Our Picks From Next American City's Top Apps & Tools for Civic Engagement

As mutual advocates of issues central to the future of cities, Next American City is just one of the resources that EngagingCities staff refers to from time to time in search of the top trends and tools related to socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities. Recently, Next American City Magazine published a comprehensive list of best apps, websites and software for enhancing and improving urban life. The list included tools affiliated with everything from city governance (ie: Diydemocracy and Datamasher), mapping and transportation (ei: Walkscore and Routeshout) to “living well” (Streetartview and Sportaneous). And our favorite - the robust civic engagement tools section with a list available specifically for community building, designed to help facilitate urban planning by engaging citizens to volunteer, share news and open lines of communication.

Here, we’ve highlighted just a few of our favorites: 

EveryBlock
This hyperlocal news aggregator and crowdsourcing site, a “geographic filter” for news and information, is live in 16 cities including Boston, Portland, Ore., Houston and New York, and provides real-time information about local disturbances, news reports, real-estate listings, missed trash collection, local restaurant reviews and local photos grabbed from Flickr.
Everyblock.com

Give a Minute
If simplicity is the key to getting people engaged, Give a Minute — operational in Chicago, Memphis, San Jose and New York City — asks residents to answer simple questions via short messages delivered by Facebook, SMS or Twitter. Chicago asked residents what would encourage them to use public transit more, for example, and Terry Peterson, chairman of the CTA board, was “listening” for the best ideas.   Giveaminute.info

All Our Ideas
This crowdsourcing website, incubated at Princeton, asks “questions” via a series of suggestions submitted by users, and then people can vote to identify the best solutions. Applications vary from the casual to the formal: Asked what would be the best step to improving campus life, Princeton students voted to push for free Wi-Fi, while the city of Calgary, Canada, is using All Our Ideas as part of a participatory budgeting process. More than a million votes have been cast.  Allourideas.org

DIYcity
This site is a gathering place for city-dwellers all over the world, who brainstorm and build tools to make their cities work better with Web technologies. In more than 100 global cities, the site has organized groups — consisting of software developers, urban planners, sustainability designers, students, government workers and others — who have created a sharable suite of tools.  Diycity.org

We found there were just too many great tools in every category to list them all, but we will continue to keep our readers informed as we discover additional innovative technology solutions promoting civic engagement.

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