Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Ideas for cities

Ideas for Cities: Citizen Branding

Ideas-for-Cities-Citizen-Branding Citizen Branding Cities could be responsible for helping citizens understand and communicate their own story and talent effectively. They could provide services that function as a cross between talent agency and media agency. Every citizen would receive this service to help recognize, package, celebrate, and accelerate his or...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Opportunity Match-making

ideas-for-cities-opportunity-match-making Opportunity Match-making Cities could host a technology platform and monthly meeting to enable people with ideas to share and get feedback from the community. Members of the community could voice their opinions and the city would seek to make connections between citizen entrepreneurs, neighborhoods, and investors. The city...
Categories: Cities, Technology

Ideas for Cities: Incubation Infrastructure

ideas-for-cities-incubation-infrastructure Incubation Infrastructure Cities could partner with property owners and incentivize them to ensure clean and safe homes, streets, and workspaces with logical standards for an entrepreneurial community at reasonable, all-inclusive market rates. Homes and workspaces would be outfitted with wifi, telephones, and a computers—the...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Edible Schoolyard

ideas-for-cities-edible-schoolyard Edible Schoolyard Cities should provide service opportunities and training for all ages to instill confidence, self-reliance, and pride. One of these programs could be an Edible Schoolyard that is cared for by students and led by professional farmers and volunteers. It would provide 100 percent of the school meals to the...
Categories: Cities, Education, Food

Ideas for Cities: Lending Circles

ideas-for-cities-lending-circles Lending Circles Cities could provides a platform for connecting people with ideas and ambition to city business angels, venture capitalists, community micro-finance organizations, and self-forming lending circles. The lending circles could support each other as they take turns helping to get one of their cohorts to achieve...
Categories: Business, Cities

Ideas for Cities: Can-do Culture

ideas-for-cities-can-do-culture Can-do Culture Cities must nurture the capitalistic, materialistic, ambitious, passionate, honest, authentic, and practical people that are its citizens. The city should become an interconnected series of creative petri dishes, inspiring individuals to invest in themselves and the community through a variety of endeavors that...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Always-on Service

ideas-for-cities-always-on-service Always-on Service Cities could provide a call center to answer any question of concern at any time, similar to New York City's 311 service.  The service could also makes house calls for appropriate citizen concerns beyond 911, fire, ambulance, and police responses, such as technology support and crisis management. This is...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Google Analytics for Government

ideas-for-cities-google-analytics-for-government Google Analytics for Government Cities could make the success of governance measurable and known. Rather than waiting for the next election to recognize and promote results (or lack thereof), cities could do it transparently. City stats, charts, and powerful infographics would provide a call-to-action for citizens. This is...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Ped Shed over Drive Shed

ideas-for-cities-ped-shed-over-drive-shed Ped Shed over Drive Shed Cities could close and re-purpose or retrofit parking garages to create incentives for walking or riding bikes, mixed with unique spaces for work, play, art, learning, farming, and other sustainable, entertaining, and productive experiences. This is part 19 of a continuing brainstorm on the future...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Citizen Recruiters

ideas-for-cities-citizen-recruiters Citizen Recruiters Every single citizen should be engaged in the city, valued, and respected. Citizen Recruiters are analogous to military recruiters who go out and get people “in the game.” They would issue a personal invitation to be involved, and help the recruits navigate the system to find the right opportunities to...
Categories: Cities
 

Ideas for Cities: Prosper.org

ideas-for-cities-prosper-org Prosper.org The Ingenuity Ringmaster (blessed and supported by the city) would commit to a problem worth solving, and citizen innovators would submit ideas, and then the city would create a portfolio of projects with design criteria and guidance. Leveraging a micro-financing engine, citizens could vote with their dollars to...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Ingenuity Ringmaster

ideas-for-cities-ingenuity-ringmaster Ingenuity Ringmaster This official would set the tone for inhabitants through open leadership and a malleable infrastructure, encouraging opportunities for risk-taking, seeding innovation, suggesting process and projects, and rewarding innovators by supporting imagination and invention. This is the coach that blows burning...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Free-agent Portfolio

ideas-for-cities-free-agent-portfolio Free-agent Portfolio Every citizen should be an entrepreneur and a free-agent. From the time you graduate junior high school, citizens would collect learning credits and acquired skills in a portfolio for every kind of demonstrable learning—from engineering and skateboarding to car sales negotiation and waitress skills. All...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Talent Districts

ideas-for-cities-talent-districts Talent Districts Cities could convert some neighborhoods into learning districts for personal, professional, and entrepreneurial development. They could provide a curriculum for development supported by the infrastructure (buildings, technology, services, mentoring, and community) within the district, and further provide...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Decentralized Design Hubs and Work Centers

ideas-for-cities-decentralized-design-hubs-and-work-centers Decentralized Design Hubs and Work Centers Neighborhoods could function as local “offices” by creating workplaces for citizens. Employers would therefore support and encourage employees to work in these hubs rather than driving or commuting to an employer-owned workspace. The employer instead “subscribes” to the pool of design...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Pedicab Infrastructure

ideas-for-cities-pedicab-infrastructure Pedicab infrastructure Some streets could be zoned for pedicabs (and bicycles) only. Themed pedicabs would make alternate transportation more fun, and would make this method of commuting a “destination” instead of simply a mode. It would also provide healthy work for the employees. Pedicab themes could be anything from music,...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Wide-walks

ideas-for-cities-wide-walks Wide-walks Cities should narrow streets to make room for wider sidewalks, which would provide spill-out space for businesses and restaurants; green space for landscaping, urban farming, and picnicking; jogging and bike paths; and noise reduction through elimination of “noise canyons.” Cities could also create a walking rewards...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Street Activity Stimulation

ideas-for-cities-street-activity-stimulation Street Activity Stimulation Cities could mandate street-level space that was open to the public. Every building would dedicate their ground floors to retail or activities that invite citizens in, which would avoid activity vacuums along city streets. This would foster greater opportunity for small businesses through greater...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Learning Jobs

ideas-for-cities-learning-jobs Learning Jobs Cities could enable job descriptions to grow or expand to convert low-wage, low-value work into high-wage, high value work. For example, a “garbage collector” could become a “waste management consultant”—beyond the menial work typically associated with the job description, they would learn to be street-scapers,...
Categories: Cities

Ideas for Cities: Google Analytics for Learning

ideas-for-cities-google-analytics-for-learning Google Analytics for Learning Cities should measure the impact of learning more closely, because education reduces unemployment and poverty and creates a greater culture of ingenuity—producing jobs and individual entrepreneurs. The city and its citizens should use better analytics to make it clear why investments...
Categories: Cities