Mission #5
Surprise Us
What have we missed? Inspire us with insights, examples and stories which go beyond our other missions. Perhaps there are surprising lessons we can draw from further afield?
View all related inspirationsRelated inspirations
"Hug-points" and other rogue tactics to keep us out of the negative.
Need a hug? Building off psychology data and work on leadership, hug-points a...
"No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City" - Critique of the role of art in regeneration
As the Creative City model for urban regeneration founders on the rocks of th...
20 Minute Makeover
One day a year, for 20 minutes, groups of family, friends or colleagues team...
24-Hour Urban Hackathon
What would you do if you had 24-Hours to Hack your city?
50 Ideas for the New City
In conjunction with the Festival of Ideas for the New City, Urban Omnibus cre...
5M Project: Giving life to local communities through art, entrepreneurship and technology
The 5M Project is an experiment in San Francisco to bring together a diverse ...
A Coffee Table at a Bus Stop in Downtown L.A.
Via Good Magazine, designer Julie Kim placed a coffee table at a bus stop in ...
A town crier, an old job making it's revival!!!
Town crier is a very old profession. Gerald Rigaud is town crier in the neigh...
Actions - What You Can Do With the City
Back in 2009, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) presented an exhibit...
Appreciation Stations
Sometimes it's more important to appreciate what we already have.
Apprenticeships for enhancing skilled workers
Tim Brown of IDEO had a short interview with NPR, reviewing what he saw as an...
Architect Community Hubs for crowd sharing local regeneration and building jobs
The Hubs concept is to design and build modern networked community hubs that ...
ASK the kids!
Let's ask the kids why they love their cities... maybe it will bring some fre...
Avatar metaphor
I was inspired by the quote from my last post: "We need to design environment...
Banking without banks
Zopa is a marketplace for peer-to-peer lending. People lend and borrow money ...
Beehive: Increased participation through micro markets
In a number of poor neighborhoods in the Netherlands, Between-us is researchi...
Beer! The Social Power of Breweries
Breweries are gathering places, where diverse people come together to sociali...
Betaville: Participatory Urban Design
Betaville is a collaborative online platform for proposals on urban design.
Bikestation
Drive Your Bike! Bikestation makes cycling easy and convenient, with se...
Cycling for Revitalization
Implementing bicycle culture in bigger cities could lead to improved health a...
Blue Engine Fellowships
Strongest predictor of college completion? Sustained academic rigor in high s...
Blue Water Baltimore
Blue Water Baltimore’s purpose is to use community based restoration, educati...
Bogota's Ciclovias: A Model For Job Creation, Community Building & Promoting Healthy Lifestyle
Every Sunday and Holiday 2 million people in Bogota converge on 70 miles of c...
Book: Ground Control - explores privatization of space in the UK + solutions for civic engagement
"Anna Minton argues that this 'regeneration' actually has a negative impact o...![BOOK: The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators [Paperback]'s thumbnail](http://www.openideo.com/open/vibrant-cities/inspiration/book-the-creative-city-a-toolkit-for-urban-innovators-paperback/gallery/cc.jpg/)
BOOK: The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators [Paperback]
From the Back Cover - The Creative City is a clarion call for imaginative act...
Bookmobile - A Library on Wheels
A Bookmobile is like a library branch on wheels! The Toronto Public Library o...
Boulevards in the middle of San Jose, Costa Rica have made a great difference
Downtown area in San Jose, Costa Rica, has been renewed with the addition of ...
BRIDGES: a non-profit to advance racial, economic, educational and environmental justice
Their vision: "BRIDGES helps youth and adults find their voice, experience th...
Broken Windows: what might prevent vibrancy
Broken Windows theory states that signaling effects of urban disorder and van...
Building Living Neighborhoods
A pattern language based on observations of towns, buildings and communities ...
Building vibrant communites from within
http://www.sfmade.org/ is an organization the helps keep manufacturing and pr...
the cube
can you use our cube?
Canadian cities embrace winter
Some people love winter. Others barely tolerate it. In Canada winter is an ...
Car Free Cities
So many successful projects (think the High Line in NY) are zones in the city...
Celebrate the people who make the city work.....
There is a growing disconnect between the citizens and the authorities in Dub...
Changing education- Focus on Employability
Education systems around the world are failing the needs of their communities...
