We help cities work better.

OpenPlans builds open source civic infrastructure. We collaborate with the public sector to create technology for more efficient, responsive, and inclusive government. Our tools address difficult transportation and planning problems — from enabling public input on city-wide infrastructure projects to supporting meaningful community action around a single dangerous intersection.
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Developers, city agencies, transportation officials, let’s work together to help your city work better.

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Meet_Plan_In_A_Box

We’re through to the second round of the Knight News Challenge, with a proposal to bring great websites to every planning project. Give us your feedback.

Content Management Tools for Community Boards

NYC Community Board’s have mountains of documents related to land use in their districts. Only a small fraction of these have been scanned and put online as pdfs, but they are not fully searchable. We want to change to make this data readily available to the public.

Civic Relationships: Hackers + Planners + Citizens

I recently sat down with a group of passionate planners, hackers, and citizens at the APA Intelligent Cities Unconference morning session to discuss “Online Public Participation.” We all agreed that meaningful citizen input is often hindered by citizens not having all the facts or not being able to examine the data.
But this is a difficult challenge, as planners generally have insufficient resources to help citizens understand the issues, especially online.

Discussing the future of your neighborhood together

Everyone has concerns and ideas about their communities. Where does one go to be heard? A first stop is the staff of your Community Board, who often can either point you to existing resources, or take your issue to the Board for discussion. But what if you want to do more than just register a suggestion or complaint?

We’re hosting #BetaTalk, 5/1

Join us and BetaNYC at our NYC office for the first #BetaTalk. We’ll hear a report back on Code For America‘s programs and meet their NYC team! More details and RSVP.

Atlantic Cities covers CRASH stories NYC, created by Transportation Alternatives with open source Shareabouts

Atlantic Cities covers CRASH stories NYC, created by Transportation Alternatives with open source Shareabouts -

“I’ve heard from so many citizens that ‘I see people almost get hit here all the time, and how come we have to wait until somebody gets killed in order to fix it?’” Godzeno says. Actual crash data, though, is the only metric officials have to prioritize where to target infrastructure improvements or stricter traffic enforcement.

So how do you document events significant for the fact that they almost happened? Transportation Alternatives recently rolled out a web platform, CRASH stories NYC, that invites New Yorkers to map their run-ins and near-misses.

– Mapping the Car Crash Near Misses That No One Ever Sees, Emily Badger in Atlantic Cities.

 

#CivicHackNights at OpenPlans, 4/17 and 4/28

We’re hosting two more Planning + Tech evenings here at OpenPlans, April 17th and April 28th. Click the links to head over to Meetup and RSVP. Looking forward to seeing everyone’s projects!

Planning + Civic Tech Happy Hour

Heading to APA? Don’t miss this! #plantech 4.15.13 @ 6:30pm Monk’s Pub 205 W Lake St

RethinkingRegulation: May 11th

Join us on May 11th for “idea-thon” to explore how technology and unconventional approaches can help deal with safety and quality of life issues.

Celebrating our Bus Time Team

Celebrating our Bus Time team.

hacknight

Planning Hack Night

Mark Headd documents some great experiments in procurement going on at the City of Philadelphia

Mark Headd documents some great experiments in procurement going on at the City of Philadelphia, using Github to solicit proposals – 

In addition, several of the responses were highly creative – responding firms took advantage of the fact that the submission platform was a GitHub repo and made the most of the opportunity. One firm created a compelling webpage using GitHub pages to tell the story of Philadelphia residents who might use the new mobile app – they didn’t do this in addition to their standard response, this was their response.

Gothamist covers TA’s CrashStories, built with Shareabouts

Gothamist covers TA’s CrashStories, built with Shareabouts –

Ever witness a car crash and want to do something more than just wait around for investigators to not take your statement? Now you can document what you saw on a website that plans to map as many NYC crashes as possible. Transportation Alternatives launched the “CRASH Stories” map today; the interactive website lets “you report about any crashes or near-misses’ that you witnessed or happened to you, whether just now, recently or in the past.

hacknight

Planning Hack Night, March 27th