For years, a certain resident of New Orleans, someone who drives a lot for work, would turn one corner or another and encounter an all-too-familiar sight: a road pocked with potholes and broken pavement. “Look at this freakin’ street,” he would say to himself. Actually, he said something a little more salty than “freakin’,” and eventually converted his repeated utterance into the handle of an Instagram account devoted to documenting, and venting about, the many flaws of the Crescent City’s infrastructure.

Today the account (we’ll just call it LATFS) has more than 125,000 followers—including employees of city and water utility agencies whose accounts it tagged in some snide posts. “I figured I’d just get blocked,” says the account’s creator, who has chosen to remain anonymous. Instead, those agencies started to pay attention to the account—and, in some cases, problems flagged (and mocked) on LATFS promptly got fixed. Today the account’s creator mostly curates submissions from others, and while the account quite clearly is not an official part of New Orleans’ infrastructure maintenance system, it’s hard to deny that it’s part of the conversation. And there may be lessons in that for cities looking to harness citizen input to manage infrastructure maintenance.

The use of technology to strengthen government-citizen communication is of course a long-established practice. The Federal Communications Commission designated 311 for non-emergency government service in 1996. Baltimore was the first city to implement a 311 system that year, and other cities followed, offering an easy way for citizens to report potholes, graffiti, malfunctioning stoplights, and so on. This early version of crowdsourcing soon moved online, evolving into web- or app-based systems that can (depending on the municipality) respond to texts, accept photo or video submissions, and incorporate back-end software that can collect and consolidate service data.

Along the way, private-sector services emerged to develop and provide cities with more efficient and consumer-friendly citizen-connection platforms. SeeClickFix, a pioneer in that category, was created by New Haven entrepreneur Ben Berkowitz and partners in 2007, and acquired in 2019 by CivicPlus, a public sector tech firm with over 10,000 municipal clients. CivicPlus offers a variety of software and services from local government software to websites to an emergency alert system. One of its clients’ top priorities across categories is making these systems work together as seamlessly as possible, says Cari Tate, solutions director at CivicPlus.

For 311-style products, that means getting user concerns to the right part of city government smoothly, and making sure people feel heard. “Residents ultimately want to see their communities improved,” says Tate, a SeeClickFix veteran who came to CivicPlus with the acquisition. “And want to partner with their local governments to do so. But they often don’t know how, or they feel like their comments go into the void.”

Partly that’s a matter of improving functionality. The publication Government Technology surveyed app-store reviews for 75 city and county 311 apps and identified Improve Detroit as one of the most praised. The app, which uses SeeClickFix software, is regularly updated with relevant new features—for example, after flooding in 2021, the city added a tool to file water damage claims.

But partly the effectiveness of a citizen-to-government tech connection may also be a matter of meeting residents where they are, which is increasingly on social media. Over the years, some municipalities have publicized hashtags—like #502pothole for Louisville residents, as an example—that citizens could use to flag problems via popular social platforms like Twitter (now X) and Instagram.

Not surprisingly, users of such platforms don’t need an invitation to sound off about the flaws or blemishes of their local infrastructure. And sounding off in public digital spaces often feels more satisfying than going through official channels. New Orleans, for example, has a 311 service, but it can feel like a “black box” compared to the buzzy camaraderie of Instagram, the creator of LATFS points out. When the latter actually gets results, that fact just heightens the attention. A recent example: A series of images of a fallen stop sign and its citizen-painted replacement caught the attention of a city council member who leaned on city services to make a real fix—and credited LATFS to local media. (A spokesperson for the city’s sewer and water utility says as an entity it does not “actively follow” LATFS in a formal way, but is aware of the account; often the utility is aware of issues before they show up on social media, the spokesperson added, pointing to the official “robust” customer contact phone number as the best way to report an issue.)

One challenge with making practical use of social media accounts is that reactions to fleeting problems may lack context. For actual infrastructure planning, social data is “actually really muddy, not specific,” says Julia Kumari Drapkin, CEO and founder of ISeeChange, a climate risk data and community engagement platform that works with New Orleans, Miami, and other municipalities and utilities. Its approach takes in social media data and uses AI to help craft bigger-picture solutions. As it happens, it has worked with LATFS, asking it to direct followers to the ISeeChange app during flood events, enabling residents to upload real-time reports and photos.

