Public spaces should be equitably distributed, open to everyone, and inclusively designed. It’s no wonder that many urban planning processes now focus on placemaking, the people-centered approach to planning and design of public spaces.  The inequities of community development were hard to ignore in 2020. Whether you lived close to...

Our cities. They are the nexuses of our world. As buzzing and vibrant melting pots of culture, history, art, commerce, and progress, they represent some of humanity’s finest and brightest triumphs. Wherever people from all walks of life come together, the air is thick with raw potential.  And yet, as...

As we’re slowly but surely making it to the other side of the COVID-19 crisis, it’s time to set our focus on recovery. Where do we go from here? How do we rebuild our communities better? And how do we make sure we emerge from these challenges together and stronger?...

One of the key actions to improving healthcare provision is to work directly with community members on the issues affecting their wellbeing. The WHO has identified community engagement as fundamental to any strategy addressing health goals. Our most recent client event brought together health organisations from across the UK, including...

Online community engagement platforms provide local governments with a single hub to collect, share, and discuss resident feedback and ideas. But how can you reach those who aren’t online?  For our latest webinar, we spoke with Milzy Carrasco, Director of Community Engagement for Lancaster, PA and Rebecca Woodbury, who runs...

For a long time, the pandemic has kept students from their campuses, dorms, and auditoria. Learning, studying, and taking exams became digital—and often solitary—experiences. As the world slowly reopens, students are breathing a collective sigh of relief and returning to a more normalized, in-person style of growing their knowledge. But...

As a social impact company that builds civic technology, CitizenLab recently took some important steps in how we evaluate our impact. The impact measurement framework that we designed can be used by other civic tech initiatives too, so today we’re sharing it here to help amplify impact collectively.  Measuring impact...

Our cities are as diverse as ever, and most local governments are responding by becoming increasingly inclusive. But even the best-intentioned local governments found themselves scrambling at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which sparked frequent changes to local guidelines. In the process, one of the jarring inclusion gaps that...

Traditional, top-down governance systems are increasingly challenged by more collective, consensus-oriented approaches. This means that we’re seeing more non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working actively in consortium with local governments or launching community engagement projects themselves to increase civic participation.    This uptick in organizational involvement has resulted in the creation of several...

It’s that time again—the time of the month where we browse the digital newsscape for compelling snippets of knowledge and serve them to you in one freshly curated list. On the radar this month: how to organize the vaccine rollout, close the digital gap, move a movement forward, tackle data...

In March 2021, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), committing to distribute $350 billion to state and local governments. Compared to prior packages, ARPA provides cities and counties with more flexibility in how they allocate these funds, igniting debates across the country as to how to best...