Civic engagement is not only important for formal city planning processes, but it is at the core of digital urban transformation into smart and sustainable cities and communities. The most widely used ways of engaging citizens, town hall meetings and/or surveys (even with social media campaigns), leave citizen participation rates low and a majority of citizens in the dark about what is being done in their city.

Enabling citizens to provide opinions and feedback as well as to participate in decision making processes is the subject of this top list. Through new forms of urban governance and participation, cities and communities embrace the ability to collaborate with their citizens to co-create a better and smarter city for all.

Explore five leading citizen engagement solutions that aim to bridge the gap between local government, especially city planners, and citizens.

For the last two months, every day at 8 pm, I go out to the balcony and together with my neighbors, we clap for all of those that are in the trenches fighting against the covid-19: nurses, doctors, people working in elderly houses and hospital staff among others. This is the minimum that we, as a society, can do right now.

Unfortunately, this is perishable, and the history tell us that when a problem is over, we easily forget it. Now we have an opportunity to challenge the history: people, politicians, companies, the society, all of us we must change many things in an enduring way. We have to do it for us and for our descendants.

Smart Waste Management is one of the solutions for cities that can help us in the fight against the pandemic to reduce the infection risk and contribute to the health of residents.

With Germany's largest international smart city startup challenge, the Ruhr Metropolis - City of Cities - is calling start-ups from across the globe to apply and solve the real-world challenges of four cities: Bochum, Bottrop, Hagen and Gelsenkirchen through a paid pilot. The application deadline has been extended due to the COVID-19 pandemic until May 3, 2020. In the following paragraphs, we will look more closely on the Bottrop and Gelsenkirchen challenges.

With Germany's largest international smart city startup challenge, the Ruhr Metropolis - City of Cities - is calling start-ups from across the globe to apply and solve the real-world challenges of four cities: Bochum, Bottrop, Hagen and Gelsenkirchen through a paid pilot. The application deadline has been extended due to the COVID-19 pandemic until May 3, 2020.

Streetlights, as they are today, have been a cause of concern for how much energy they consume as well as how they have been adding to the light pollution in cities, burning brightly while no one is around. These are just a few of the concerns that some solution providers have been aiming to address with their Smart Lighting solutions. They aim to make cities feel more safe, make lights more efficient, poles multi-functional and push costs of maintenance and energy down among others in various ways.

CityTech RUHR invites startups from around the world to participate in Germany’s biggest smart city challenge. Four cities and their business partners seek innovative solutions for four different challenges and offer the opportunity to win paid pilot projects. Startups that want to participate can apply until May 3, 2020 (Deadline extended due to the COVID-19 situation) for one of the program’s challenges at: www.citytech.ruhr

As the formidable threat of cyber security looms over the majority of the world’s municipal governments, Leading Cities launches AcceliGOV. This global competition offers municipalities around the world the chance to compete for a pre-paid pilot of a globally sourced, expert-vetted cyber security solution. Interested cities may complete a brief application found at AcceliGOV.com by March 31st . AcceliGOV was launched by Leading Cities CEO, Michael Lake, at the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which featured over 1,200 government officials, private sector leaders, international organizations and other key stakeholders drawn from expert communities and academia.

In less than a decade, the concept known as mobility as a service (MaaS) has captured the imagination of visionaries and innovators throughout the global transport industry. As an opportunity with potential to transform the industry and reduce dependence on car ownership, MaaS evolved from an intriguing concept to early-stage reality (at least in terms of trials, pilot projects and embryonic services).

In their eagerness to create breakthrough technologies and disruptive platforms, innovators sometimes collide with an established (and perhaps ill-suited) regulatory and policy-making process. In a previous article on e-scooters, we reported that a strategy of "permissionless innovation" enabled app-activated e-scooter startups to gain a precarious foothold in urban mobility markets. However, these startups soon discovered that safety and regulatory issues - including the lack of regulations in most situations - led to controversial relations with cities and citizens. In this article, we cover recent experiences, lessons learned and thoughts on the need for collaborative solutions. For an overview of the e-scooter market and its dynamics, read our article E-Scooters: A Passing Fad or Smart Mobility?

Electric scooters appeal to those who want to move quickly and easily through urban streets at low cost while avoiding congestion and solving first mile / last mile mobility problems. However, menacing clouds - in the form of safety, regulatory and business model issues - linger above the nascent e-scooter sharing market, raising questions about its future. A key question is whether cities can find ways for this new micro-mobility service to add value to sustainable urban mobility. In this article, we explore the e-scooter market and competitive dynamics and offer a perspective on smart city challenges. To learn about the lessons learned from the city perspective regarding the introduction of e-scooter sharing, please read our article E-Scooters: A Collision Between Innovation And Controversy.

In 2018, Leading Cities, a global nonprofit for Smart City growth and collaboration, launched AcceliCITY - a global Smart City startup competition that provides potential capital from a network of investors as well as the tools and knowledge of how to do business with cities. In this year’s edition 50 semi-finalists were selected from more than 500 applications from 43 countries. An international panel of Smart City experts judged each semi-finalist to select the 14 finalists that will gather in Boston (Sept. 30 - Oct. 4) for AcceliCITY’s Smart City Boot Camp.

bee smart city partner Leading Cities is now accepting applications for its second edition of the AcceliCITY smart city startup accelerator. Last year’s inaugural edition of the contest worked with 27 semi-finalists selected from more than 550 applications from over 40 countries.

“The goal of the AcceliCITY program is to facilitate sustainable growth, resiliency and quality-of-life improvements for cities around the world by addressing the critical needs of Smart City startups,” says Michael Lake, President and CEO of Leading Cities. “These startups are developing the innovative solutions to municipal challenges in the 21st century.”.

AcceliCITY offers the chance for startups to secure what they need most - paid projects to build their portfolio and validate their solutions. This edition will focus on the challenges of smart water and smart mobility through pioneering partnerships with the cities of New Bedford, Massachusetts and Mount Pearl, Canada. In addition, all applicants will compete to be selected for fast-tracking to the Urban Resilience Challenge. Those selected will automatically advance to the semi-finalist stage and compete for a 1st Place prize of $75,000 and 2nd Place prize of $25,000.