The app will offer crisis navigation warnings and provide detailed visual information about hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes.

I don’t have a problem with the term “smart city” per se. Embracing evidence-based, data-driven decision-making and using technology to capture that data is a laudable goal. My problem with the idea is that it’s often presented as a panacea. There is an underlying assumption that technology is the key to unlocking the smart solutions our cities most desperately need. To believe this is to completely miss the plot.

How do you get audience members, much less the journalists presenting a story, to walk a mile in the shoes of a dot? Or a bar chart?

Newsgames are a branch of “serious games,” or games that are built with purposes other than pure entertainment. While newsgames have been around since as early as 2001, the development of these games themselves is still far from becoming a mainstay of journalistic storytelling.

Come help us chip away at civic problems by combining technology with the power of our community.

The good folks at Participedia shared with us an exciting announcement – the launch of their newly revamped open collaboration website! The new Participedia.net site operates in a similar way as Wikipedia and is open for anyone to add resources related to civic engagement and democratic innovation

In the fight against gentrification, three placemaking programs activate community networks and help artists and residents lay down economic roots.

Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper (LQC) is about finding immediate and effective solutions for improving public spaces.

The freedom to test and fail enables the private sector to be our primary source of experimentation, innovation, and growth. But we should reconsider the design and implications of private systems before wholesale adopting them as gatekeepers to public services and servants.

Video from the Code for America summit

Compared to computer-assisted reporting, the emergence of data journalism in the US and in Europe intersected with several developments both within and outside newsrooms: the growing availability of data online, not least due to open data initiatives and leaks; newsrooms hiring developers and integrating them within the editorial team to better cope with data and provide interactive web applications; and the emergence of various ‘tech for good’ movements that are attracted to journalism as a way to use their technological skills for a ‘public good’.

Matt Jukes shares what he learned at the recent Code for America Summit, which is one of the must attend events for those working in civic tech.

Cultivate the art of noticing — from smell inventories to sonic mapping, getting lost, looking up and more.

Cities are now fueled by data. They depend on it as much as they depend on air or petrol. We see this in our daily lives, whether using Google Maps to get from place to place counting our steps with a Fitbit, or checking out a restaurant review. But how this data is to be managed and governed is becoming ever more fraught and controversial.

The govtech movement holds great promise, but is hindered by a glaring blindspot — the assumption that technology alone will solve our public problems, without considering either the people or…

Code for America is trying to show government agencies that technology doesn’t have to be complicated to start making citizens’ lives better.

Local governments and organizations are forming coalitions to encourage census responses in 2020.

Lou Huang, creator of Streetmix, will lead our next webinar on June 12 at 1 p.m. eastern time to discuss how technology can break down these barriers to participation and make engagement a more collaborative and cooperative process.

The opportunities cities promise have almost always drawn very different people together. These tensions have no doubt birthed tragic histories. But they have also served to illuminate the unique beauty found in a diversity of cultures and identities.

As a network that began and has thrived with a small team, we’re pretty happy about the ways we’re able to support our members. One thing that is a constant battle, however, is often having to turn…

Code for Miami began in 2013 as a group of weekly volunteers, trying to build technology for Miamians, by Miamians. Since then, a lot of amazing things have happened; we’ve hosted a dozen Civic…

Even after recognizing the attack and responding to reduce the damage, we were left without access to critical systems. Email access was gone for almost two weeks. Other critical systems­—including building permitting, business licensing, time clock, agenda, and more—were unavailable for many days.

Dr Rebecca Rumbul, Head of Research, mySociety highlights why government support is key for civic technology, here

At a national level, investments and commitments are needed to form a smart city agenda for the 240 million Americans living in urban areas. A smart country may very well start with our smart cities.