ISeeChange’s software can take in that information and combine it with data from its municipal and utility clients to deliver insights with tangible impacts, Drapkin says. In one recent project with engineering and design firm Stantec, ISeeChange collected firsthand, citizen-provided flood data that helped improve a flood infrastructure project in New Orleans. This resulted in the reallocation of $4.8 million in federal funding, more than doubling stormwater capacity in one low-income neighborhood. On the ground residents, she maintains, can provide the best data.

Social media’s role in reporting infrastructure issues may be somewhat messy, but its sheer popularity makes it hard to ignore. Last year, Tulane University sociology PhD candidate Alex Turvy published an article in the journal Social Media + Society closely analyzing LATFS posts and comments provided to him by the account’s founder, and concluding that it is “an effective and powerful participatory platform for exposing a broad range of systemic problems and their causes.” Boiling user strategies down into categories (shaming, mocking, and exposing), he contends that the account allows residents, through humor, connection, and “in-group knowledge,” to “take back the narrative of their city’s infrastructure challenges” and who is responsible for them. And while there is plenty of anger and snark, resident users also swap explanations and practical information.

Turvy acknowledges both the utility of 311-style systems and the challenge an actual city government would face in trying to corral the disgruntled and profane discourse of something like LATFS. And while similar citizen-driven accounts have popped up elsewhere—Pittsburgh’s PWSA Sinkholes on Instagram is a notable example—many fizzle out if they fail to attract submissions and followers. But even if LATFS is an outlier, cities might still learn from it, Turvy argues.

“The core lesson is that cities need to move beyond treating citizen reports as individual service requests and instead view them as part of a collective narrative on infrastructure issues,” he says. While traditional systems feel transactional, LATFS feels like a shared story. Its success, he continues, “highlights the power of storytelling over service processing.” To encourage that “organic, citizen-driven” feel, cities could work with community groups, communicate more proactively, and clearly demonstrate how citizen feedback is being put to work.

Some of this may seem a bit utopian, but it also overlaps with trends and aspirations for 311-style systems. Cities are looking “to provide a way for residents to actually hear back and to see all of the other things that they’re doing,” says Tate of CivicPlus. Too often, “you see all of the problems, but we don’t see what the city is actually doing.” Cities are increasingly looking for systems with strong data analytics that also “provide visibility, and actually shift that mindset and build trust.”

While LATFS remains a highly irreverent forum focused more on complaints and jokes than on civics or the complexities of infrastructure planning, the city’s engagement with the account has probably softened its original oppositional feel. “We try not to post things that are in the middle of repair, which I get a lot of,” says its founder. “We can’t shame the city for repairing things.” That said, he is also quick to point out that he’s a citizen, not a stealth urban planner or city activist. As he put it: “I’m just a guy posting on Instagram.” But sometimes, that’s exactly the person the city needs to hear from—and wants to engage.

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. He is the author of City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape. His newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image: This photo of a hand-painted New Orleans stop sign held up with plastic wrap gained notoriety—and inspired the city to install a proper replacement—after it appeared on a citizen-led Instagram account dedicated to flagging necessary infrastructure repairs. Credit: LATFS.

“I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Plastics.”
“Exactly how do you mean?”
“There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?”

With apologies to my millennial friends, I can’t help but date myself with this iconic example of unsolicited advice given by Mr. McGuire to Benjamin in The Graduate. It captures the thing that bugs me the most about policy think tanks—their habit of providing wholesale unsolicited advice. Think tanks often conjure questions they presume to be relevant, analyze them, and then dispense policy recommendations to unknown audiences.

There’s nothing less appealing than unsolicited advice—and unsolicited policy advice, even when well-intentioned, undermines the recipient’s problem-solving journey and often results in frustration. The advice typically focuses on the desired outcome, not the process one must undertake to get there. Even worse, the adviser bears no responsibility for the outcome. Offering solutions without investment, the adviser risks nothing while the recipient grapples with the potential consequences of acting on the counsel. How exactly was Benjamin supposed to manifest the potential of plastics?

We’ve been known to do this at the Lincoln Institute. Take the example of land value capture: For decades, we’ve advised local governments to use this land-based financing tool to mobilize revenue that can help pay for urban infrastructure. We’ve suggested to municipal funders that they should underwrite loans against future revenue captured from land value increments. We’ve written papers to introduce governments and funders to the concept, described multiple land value capture tools they can use, and produced case studies of best practices in places like São Paulo. But we haven’t often dug in with practitioners to help them decide which land value capture tools are best for their circumstances and learn with them as they adopt and deploy them. That is about to change.

