City Forward aims to offer insight into contemporary urban dilemmas

At one time or another, I’m sure the thought has crossed your mind that if you were in charge, you’d do things differently.  You would do things right.  And for everyone out there who has ever shared that sentiment, City Forward is asking you to put your money where your mouth is.  Sparked by IBM, City Forward began as a donation of technology in hopes of tapping into the resources of the greater good to offer insight into contemporary urban dilemmas.  

City Forward is an entirely free platform targeting a wide range of people: government workers, scientists, urban planners, students and informed citizens from all walks of life.  Data is culled from numerous public sources, primarily data relevant to metropolitan areas, and brought to City Forward where users can then study the information.  While City Forward maintains its distance from the data it collects; it clearly sites all information and seeks to be a ‘transparentplatform’ rather than a direct source, it does hope to cultivate an engaged community of users.  Patterns, trends and other correlations will ideally be discovered amongst the online warehouse of data.  Any insights gained or areas explored can be shared within the City Forward community.  Ideas can easily be exchanged and users from entirely different parts of the country, or even the world, can work together in finding solutions.  

City Forward currently features a wide variety of data from over 70 cities, encompassing 6 continents, and continues to add to the collection daily.  Users can quickly engage in the ongoing dialogue through the ‘Explorations’ tab of the City Forward website.  Through this portal, one can view all current investigations taking place throughout City Forward.  Current topics tend to resonate with current affairs, including ‘How Does a City Respond to an Acute Crisis?’, ‘Recession Impact - A Look at Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit and Phoenix’, and ‘Is Being an Olympic City Good for Employment?’.  City Forward may hope to encourage users to engage and actively work towards solutions, but it’s also an excellent resource for the more passively engaged citizen to peruse what others are researching and possibly come away better-informed about an interesting topic.