New York City Turns To Crowdsourcing

If you are the mayor of one of the most famous cities in the world and suffering from problems like snow removal screw-ups, fraud, complaints about the school system and a broken prison system? Well you turn to the crowd - the citizens of your city. Thats exactly what NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg did when he announced a new program called "Give a Minute" - a place for the citizens of New York to generate ideas to make the city better. 

The interesting thing is that all these idea are generated around a single theme - which will change up every so often. As part of a larger sustainability-focused initiative the first theme "Give a Minute" will centre around will be asking citizens for ideas on how to make their neighbourhoods greener. Those ideas, which can be submitted through the "Give a Minute" site , Facebook, Twitter, or text will be sent to organisers in city government who will connect people with similar ideas to action groups organised around potential solutions.

I personally love this and will be watching it closely - If it works, crowdsourcing solutions to urban problems may become mainstream and diverge into taking more more and more of the problems we face. I cant wait.