Before I explain how, let me suggest that another useless kind of advice is the “best practice.” Advocating “best practices” to solve complex social, economic, or environmental problems ignores the context surrounding the challenge at hand, does not account for the resources or capacities of people and organizations trying to adapt someone else’s successful approach, and often leads to frustration and inefficiency when the prescribed solution doesn’t align with reality. Best practice thinking stifles innovation and creativity, discourages exploration and experimentation, and often overlooks more appropriate and effective solutions. And who knows if the practice is “best” anyway?

The world is dynamic, and context matters. Relying solely on established norms promotes passive acceptance rather than fostering an environment where individuals question assumptions and actively engage in solving problems. Rather than blindly adhering to “best practices,” a better strategy for tackling complex problems lies in understanding context and adopting a principles-based approach. This champions adaptability and encourages customized solutions to address the unique nuances of each challenge. It compels individuals to weigh various options and make informed decisions grounded in evidence and logic.

So how does this relate to the work of the Lincoln Institute? This fall, with our partner Claremont Lincoln University (CLU), we launched the Lincoln Vibrant Communities program. This new undertaking embodies our best thinking about how to traverse the gap between theory and practice. It prioritizes leadership, action, collaboration, and tangible results. It is a bold and innovative initiative that seeks to transform the way we work, learn, and act together to solve the vexing challenges that cities of all sizes face.

Many communities, particularly those facing economic hardship, lack the capacity (financial and human resources) to implement ambitious development plans. Bureaucratic red tape, outdated regulations, and deeply ingrained power structures impede progress and stifle innovation. Frequently, a lack of trust between residents and local leaders, coupled with limited opportunities for meaningful participation, undermines the effectiveness of development initiatives. More often than not, pressure to produce immediate results leads practitioners to focus on quick fixes rather than long-term, sustainable solutions.

Over the coming decades, we will train a new generation of leaders and equip them with the skills, tools, and resources to transform their cities. We will help these leaders engage cross-sector teams in their communities that can work with residents to take ownership of their futures by solving complex problems collectively. Lincoln Vibrant Communities will furnish the training, tools, resources, and support needed to turn ideas into reality.

And we intend to deliver at scale. Our new initiative draws inspiration from the best leadership development and challenge-based training programs we’ve seen, including the Center for Community Investment’s Fulcrum Fellow and Community Catalyst programs and NeighborWorks America’s Achieving Excellence program. It draws on the superpowers of both CLU and the Lincoln Institute—adapting CLU’s leadership training curriculum and relying on the institute’s deep well of research, policy tools, and expertise.

Lincoln Vibrant Communities begins by identifying and training emerging leaders from diverse backgrounds and sectors. These individuals will complete an intensive six-month leadership development program focused on understanding the complexities of urban challenges, building collaborative leadership skills, developing strategic planning and implementation capabilities, and learning how to leverage community assets and resources. After completing their training, these leaders will return to their respective cities and recruit diverse teams of people representing the public, private, and civic sectors. This cross-sector collaboration is vital for addressing complex challenges that demand multifaceted solutions.

Each team will identify a major challenge their city faces. This could encompass a range of issues, from economic revitalization and affordable housing to environmental sustainability and public safety. The teams will then return for comprehensive team-based training over an additional six months that will equip them with tools and policies developed by the Lincoln Institute; this training will provide a framework for addressing their challenges and building sustainable solutions. With the guidance of experienced coaches, the teams will develop detailed action plans. The teams will then return to their communities and embark on the journey of implementing their plans. Throughout this 18-month process, the teams will receive ongoing support and, most important, coaching from the program to ensure they stay on track and overcome any obstacles they may encounter.

Lincoln Vibrant Communities has the potential to be a game-changer in the field of community and economic development. By traversing the space between theory and practice and empowering local leaders to act, the program is designed to produce concrete improvements in participating cities. By tackling major challenges head on, the teams will make a real difference in the lives of local residents. Additionally, the program will build the capacity of local leaders and communities to design solutions for complex challenges that can be deployed again and again. The skills and knowledge gained through Lincoln Vibrant Communities will have a lasting impact, enabling communities to continue making progress long after the program concludes.

This program will culminate in a growing, curated network of dedicated community problem-solvers. Our approach cultivates innovation by prioritizing comprehension and adaptation over rote implementation. It nurtures a spirit of continuous learning, prompting individuals to reflect on their experiences and refine their problem-solving strategies.

Lincoln Vibrant Communities is not just about solving problems; it is about building a movement of empowered leaders who are committed to creating vibrant, sustainable, and equitable cities. By bridging the gap between theory and practice, we can unleash the full potential of our communities and create a brighter future for all.

