5 Outside-The-Box Ideas To Change U.S. Cities For The Better

It’s a theme that we’ve touched on over and over at Co.Exist: Cities are in a better position to enact real change than a stagnant federal government. Across the U.S., cities are coming up with replicable ideas that can change the way we all live for the better.

Bloomberg Philanthropies, a philanthropic organization created by New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, is fueling 20 of the best ideas with the Mayor’s Challenge, a competition for local governments to improve the way their cities work by taking on social and economic problems, improving customer service, enhancing accountability to the public, and making government work more effectively.

Chicago’s Bloomberg-worthy idea: creating an open-source analytics program for the city’s numerous data sources. "At a real high level, the idea is that the city has enormous amounts of data, and lots of systems ranging from 311 to licensing to 911. Historically they have remained quite siloed. What we’ve been doing over the past year is starting to bring all this data together," says Brett Goldstein, Chicago’s first chief data officer.

Ariel Schwartz

Full Story: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680855/5-outside-the-box-ideas-to-change-us-cities-for-the-better

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