Urban Innovation in Action: Empowering Cities
The Slovak branch of Innovation Stream closely collaborates with cities recognizing them as key drivers to accelerate the citizen-centric innovation and to foster the growth of the local startup ecosystem. The cities of Bratislava and Košice approached Civitta to address urban challenges, build climate resilience and increase citizen engagement. Currently, Civitta has two types of innovation collaboration platforms, namely Climathon Bratislava and Košice 2.0.
Climathon is a global initiative that engages citizens to tackle local climate challenges. Climathon Bratislava became the largest city hackathon in Slovakia where teams of participants cooperate with city representatives, experienced mentors, and experts to develop solutions for urban challenges. Civitta and Bratislava Municipality power the Climathon Bratislava with their expertise and support.
Program Košice 2.0 develops a creative ecosystem in which individual stakeholders (local governments, citizens, businesses) cooperate and make data-based decisions to improve the quality of life in the city. It consists of Citizen Experience and Well-Being Institute (CXI) and innovation programs. CXI uses creative methods that combine new technologies and art to collect, interpret, and visualize data.
In both platforms, Civitta focuses on three main areas, namely improving the community engagement, co-creation with the city and data-driven decision-making framework.
Community engagement
In the last five years, more than 750 software developers, data scientists, climate activists and students participated in Climathon Bratislava. Every year, participants meet with more than 40 mentors (city leaders, municipal specialists and field experts) to receive guidance and consultations that will challenge their solutions and enhance the implementation potential. Moreover, private companies demonstrate a strong commitment to local communities by offering high-quality data, expert insights, and financial support.
The city capacity building and engagement of citizens are closely connected in the program Košice 2.0 . The program offers design thinking workshops for both groups. It utilizes culture, art, and data-driven approaches to incentivize and involve citizens in solving urban challenges. The program fosters citizen engagement by Mobile Urban Laboratory (MUL), CXI, Innovation Programs, Educational Programs and Media Art Interventions and other. Košice 2.0 supported 30 startups and 36 ideas.
Co-creation with the city
City of Bratislava is actively engaged in the definition of challenges. City representatives from interested city departments, institutes, and organizations participate in several workshops organized by Civitta to identify the right challenges for Climathon. Out of numerous well-defined challenges, 3 are selected based on the following criteria: team capacity, availability of budget, data availability, the readiness of the city to implement the solution, novelty, and attractiveness to the participants.
As part of the Košice 2.0 program, Civitta collaborated closely with the City of Košice to develop challenges for Ideator, an educational entrepreneurship program. In the initial stage of the program, program-participants attended City Interaction Walks to map and understand the pain points identified by the city representatives. The city representatives also led the CIW and facilitated discussions to deepen participants’ understanding of key pain points and refine problem definitions. Over the three-month program, teams developed solutions and presented their final outputs to an expert jury and the public.
Data-driven decision-making framework
The participants have exclusive access to live city and weather data. They are provided during the hackathon by the city of Bratislava and Climathon partners. High-quality data make Climathon solutions more applicable and relevant, lead to more informed decision-making and innovative solutions, and create a more dynamic and engaging environment for participants.
The City Open-data Platform is one of the key outcomes of the Program Košice 2.0 and a crucial milestone for the city on its way to becoming more transparent. It contains various datasets covering areas such as: infrastructure, mobility, and the city’s economy. Citizens and city representatives can download the lists of schools, see the last voting of the city council members, or study the map of the cycling routes. The platform also provides interactive visualizations and dashboards that are easier to understand, graphic visual art forms to collect data and provide evidence-based data to citizens and policymakers.
The collaboration of Civitta and the two largest cities in Slovakia, Bratislava, and Košice, has led to a visible impact through the enhancement of citizen engagement, the co-creation process with cities, and the development of data-driven decision-making platforms. Košice 2.0 brings the concept of citizen experience to policy-making and increases participation by providing engaging access to data. During Climathon, Bratislava and its citizens are brought together to raise awareness and inspire local climate actions.
Civitta adds value to the cities by facilitating innovative collaboration among stakeholders, enhancing community engagement, and leveraging data-driven approaches to ensure that solutions are not only creative but also practical and aligned with the real needs of the cities. imageiamges