civic tech
Civic tech platform Mobilize launches a census hub for the 2020 count’s critical final stretch
With the already narrow window of remaining time to complete a census count abruptly cut short by the Trump administration, getting every person living in the U.S. to fill out…
Sean Parker’s Brigade/Causes acquired by govtech app Countable
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…
NYC launches partnership network, ‘The Grid,’ to help grow urban tech ecosystem
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and CIV:LAB — a nonprofit dedicated to connecting urban tech leaders — have announced the launch of The Grid, a member-based partnership network…
Featured Article
The economics and trade-offs of ad-funded smart city tech
In order to have innovative smart city applications, cities first need to build out the connected infrastructure, which can be a costly, lengthy and politicized process. Third-parties are helping build infrastructure at no cost to cities by paying for projects entirely through advertising placements on the new equipment. Here I try to dig into the…
Featured Article
How cities can fix tourism hell
A steep and rapid rise in tourism has left behind a wake of economic and environmental damage in cities around the globe. In response, governments have been responding with policies that attempt to limit the number of visitors who come in. We’ve decided to spare you from any more Amazon HQ2 talk and instead focus…
London’s transport regulator looks to startups to help fix urban mobility
London’s transport regulator, TfL has announced a partnership with Bosch for its forthcoming co-working space in Shoreditch. The civic tech project is intended to run for 18 months as a…
Featured Article
Big tech must not reframe digital ethics in its image
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s visage loomed large over the European parliament this week, both literally and figuratively, as global privacy regulators gathered in Brussels to interrogate the human impacts of technologies that derive their power and persuasiveness from our data. The eponymous social network has been at the center of a privacy storm this year. And…
Urban-X, the urban-tech startup accelerator backed by MINI and early-stage urban-tech fund Urban.Us, hosted at its Brooklyn HQ a demo day today for its fourth cohort of companies. The seven presenting companies…
OpenGov acquires Ontodia to add open-sourced data to its civic intelligence platform
After raising $25 million in additional funding in October, civic technology specialist OpenGov — the startup co-founded by Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale that works with government organizations to collate, analyse and publicly present…