Christopher Alexander: Building Living Neighborhoods
Christopher Alexander has remarkable insights for building living neighborhoods.
City Memory Game
The game is about the many and unexpected events and personal memories that m...
Mural Contests
In Zagreb there is a prominent wall that the city designates for street art. ...
City Workers & the Arts
Art At Work is an initiative to improve municipal gov't through strategic art...
Code for America: Enlisting Tech-Savvy Citizens to Better Our Communities
Code for America connects forward-thinking cities with technologists to devel...
Collective Impact as a framework?
Using the strength from groups across different sectors to come together and ...
Collective Impact Initiative
The various submissions that Open IDEO participants have suggested are inspir...
Community Collaboration : It's Good To Be Here
OK, Candy Chang is a force to be reckoned with. She and her partner at Civic ...
Community patterns and thinking of analogies
All these posts about communities and vibrancy inspired me to look at the pro...
Community planning tastes better in chocolate cake
Place making and urban planning can be a bit inaccessible to many communities...
Community support
http://www.sfmade.org/ is an organization the helps keep manufacturing and pr...
Complaints Choirs: Airing "The Wonderful World of Complaints"
"A complaints choir is doing exactly what the name suggests - it is a choir t...
Connect with other cities - Sister Cities International
Share insights with cities from around the world, join a network like Sister ...
CONNECTED IDEAS IN CURITIBA
Curitiba is a model when we speak about revitalization of cities. The princip...
Contagion - Nothing spread like ... vibration?
And what if vibration was something that we all had inside us and could come ...
Create an open-source global village constructor set for the world
Open Source Ecology is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters buildi...
Crowdfunded micro-grant events for creative & entrepreneurial ideas (SOUP DETROIT)
This is a great way to bring any community together and to get them to collec...
Cut & Paste Cities
Arup’s global Foresight + Innovation team creates Cut & Paste Cities. People...
D.I.R.T - Dump It Right There
Landscape architect, Julie Bargmann, started DIRT as a way of revitalizing ur...
Dave Meslin: Asking municipalities to engage their citizens in more meaningful ways.
After recent changes, Torontonians worry that their City Hall will become les...
Design for America
Design for America is an organization that reaches out from college campuses ...
Design for Children
Children serve as a kind of "indicator species" of whether a neighborhood is ...
Design with the Other 90%: CITIES
The Design with the Other 90%: CITIES exhibition features sixty projects, pro...
Designing for the homelessness
http://www.habitables.co.uk/architecture/the-architecture-of-the-homeless
...
Determination, Heart, and Recovery
The Eric LeGrand story always provides me with inspiration to deal with adver...
Detroit from Detroiters' Eyes
The Detroit Free Press is collecting images of Detroit. Check them out here!...
Detroit Needs You
Can we create situations where it becomes attractive for particular demograph...
Devil's Night / Angel's Night
"Devil's Night" is a name for the arson/vandalism in Detroit on the nights/da...
DIY Gabions
Wirework containers of rocks and other material. Could these be interesting w...
Do it!
Detroit Collaborative Design Center: design activism through direct action an...
Electric! Smart.
Detroit used to helm the automotive world, and there is little reason for it ...
Empowering everyday citizens to create change
Bringing people together and involving ordinary citizens in the policy makin...
Empty No More
Storefronts Seattle rents empty retail spaces in between leases for creative ...
Engaging Citizens With Digital Media
How can digital media aid citizens to engage with their environment, with fel...
Engaging community in planning on-line
Community Planning - A planning platform with gaming elements provides a way ...
Ethical Banking & Local support
Back to the origin of banking, when the bank still had this role of connectin...
EUREKA MOBILE LAB PROJECT
EUREKA MOBILE LAB PROJECT-AFRICA is a new approach to optimize vaccines and h...
Events as Catalysts for Development
Expo. Olympics. Art Basel. Cannes Film Festival. These are all events that h...
Evoke Reactionary Pride in Citizens by Dissing the City!
A good friend of mine, Tara from Designing Dublin, came up with this amusing ...
Evolutionary Theory
The Binghamton Neighborhood Project uses evolutionary theory to try to improv...
Expanding how we measure urban vibrancy
There is a growing interest in using GIS technology to visualize successful t...
