Local elected officials can’t just muse about the future. They have to make decisions that have real consequences.

Armed with a street-design tool called the knip, the Dutch capital is slashing car access in the city center, and expanding public transit hours.

A tool Google offered in the US to help cities measure pollution and emissions levels is now available in Europe.

It compiles transport and building data from Google Maps with publicly available information about emissions

This is the power of storytelling. It’s not the events you host or the broadcast of what the [insert local government here] is doing for its residents that generates this type of community experience and buy-in. It is the stories that we share, the personal connections made between individuals, that build communities where people want to live, work and play.

Over the past year, Sidewalk Labs conducted a detailed thought experiment on the future of cities. Here’s what we learned, and how we hope to accelerate urban innovation.

An abandoned mine shaft beneath the town of Mansfield, England is an unlikely place to shape the future of cities. But here, researchers from the nearby University of Nottingham are planning to launch a “deep farm” that could produce ten times as much food as farms above ground. Deep farms are an example of what the latest wave of smart cities look like: putting people first by focusing on solving urban problems and improving existing infrastructure, rather than opening shiny new buildings.

This week in New York, heads of state and government have come together at the UN headquarters for two dedicated Summits on climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As they gath…

Warren Logan, a Bay Area transportation planner, has new ideas about how to truly engage diverse communities in city planning. Hint: It starts with listening.

This multi-media organizing toolkit is a collection of activities, how-to guides, facilitation plans, and resources that organizers and residents can use to fight displacement in their communities.

Officials have long complained of companies that offer products in search of a problem. New procurement strategies are cropping up as a result.

The speed our society evolves has passed the speed of legislation, but it can catch up. The internet could be the facilitation, and AI could be the catalyst.

We chose Memphis to kick off the Strong America Tour for a reason: the city is both an object lesson in what has gone wrong in American cities, and what could go right. And Memphis’s example helps us see why in places that are going to experience a renaissance, it’s going to come from the grassroots

While Facebook and Twitter are the dominant platforms for public discourse, governments are grappling with how policy discussions may be kept from going wayward. Much like Mr. Toad’s wild ride, the…

Word. Microsoft Word. The wordprocessing software that’s been around longer than some of us have been alive. It’s the software government runs on. But it’s also the software holding back governments…

Artists are everywhere, on every block and in every community. Finding the opportunities for artists to share their creativity and …

We are at a point where climate chaos, economic inequity and social alienation are converging into an unprecedented catastrophe. People everywhere realize that current efforts to address these…

It is an exciting time to be an experience designer. With the recognition that human-centered design is necessary across multiple industries and thought-leaders pushing the urgent need for…

A UN report warns extreme weather events that historically happened about once in 100 years could hit coastal cities yearly by 2050. Cities need to prepare now.

Recent research paints a bleak picture of young people's participation in civil service.

Just 7 percent of federal government employees are younger than 30 — even though, according to some estimates, millennials will soon make up three-quarters of the country's workforce.

The German company Siemens is launching an ambitious adaptive reuse project to revitalize its historic corporate campus, with a very modern data-collecting twist.

What becomes of communities and regions after disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods? How long does it take to rebuild? Is there anything communities can do to speed the process, to reduce the losses, to become more resilient?

The Underline, a new linear park, will hire staff to help create digital tools to improve park engagement.

Lessons on delivery-driven government from Jennifer Pahlka at Code for America Summit

Sunlight’s Open Cities team helps cities develop open data policies and effectively engage communities with open data through our flagship Tactical Data Engagement (TDE) method, but, inevitably, most engagement methods for open data attract data users with experience reading or using data on their o

When I grow up, I want to run an NGO and spend my day dealing with admin, finance, and HR. I want to spend time worrying about how to pay employee salaries, writing funding proposals and narrative…