Crowdsourcing Civic Infrastructure

Across America, the challenges facing city governments are growing ever more complex, while city budgets are tightening. At the same time, the internet has made it cheaper and easier for elected officials to communicate with their constituents. This made us think: What if cities started using the internet to organize citizen volunteers? If executed properly, we believed this could relieve some of the pressure on government while building stronger local communities.

Code for America put this theory to the test in the city of Boston with Adopt a Hydrant, a simple web application that allows Bostonians to “adopt” fire hydrants near their homes or offices...