F.I.R.S.T Robotics invests students with valuable trade skills
The FIRST robotics program seeks to inspire students to pursue science and te...
Fab Labs revitalize communities
Fab labs provide open access to to modern means of invention. It is an advan...
Five ideas from Asia for creating future cities
Compact Living, Modifying Historic Urban Space, Encouraging Sustainable Lifes...
Flexi-dency –The flexible residency try before you buy model
Applying the principles of funky office ware and soil recapturing Flexi-dency...
Fringe Festivals
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world and t...
Fureai Kippu
A different Bank in Japan: you save time for help and care. for yourself...
Future Melbourne 2020
Communities contribute their ideas to form the future plan for the city Melbo...
Give the citizens an opportunity to share their thoughts
Candy Chang is an artist, designer, and urban planner who makes cities more c...
Go out and play!
Internet and social media can be used to spread this message: "GO OUT in the ...
Help citizens figure out what they *really* want their communities to be
This Post-it was an outcome of a design charrette held for the Bow to Bluff I...
High Performing Infrastructure
If some of the only money we are going to spend on cities in the coming years...
Hired in the USA
How to be relevant across timezones? For starters, hire military spouses who ...
How might fun help cities?
We would do anything for fun! Just watch all those videos and....have fun! h...
Improv Everywhere
In terms of engaging the community, we can create programs like Improv Everyw...
Integrate nature into the City - Base on FLW's Broadacre City
Base on FLW's model of the city, can we think about rejuvenating Detroit not ...
Interaction Design, Social Computing & Urban Planning
There are striking parallels in designing for social computing and creating l...
Interactive Piano Stairs
Interactive piano stairway in Stockholm encourages commuters to ditch the esc...
John Todd: Healing Waters
John Todd has pioneered techniques for treating waste water through the use o...
Karen MacKay: Vertical Theory
Karen MacKay's Vertical Farms envision a sustainable approach to Urban Agricu...
Learn What You've Taught
When a child litters you tell them "No, go put that in the trash." But then w...
Learning from Bangkok: when all else fails, organize!
The Thai government supports low-income people through a loan program: indivi...
Learning from Burning Man
Burning Man is a city that appears out of nowhere for a week every year and t...
Learning from the City
City schools shouldn't just be better schools, they should be THE BEST SCHOOL...
Lego Serious Play for Participatory Neighborhood Design
Lego Serious Play Kits are customized for building metaphors, creative story ...
Let the seniors teach us---A new public community college system
Seniors are treasures of our communities. Although they may retired, they obt...
Local Currency: circumventing the faltering global economy
The Brixton Pound and BerkShare are examples of two successful currencies tha...
LOVE MEDELLIN
amazing public spaces in medellín, colombia
Main Street program
"Over the past 30 years, the Main Street movement has transformed the way com...
Map your assets...especially creative ones.
Maps are powerful. Asking spatial questions about the assets in our communiti...
Martha Stewart: Simplified Hydroponics for Urban Farming
Martha Stewart presents Simplified Hydroponics for Urban Farming
Mobile: The Food Truck
Mobile food trucks provide community, good food, and jobs via a small busines...
Mobile: The Mobile Concert ("Concerts a Emporter", or "Take-Away (Take-Out) Shows")
Concerts by any manner of artist can raise the pulse of a city. Making them ...
Moving out
Micro town in forrest nearby big city, 4 km from city border. It's a trend. P...
Traditional house helping little businesses
A traditional house in a historic area of Tokyo has become a multi-purpose sp...
Music and art can help communities come together.
Lets think outside of the box, this is a perfect example of how music can bri...
My company bike
Let employers pay for public bikes instead of for a company car.
Neighborland (New Orleans)
"A fun online platform to make our city a better place. Please take a look ar...
Opera wedding---a fun wedding ceremony tights you, your community and society
Your wedding could be meaningful for saving the vanished culture and traditio...
PARK(ing) Day
Providing temporary public open space . . . one parking spot at at time.
Partecipatory democracy
Citizien share idea and try to project their future. It is another way to be ...
Partecipatory democracy in NY.
Citizen sometimes know better than politics problem life, city where they lif...
Participatory Design
Hester Street Collaborative's (HSC) mission is to empower residents of unders...