George W. McCarthy is president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: The Lincoln Vibrant Communities program is designed to equip local policymakers with the capacity and conviction to address complex social, environmental, and economic issues. Credit: CLU.

In the spirited cultural debate over the possibilities and risks of artificial intelligence, the imagined pros and cons have tended toward the sensational. There’s been little mainstream attention paid to the technology’s potential impact on the everyday tasks that keep our cities humming—things like construction permit reviews, development application processes, and planning code compliance enforcement. But the needs in those areas are quite real, and experiments to apply newer AI breakthroughs to these kinds of operations are already well underway. Municipalities large and small, from Florida to New England, and Canada to Australia, have announced AI-related pilots and other exploratory efforts.

While the approaches vary, the challenges are practically universal. Determining whether proposed construction or development projects meet all land and building codes is a detail-intensive, often slow process: It can be confusing for applicants and require extensive back-end work for municipalities and other authorities. The hope is that AI can help make that process—or “the tedious parts of city planning,” as the publication Government Technology bluntly put it—speedier and more efficient, as well as more accurate and comprehensible. Ideally, it would even allow planning departments to streamline and reallocate resources.

But as city officials working with the new technology make clear, there’s a long way to go to get to that point. And given that some of AI’s most publicized moments to date involve embarrassing failures (such as Google’s AI search tool advising users on the benefits of eating rocks and adding glue to pizza), they are proceeding with caution.

There’s often a “hype cycle” between a new technology’s early promise and its eventual reality, cautions Andreas Boehm, the intelligent cities manager for Kelowna, British Columbia, a city of about 145,000. His team is specifically charged with seeking new opportunities to leverage tech innovations for the city and its residents. Despite a lot of chatter, we still haven’t seen many “concrete, tangible examples” of AI as a “transformative” force in planning systems, Boehm says. But we may start to see real results soon.

Canada is experiencing a housing shortage, Boehm notes, and moving faster on new construction could help. The permitting pipeline is clogged with inquiries from current property owners about zoning and code issues for more routine projects. For a few years, Kelowna has been using a chatbot to answer common questions, Boehm says. That has helped, but the more recent “generative” version of AI can handle a much broader range of inquiries, phrased in natural language, with precise and specific responses. So Kelowna began working with Microsoft to build a new and much more sophisticated version of the tool incorporating Microsoft’s Copilot AI functionality, which they now use to aid permit applicants.

Boehm says the Intelligent Cities team and its consultants worked with a range of residents (including those with no permitting knowledge) as well as experienced builders to develop the tool; it can give high-level responses or point to specific code provisions. It has notably streamlined, and sped up, the application process. “It frees up our staff time” because fewer questions need to be addressed by staff early in the process, Boehm says. “So now they can focus on processing applications that are coming in. And often these applications are much better quality because people are using these AI tools as they’re putting these applications together, and getting all the information they need.”

On the other side of Canada, the city of Burlington, Ontario, near Toronto, has been developing generative AI tools in collaboration with Australian property and tech firm Archistar. Chad MacDonald, Burlington’s chief information officer (and previously executive director of digital service), says Burlington, population 200,000, also faces a housing crunch. With little space available for single-family housing construction, the city’s focus is on improving the process of handling larger projects, including industrial and commercial proposals, with an eye toward creating a single platform that would work for all kinds of projects. The system the city is developing aims to integrate not only local zoning and bylaws, but also the Ontario Building Code, which affects all structures in the province.

Testing this system involves checking whether it correctly assesses previously submitted plans whose outcome is known. This process also trains the AI. “Every time we correct an inaccuracy in the algorithm, it actually makes it smarter,” MacDonald explains. “So the next time it gets more and more accurate.” And if the proposed solution to one permit problem could create two more problems in the application, the system is designed to point that out immediately, avoiding a lengthy resubmission process. An “extremely successful” round of testing was completed in May, MacDonald says, and he expects the city’s use of the technology to expand.

MacDonald envisions the technology advancing to the point of creating code-compliant designs. But won’t that put engineers and architects out of business? He counters that it’s vital to keep humans in the loop. “This is about speeding up these really mundane processes,” he says, “and then allowing these very highly educated and specialized experts to focus on the things they really need to focus on.”

