Causes grew to a jaw-dropping 200 million users as one of the first 10 Facebook platform apps. Started by Facebook co-founder Sean Parker, it was meant to turn a generation into activists and philanthropists. Causes acquired Votizen to augment shallow clicktivism with a way to remind friends to vote. But after Facebook went mobile and […]

To meet the goals of the resolution, the design and construction industries will retrofit millions of structures and build many more. In the process, they could create a more just and resilient country.

Planetizen needs your input in creating the definitive list of mobile apps for professional, student, academic, or citizen planners.

Internal documents shed new light on the Rockefeller Foundation’s decision to stop funding 100 Resilient Cities. And now, new efforts are in the works to continue building "urban resilience."

New report offers sobering look at shortfalls in current climate plans, and radical solutions that can make a difference.

Public space provides a window into the soul of a city. It is where collective urban life plays out — cycling to work, playing in a park, enjoying hot food from a street corner, performing music for a tip, coming together in celebration or resistance. This diversity of activity can make public spaces rich, but it can also make managing public space difficult.

vTaiwan is a promising experiment in participatory governance. But politics is blocking it from getting greater traction.

Join IAP2 as they celebrate the best of the best in P2 in North America. Celebrating and learn about the amazing projects that have been taking place from the northern tips of Canada to the southern corners of the United States.

Plus, NYC’s deputy chief technology officer goes to work for the state; Grand Rapids, Mich., nets an accolade for data-driven governance; the White House OMB releases a federal data strategy action plan; and more.

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.