On the same day as the first snow of the season, the city of Seattle announced its “Let It Snow!” hackathon. The city is hoping to tap technology users, designers, and developers for a community design workshop on how city officials communicate with the public during snow-related emergencies.
Calls for government transparency are increasing as citizens want to know exactly what information governments have and how governments are spending taxpayer money. Cincinnati has taken these calls to heart and has invested roughly six months and $55,000 into 15 new dashboards that help educate and inform citizens.
Renters in San Francisco will now be able to pick their own Internet service provider in all multi-unit buildings.
The Trust for Public Land is launching a platform called ParkServe that will contain urban park data from 13,931 cities and towns across the country, covering more than 80 percent of the population.
Civil rights advocates flooded a City Council hearing to protest the Boston Police Department’s plan to buy $1.4 million in social media monitoring software. Advocates questioned police promises to respect citizen privacy, as well as whether the technology can actually detect threats.
Bob Zangrillo, a Silicon Valley investor and CEO of Dragon Global, and Tony Cho, a Miami real estate developer and CEO of Metro 1, are hoping to turn Miami’s Little Haiti into Magic City, a 15-acre mixed-use development.
The Boston Police Department is taking to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to fight crime, which raises privacy concerns.
A New Hampshire man is trying to end the scourge of dog owners leaving behind their dog’s waste–and he thinks technology is the answer. Jon Kelly, a high school English teacher, is proposing that cities use DNA testing to fine and discourage negligent dog owners.
The code for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation’s new tree map is publicly available for local governments and organizations looking to create a similar website.
The New Orleans Police Department plans to install automatic license plate readers throughout the city. Police consider the investment in the new technology, used elsewhere in Louisiana, as a “down payment” on public safety. The cameras will allow police to mine a large database of license plate images and identify and track suspects.