In Honolulu, expanding the use of AI tools is part of a more sweeping tech-plan upgrade to address a significant permitting backlog—in 2021, the city’s mayor declared the process “broken” and committed to an overhaul. In 2022, a permit prescreen process involved “an intolerable six-month wait” to reach a reviewer, says Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, director of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting. The city added an AI bot that was able to review some of the prescreen checklist items in a newly streamlined process, and it helped cut that wait to two or three days. That success helped lead to a more expansive generative AI pilot with Chicago-based startup CivCheck, a relationship Takeuchi Apuna expects to continue.

“We have learned that there are enormous possibilities of AI in our business processes,” she says, “and that the most important piece is the people that are using it.” She emphasizes that this is just part of an overhaul that also includes better staff training and improved communication with applicants. “It’s a value that you must bring and continue to enforce as part of AI in order to get the best results.”

While these early results are promising, AI still presents plenty of challenges and wildcards. Some of the startup’s promising, powerful generative AI tools are untested. And as MacDonald points out, the technology isn’t cheap. There’s also a need to set standards around what data the process collects and how it can be used. (Kelowna, for example, is working with the nonprofit Montreal AI Ethics Institute on policy and guidance issues.) And, of course, there are broader public concerns about giving too much control to an automated tool, however seemingly intelligent and teachable that tool may be. “It’s not going to replace people,” Boehm says. “We’re never going to just issue you a building permit from an AI bot.”

In fact, he continues, that concern could be considered an opportunity, if cities use AI thoughtfully and transparently. Although government is often opaque and thus treated with skepticism by many, AI “is a great opportunity to demystify government,” Boehm says. “It [can increase the] understanding that this is really about people in the end and supporting them.” In other words, in the best-case scenario, AI might improve a knotty but vital bureaucratic process by giving it a more human touch.

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. He is the author of the Lincoln Institute book City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape. His newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image credit: PhonlamaiPhoto via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

CAMBRIDGE, MA—The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has released its newest book, City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape, by Rob Walker.

In this thoughtful, inquisitive volume, Walker investigates technologies that have emerged over the past few years and their implications for planners, policymakers, residents, and the virtual and literal landscapes of the cities we call home. Featuring a foreword by tech journalist Kara Swisher and an afterword by urbanist and futurist Greg Lindsay, the book explores the role of technology in our rapidly urbanizing world.

Experts predict that up to 80 percent of the population will live in cities by 2050. To accommodate that growth while ensuring quality of life for all residents, cities are increasingly turning to technology, from apps that make it easier for citizens to pitch in on civic improvement projects to designs for smarter streets and neighborhoods.

“We’re on a complicated journey; our decisions can set us off in surprising directions, and opinions may differ on how to navigate the challenges ahead,” writes Walker, a Fast Company columnist and New York Times contributor, in the book’s introduction. “But based on the examples in this collection, it seems clear that collaboration, creativity, and an openness to new ideas are the keys to getting where we need to go.”

City Tech is a chronicle of the recent rise of urban technologies, featuring firsthand reflections from the founders, innovators, and researchers closest to the work and from the planners and other officials who are putting these tools into practice on the ground. It’s also a source of essential questions: What are the ethical implications of smart cities? How can cities keep up with the rapid evolution of driverless vehicles? Is building skyscrapers out of wood a viable climate solution?

“If the last decade of urban tech has been a dress rehearsal, then the curtain is now rising on the most momentous decade of change most cities have ever had to face,” writes Lindsay in the book’s afterword. “It is our turn to formulate what we demand from our technologies, versus the other way around.”

City Tech, a curated collection of newly updated columns originally published in Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute, follows last year’s release of Mayor’s Desk by Anthony Flint, a compilation of interviews with mayors from five continents who shared their strategies for tackling global challenges at a local level. Together, the books provide tangible examples of how cities across the world have mobilized to implement innovative land-based solutions for some of society’s most critical challenges.

City Tech is available for purchase on the Lincoln Institute website. For review copies, contact Kristina McGeehan at kmcgeehan@lincolninst.edu. City Tech is distributed by Columbia University Press.

About the Author

Rob Walker is a journalist and columnist covering technology, design, business, and other subjects. A longtime contributor to the New York Times, Walker writes a column on branding for Fast Company, and has contributed to Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, Fortune, Marketplace, and many other outlets. He writes the City Tech column for Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He is the coeditor of Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss and Why They Matter and the author of The Art of Noticing. His Art of Noticing newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com. He also serves on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide. We organize our work around three impact areas: land and water, land and fiscal systems, and land and communities. We work globally, with locations in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Washington, DC; Phoenix, Arizona; and Beijing, China.

Lead image: Quantum network servers managed in a partnership between Chattanooga utility EPB and Qubitekk. Credit: Courtesy of EPB.