Context and Connections: Civic Tech Startup Tackles Spatial Challenges
Megashift recently spoke with James Pierre Louis the CEO and Co-Founder of CityXcape, a civic tech startup out of San Francisco.
We wanted to understand how new tech companies are innovating for public good and creating value in the civic tech space. He’s a former Navy Engineering Officer and is now working to help people in cities have more context and connections.
Define what “civic tech” means to you…
Traditionally, civic tech implies technology that improves communication between the public and its government. It’s rooted from the problem that there is a massive communication gap between government and its constituents.
Civic tech is much more than that, to me, however. Communicating with the state is only one slice of public infrastructure, not the entire pie. I see civic tech as any technology that makes cities or community infrastructure more intelligent.
Why do people often overlook this area of technology?
Civic tech is often associated with government, which many people find unsexy. Young entrepreneurs and developers tend to see government tech as slow, uninteresting, overly functional and redundant. Many of my peers feel this way; they prefer to work on technology that involves more color.
The truth is, however, civic tech is a crucial component to the future of society, almost like an unsung hero. There are mainly two reasons for this:
First, the currently centralized public infrastructure system is overworked and very vulnerable. Not removing some of this stress from the system will result in its collapse. Civic tech also enables citizens to provide for themselves much of what they are dependent on public infrastructure for, which makes them more autonomous and free.
What are you referring to exactly when you say “public infrastructure”?
Public infrastructure is the technology, construction, utilities, and legal system we all depend on to operate as a collective. Here you have things such as water, telecommunications, energy, and even law. Civic Tech not only makes these infrastructures smarter by taking them online and managing them more effectively through software. It also allows citizens to participate in the system to whatever extent they desire.
There is a lot of opportunity for disruption in this space, what problem are you focused on solving?
The problem I’m addressing is one that should’ve been solved a long time ago, to be frank… It deals with people to people communication within cities.
Cities are large tribes, unlike the small tribes of yesterday where everyone knew what was going on within it, people in cities have no idea what is happening just a few blocks away from them. Cities are incredibly opaque.
We’re still using archaic methods to communicate with the city, like flyers or craigslist, which is genrally a list of links….cities deserve better.
What’s the problem summarized in one or two sentences?
People living in cities are too fragmented and disconnected from each other. This makes it difficult for people to find the help or connection they need.
With all this fragmentation concerning people in cities. How are you solving that? And what’s the vision for the future?
Well not just me, but my team and me…. I couldn’t do this without them. We’re solving this problem by creating a real-time map that shows you the actual people in the city and the messages they want to communicate.
People are visualized as Dots, and their messages get marked as Pins. This makes it easy for anyone to see where people are throughout the city and what they’re doing in one glance.
The goal is to visualize the actual pulse of the city…the people, their activities, and their movements. No more guessing what the city is doing, just pull out your phone and see for yourself. The platform is called CityXscape.
How does it help government and citizens?
Through this platform, the government can give notices of public hearings, measure pedestrian activities, inform of new regulations, etc.…
In other words, this platform gives them a direct gateway to the citizens of a city — it’s a vital channel for public polls, voting, and infrastructure decisions.
Citizens also benefit in so many ways. They can promote their event, warn each other of social or physical dangers, invite nearby people for activities and find where the hotspots are at night.
Why hasn’t this been done yet? What are the biggest challenges in launching a solution like this?
Making cities and their countless activities transparent is a huge undertaking, but many other folks have tried solving this problem. From apps like Circle to Nextdoor, many brilliant minds have attempted to establish the unified community we all want to see.
There are several challenges in creating a transparent platform for cities… The first is the issue of privacy. A big factor affecting our quality of life in cities is the people we know and interact with. We want a platform that shows where people like us are hanging out, but without invading anyone’s privacy. No one wants to live in an Orwellian world.
There are also more subtle issues that are just as important. For one, people want an original solution — we’re all tired of scrolling through feeds. This is a challenge that requires innovation in the realm of product.
We also face usability problems, a city is big, with lots of activities and content. Making users browse through a list of content and click through each one is exhausting. The platform needs to intelligently prioritize what to show the user first.
Last but not least is regulating the content, the internet community is known for its lack of filters and rogue remarks. We plan on using various methods to control that, it will likely be a mix of user regulated content, artificial intelligence, and manual administrators.
How do you think CityXcape will evolve? What’s the vision?
That’s a good question… This is entirely personal and probably biased, but I see CityXcape becoming a platform that immensely displaces newspapers and radio. Through CityXcape, people will get local news from each other. News won’t come from a news anchor or a reporter, but from someone who is actually at the scene and reporting it live from their point of view.
People will also use CityXcape to keep communities safe, facilitate local commerce, promote community events and connect with others nearby. CityXcape will further what the internet was always about, people connecting with people, our platform simply focuses on physical location.
There must be a ton of data being collected — is the data you collect open to the public?
Very good question. I am especially passionate about this topic because I grew up reading “big brother” books like 1984 and Brave New World. Even though we track our users’ location, we keep everyone’s data anonymous, both publicly and even in our database. General metadata that we find useful will be made available for the open source community to do amazing things with.
What do you expect your relationship with government to be like?
I’m certain CityXcape and city governments will have strong and healthy relationships. We’ll be great tool for city agencies to communicate with the public. However, the biggest sector we feel CityXcape will have an impact on is transportation. Since CityXcape possesses crowd metadata, transit agencies can really use us for infrastructure planning and expansion.
How can readers support you?
Readers can support, of course, by downloading the CityXcape app. Just having the app contributes so much to the city, because you’re passively feeding data to make the city transparent. Readers can also help by providing press coverage or simply emailing me if they have anything else in mind.
Any other startups solving civic issues you’d like to mention?
Definitely. I’d like to shout out some cool apps I know that are doing great things with geo-space. This includes Spotted, which shows you people you’ve crossed paths with in the real world, and Eden which supports communication with your intimate friends via location.
I’d also like to say special thank you to CityXcape’s investors and mentors — mainly Thomas McQuade, Ayalur Krishnan, and Michael Taylor. These men are not only our investors but also my personal heroes.
If you’d like to support CityXcape, Download it here.
