When NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg launched the Big Apps competition this past June, he invited individuals and groups to program applications that make government data sets accessible to the public — solidifying that technology can contribute to improved quality of life. Applications created in response to Bloomberg’s decisions will join the crowd-sourced initiatives that already exist in New York City, and already explore methods that can offer residents not only information, but a place to gain a sense of community, to exchange ideas and to visualize space digitally.

This obvious question this begs is the capacity of the city planning infrastructure to demonstrate that an open source approach is implementable, by identifying those sourced initiatives that can be feasibly and rapidly implemented, and to embrace the opportunity to demonstrate nimbly how such ideas are brought to life. Put more succinctly: this only works if the best ideas are rapidly prototyped and brought to life.

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