Cities are the current focus of CfA’s programs because of their problems and promise: there are severe and growing challenges facing urban America, and yet cities are ideal for innovative, light-weight, and scalable solutions.

GROWING CHALLENGES IN URBAN AMERICA

Throughout America cities are being squeezed between falling revenues and increasing needs for services. This problem has been most acute in cities where structural jobs deficits have left residents impoverished and suburbanization has drawn tax dollars out of the urban centers. But the current economic crisis and declining support from state governments have brought these challenges to almost every city in the nation. When the National League of Cities surveyed its membership earlier this year, it found that 84% of cities were facing significant financial difficulties and 92% expected to have trouble meeting citizens’ needs.

There is a desperate need to bring innovation and new ways of thinking and problem solving to city governments. Without significant change, cities as a group will not be able to provide the infrastructure and services upon which our collective prosperity depends. The health of our cities – the historical locus of innovation and industry Рto a large degree determines the health and wellbeing of our nation, both today and tomorrow. Code for America seeks to meet the challenges our cities face by opening city data and developing empowering, cost-saving solutions to service delivery and community development.

SCALED FOR INNOVATION

City governments are generally administratively focused and small enough to bring various stakeholders together easily. The citizen-focused issues of service delivery and community development that they control are highly compatible with Web 2.0 strategies that can turn communities of users into networks pursuing a common purpose. And With hundreds of large and medium sized cities and thousands of smaller municipalities, all providing for similar needs, we think cities are the perfect laboratories for innovating government and fertile ground for driving social change.