Urban Innovation Award Winners Announced

Providence, Rhode Island's vision for improving early childhood literacy has been selected as the winner of the Bloomberg Philanthropies' Mayor's Challenge, a nationwide contest seeking innovative and replicable ideas for improving cities.

March 13, 2013, 12pm PDT | Jonathan Nettler | @nettsj

While Providence's plan for helping parents to improve their children’s vocabulary was chosen as the winner of the $5 million grand prize, four other cities were also selected to receive $1 million grants to help kick-start their promising projects.

Other winners include:

Houston's plan for "a new recycling program that would allow residents to be free of sorting"
Santa Monica's plan to develop a comprehensive wellbeing index
Philadelphia's plan to facilitate creative entrepreneurship
Chicago's plan for a real-time analytics platform to improve city operations

“These five ideas reflect the most promising innovations that are emerging from city halls around the country,” said Mayor Bloomberg, in an e-mail, “and we’re excited to support them because they have the potential to be replicated in cities large and small. While Washington is paralyzed by partisanship, mayors are moving forward with bold new solutions to many of our nation’s toughest problems.”

To see the five award-winning pitches see this post in The Atlantic Cities.

Full Story:

Providence Is Top City in Contest of Ideas

Published on Tuesday, March 12, 2013 in The New York Times