EngagingCities

Carey Newson, author of our essay 'Designs on the past', describes her experience of learning from four Big Local communities who see their histories as a catalyst for community change

Trip highlighted grassroots climate action initiatives across the United States.

Streetcred, a blockchain-powered open-source mapping startup, will pay you to map. (And then give the data away for free.)

An updated version of the proposed comprehensive plan is set to released sometime next week. 

Cyd is a passionate advocate for the citizen experience. She's an accomplished user experience (UX) researcher and currently serves as Code for America's UX Evangelist. Cyd wants to redesign interaction between government and its citizens to create a virtuous cycle of trust. She envisions a world where civic interactions are just as inviting and rewarding as commercial ones.

Just three years ago, dockless bike sharing was operating at a small, university-scale in China. By the end of 2017, there were more than 20 million dockless bikes in the…

One couple is on a mission to transform every public bench into a mini community hub.

Eric Klinenberg, author of "Palaces for the People," talks about how schools, libraries, and other institutions can restore a sense of common purpose in America.

Can more techies in politics make for better policy? Dozens of scientists, computer scientists and tech entrepreneurs are running for office this year both on the federal and state level. They won’t be immune to the gravitational pull of politics once in office, but many expect that they’ll put more faith in data and the expertise …

There is nothing quite like a major natural disaster to reveal huge gaps in a community’s information needs and infrastructure. When Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey in late 2012, leaving $68 billion in damage in its wake, people scrambled for information. Where and when to buy gas during the shortage? When will the electricity be restored? How to get help from the state to rebuild damaged homes?

Emanuel Yekutiel is raising funds for Manny's: A Civic Gathering Space in San Francisco on Kickstarter!

Manny’s is a gathering space in San Francisco that combines a cafe, restaurant, newsstand, political bookshop and civic event space.

Bella Macarelli regularly discusses the big issues of the day — politics, immigration, gun control — with her classmates at Golden High School.

She says her age (she turns 16 in November) shouldn’t preclude her and her friends from bringing those lofty thoughts from the schoolyard to the ballot box.

“Most of the votes you would get are from students who care and are well informed,” Macarelli said. “We have highly intelligent conversations in class.”

As we enter a more environmentally-conscious age, we need to inevitably build more ecologically responsible and sustainable cities.

For a planting cost of $250-600 (including first 3 years of maintenance), a single street tree returns over $90,000 of direct benefits (not including aesthetic, social and natural) in the lifetime of the tree.

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…

“We hear a lot of, ‘I’m in support of affordable housing, just not here,’” says DeFranza, who’s the executive director of Harborlight Community Partners, a community development corporation in southern Essex County in Greater Boston.

The Seattle Department of Neighborhoods has wrapped up a second year of its citywide participatory voting program, Your Voice Your Choice (YVYC), to select projects with a street or park focus to receive community funding. Formerly the funding had been allocated by the department’s District Neighborhood Councils under a program called Neighborhood Park and Streets

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

Whether dealing with climate change, immigration or even trade, cities and metropolitan areas have for some time now taken initiatives and formed networks to address pressing social and economic issues.

Web developers at Sidewalk Labs — the Google-funded, New York based private firm that is working on a tech-first waterfront neighbourhood in Toronto — have been busy. While the New York based…

Adaptive cities are analytical. Their leaders set a balanced vision for the future of the community, and then collect and study data, continually look for patterns, and use that information and analysis to inform long-range planning and infrastructure investments to realize that vision.

The term “gentrification” turned 50 in 2014. Originally coined to describe organic population shifts witnessed in London’s inner neighborhoods, it has come to encapsulate cultural trends, economic cycles and discrete public policies.

It's not enough to simply produce data — what that data shows must track with residents' lived experience.

Code for America expands program to promote citizen-driven government in the digital age, with a new $2 million investment from Knight Foundation Funding will support the next phase of Code for…

Attackers using vehicles as weapons are causing designers to rethink security in public spaces.