Participatory planning - URBAN TYPHOON
URBAN TYPHOONS are events during which local communities from particular neig...
People need to find their voice.
Citizens need to communicate effectively with eachother and with business and...
Piranesi 2020 – Greening the Abandoned
Without massive reconstruction, can we imagine sublime vertical parks in plac...
Places for People
Jan Gehl is one of my favorite designers— he's known for revitalizing Copenha...
Post-war reconstruction strategies for restore vibrancy in cities
It is possible to relate conflicts resulting from wars or natural disasters, ...
Preserving heritage to draw back talent
What ties us to a place? How can we preserve those physical reminders that gi...
Project based on the integral human development
This problem is caused by the industries and commerce that displaced the loca...
Project Poverty Walks
Project Poverty Walks teaches and trains motivated homeless people to be city...
Provoking input through artistic gestures
Candy Chang is an artist, currently living in New Orleans, who creates works ...
Public Giving in Ancient Jewish Law
In the Jewish Scriptures (to Christian groups, the Old Testament) there's anc...
Put this Discussion Behind Bars
A large population of struggling cities (and potential contributers to the "d...
Question Box - An information resource for the community
Question Box, an Open Mind initiative, provides easy access to information in...
Rating apps
Nosh. me is one such app which let's people rate their food, how could this t...
Real Reality TV - Stand-up Comedy in the 'Back of Beyond'
A famous Danish comedian travels to the outskirts of Denmark, spends 2 days t...
Rebranding cities. Recovering Cities Self-Esteem.
A big rebranding project that starts as an art action. It's just a simple id...
Rethink the HOA
Homeowners Associations (HOA) are legal entities with the capability of chang...
Reversible Destiny Lofts
To achieve revitalization, it is indispensable for people to regain their vit...
Revitalization and Basketball
The success of a sports programs and vibrancy of a community both hinge on be...
Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies
Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what...
Rollercoaster: A Functional Square in Beijing
Via Atlantic Cities, architect Adolph Loos created Rollercoaster, "a continuo...
S.I.M. City Baltimore
S.I.M. City Baltimore - Urban Design Studio
Storytelling the rebuilding process
A huge part of Kenya's momentum as a tech hub comes from popular bloggers (eg...
Shops On Wheels
Like food trucks, mobile shops lower barriers to entry and encourage entrepr...
Shrinking Cities - Exhibition + Project
"Shrinking cities are a cultural challenge to us. In the Shrinking Cities pro...
Sister Cities
WIth an eye toward the bigger picture of a vital global ecosystem, it's both ...
Sister Cities: Revitalizing communities and spirits through "micro-diplomacy"
Twin or sister towns and cities have been around for hundreds, if not thousan...
Smart City: Theory and Practice of Creating Intelligent Cities
The talk about different ways of creation interactive city platforms which co...
Social Potluck
SOCIAL POTLUCK promotes improved quality of life and the integration of commu...
Space Design Must Work for People. Use Neighbourhoods.
Inspired by a post from a fellow contributor stating the essential element fo...
specifiCITY: the hive
Build up the sense of belonging and ownership, the networking and community b...
Starbucks and Create Jobs for USA
Starbucks is teaming up with Opportunity Finance Network® (OFN) to help creat...
Check Out A Human Book
Instead of checking out your favourite stories, library users can instead hav...
Supporting Local Business
The Wedge Card is a new take on a loyalty card. It offers discounts for shopp...
Supportive Housing for Homeless
Helping the homeless transition back into society is a difficult process. One...
Swings Tampa Bay
Swings Tampa Bay is a very simple community-building initiative. Cofounders R...
Switch to a local currency: Ithaca hours
Ithaca hours are a local currency traded in the town of Ithaca, New York. One...
The 7 wonders of reclaiming our environment
Henry Cheung proposed the idea of 'Greening the Abandoned' to reclaim decayin...
The Bureau of Doing Something About It
Bruce Mau Design responds to the Toronto Complaints Choir with a pop-up studi...
The City Fix: Sustainable Urban Mobility
An online resource packed with inspiration for sustainable transport news, ad...
The Collectivity Project (Olafur Eliasson)
Image if you dumped 3 tons white LEGO bricks in a public space, and got the l...
The Dabbawallahs of Mumbai: food delivery in one of the world's most congested cities
I believe the Dabbawallahs of Mumbai, India embody a number of design princip...
