an ordinary advertising hoarding.

The Obama Center will not include an official federal government-run presidential library; instead, it will host a Chicago Public Library branch.

ZenCity, a platform that aggregates and analyzes citizen sentiment and feedback for local government, has won a $1 million prize from Microsoft’s venture capital arm and other investors for artificial intelligence startups.

Mike Lydon is a Principal at The Street Plans Collaborative and one of the founders of Tactical Urbanism. It is through his work and his articulation of the work of others that many of us have come to learn about tactical urbanism. He remains on the cutting edge of trying to figure out how short-term experiments can be used to catalyze and create sustainable change. Essentially, he has helped create a new paradigm for community change that is continuing to have significant impacts.

In the Boyle Heights neighborhood, a design intervention led by residents and activists unveils a “playground in a box” to reclaim streets for public life.

Across the US and Canada, cities are proving to be vibrant hubs for dynamic, citizen-centric problem-solving – something that I have witnessed first-hand during the Centre for Public Impact’s extensive work supporting Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 2018 Mayors Challenge.

So, how can city leaders innovate, meet rising citizen expectations and achieve a positive impact? Some key lessons have emerged, many of which are cited in our conversations listed below.

Over the last twenty years nonprofit organizations have gotten steadily better at financial management, communications, and evaluation. For many organizations these are now core capacities. Such…

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Alternative Finance Lab has been working and experimenting with crowdfunding now more than five years, by developing campaigns, workshops, booklets and observing how this new way of financing can help communities to become more resilient and empowered. Due to fiscal constraints governments are facing globally, conventional means of financing …

Last week, I was at TICTeC 2018 where researchers, activists and practitioners discussed the impact of civic technology, or civic tech. This blogpost summarises the discussion of Two heads are better than one: working with governments.

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