IBM & Next American City want to see the best of Gov 2.0

How are you and your agency addressing the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century? Is it opening data for everyone? Is it developing transportation alternatives to the car? Is it preparing for demographic shifts and economic changes? Are you and your friends creating innovative ways to engage your fellow citizens and encourage others to experience your city?

Next American City, in association with IBM’s Smarter Cities Scan, invites you to join us in exploring the future of cities. For the next 30 days, we challenge you to tell us why your city deserves to be called the Next American City. Tell us why you live in the Next American City by responding to the following question:

How is your city sharing data, engaging its citizens and planning for demographic shifts and other challenges? You can submit a post right on the Tumblr site, send it via email to [email protected], or if you have a Tumblr site, just tag it “nac” and we’ll reblog it from your site to the Smarter Cities Scan.

You can write about your own projects and ideas, or highlight the work of another individual or group. You can post video accounts of progress in your city, or upload photos of exciting spaces and events. From a creative personal project to a large-scale plan, we want to share your efforts to make your city better. The authors of the 3 most popular posts, based on the number of “likes” received, will win a free, year-long subscription to Next American City. The city that gets the most posts will be featured in an article on our website.

We’re about halfway through our joint web-challenge effort with IBM’s Smarter City tumblr
page. We have been asking our readers to share with us all the exciting projects in their city and by regular people to make their cities smarter. We’ve gotten posts from Chattanooga, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Portland, and Denver. But by far, Lansing, Michigan has taken the lead in this challenge’s quest to be the Next American City, a group of Lansing tweeters all following the hashtag #lovelansing have organized and committed to sharing with the world some of the exciting things going on in Lansing, submitting posts about their Technology Innovation Center, their public art projects and many more.

The challenge is far from over and there is plenty of time to share what makes your city great.

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2003, Next American City promotes socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities and examines how and why our built environment, economy, society, and culture are changing. We publish a quarterly magazine, maintain an website that is updated daily, coordinate an emerging urban leaders program, host events across the country, and advocate for issues central to the future of cities.

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