The Death of the Fringe Suburb
I recently read this article in the New York Times about the move towards cre...
The Detroit Declaration
The Detroit Declaration is a political movement to elect leadership who will ...
The Dream Is Alive in Your City (and on TV)
Portlandia pokes fun at the quirky nature of Portland. What might it look lik...
The Fiber City - Comprehensive Model of a shrinking Metropolis
Fiber City 2050 focuses on the use of urban fibers to develop an alternative&...
The "Growing Power" of Will Allen
In 2008, Will Allen, an urban agriculturalist, won $500,000 as the recipient ...
The HUB - a globally local home for change makers
The HUB is a global network of collaborative spaces and communities where peo...
The Oasis Game
The Oasis game is a two day event that invites a community to project and bui...
The Open City: a city which encourages adaptation and intervention
According to Richard Sennett city’s fail to meet society’s needs when they ar...
The organic city vs. the tidy-minded city
How might we restore vibrancy to cities and regions? An underlying assumption...
The Power of Discussion: A Small Group
A Small Group is a Cincinnati-based initiative started by consultant and comm...
The power of lunch
Knowing someone is listening means a lot. What if every month any resident c...
The right track
Turning a city facing economic decline into a place that people specifically ...
The story of the titmouse and the milk bottle
This is a story from 'The Living Company' book by Arie de Geus. Using birds a...
The Third Eye
During my trip to Mumbai in 2009 for our graduate class research project, a f...
Tidy Street: Changing Neighbors' Behaviors through Voluntary Monitoring and Public Infographics
Residents along Tidy Street (Brighton, UK) in collaboration with a graffiti a...
Towards new Recipes for Urban Ecosystems
Cities in crisis are the result of a loss of diversity. The urban ecosystem h...
Transcend capitalism?
Do vibrancy and sustainability (meaning "viable for the imaginable future", r...
Transformative Public Works
A bold and ambitious public works plan for the Colombian city of Medellín hel...
Transforming a country through its people : ¡GUATEAMALA!
Bruce Mau and the Fundación Proyecto de Vida, a collective of Guatemalan lead...
Transposing Small Town Values to the Big City
Vibrancy is often reflected in how the people of a certain town or city come ...
Empty Spaces for Charitable Pop Ups
3Space is a nonprofit organization that helps charities to temporarily occupy...
Unbalance The Budget
In any growth business or small start-up company, entrepreneurs know that to ...
Urban beekeeping for honey making!
Save the environment, make honey. I first read about urban rooftop beekeeping...
Urban Brainfood
Get inspired to put unexpected enterprises in unusual places. This inspiratio...
Urban Omnibus
Urban Omnibus is an online project of the Architectural League to create a ne...
Urban Symbiosis
Being in good company makes oneself better.
Urbanism Manual for Precarious Settlements
Urbanism Manual for Precarious Settlements / Manual de Urbanismo para Asentam...
Urbanized
Urbanized is a documentary about what makes cities work.
Use Arts To Transform and Create Value
The arts and culture have shown to transform people and communities. Vacant l...
User Generated Cities
URBZ believes that residents are experts in their neighbourhoods. Their every...
Venture for America - starting with students
It's a vicious circle: cities that lose their industry are not attractive for...
Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab: Visions for the future City
The Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) seeks to identify and promote emergin...
Vital to create spaces
Build spaces to connect people with ideas and tools to realise their potentia...
Vito Acconci on reinventing public space
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Wall Gardens for Freshness and Food
Planting gardens on the insides and outsides of old buildings looks refreshin...
We are all in the same boat, and?
When staying in the boat requires more energy than paddling, we would be bett...
We Tell Stories: An Interactive Journey Through a City, Powered by Google Maps
Penguin Books collaborated with one of its authors to create a dynamic, inter...
What If You Had 72 Hours to Transform Your City?
A hundred designers, 10 urban challenges, very little money, and no sleep. Th...
What we can learn from operant conditioning
In operant conditioning, the strongest patterns happen when you reward consis...
World of Citycraft: Games for City Design
World of Citycraft demonstrates how simulation games can be introduced and pl...
Yolanda Domínguez - Strike a 'Pose' in public places
A direct criticism of the artificial world of glamour and of fashion that mag...