What is crowdsourcing and what does it have to do with Smart Cities?

Earlier this month, the City of Oakland announced that it would be taking an unusual--and perhaps unprecedented--approach to preparing its response to the US Dept. of Transportation's Smart City Challenge notice of funding opportunity. 

The standard approach to grant writing is to dedicate city staff who, alone or together with hired consultants with subject matter expertise, research the opportunity, develop the proposal and complete the application packet.

Wikipedia is a famous example of a crowdsourcing effort that disrupted a centuries old industry and changed the way we relate to encyclopedic information

In response to the Smart City Challenge, however, the City has opted to use an open, crowdsourced approach. Will this fundamental shift in proposal writing strategy work? As Shakespeare said, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." It took some time, but eventually Wikipedia pushed Encyclopedia Britannica off of the top shelf.

The point of this post, however, is not to speculate about the eventual outcome of this challenge grant and which approach will eventually win out.

The important thing to understand is that the City of Oakland's approach exemplifies many of the values and practices that make cities smart: For example, 

• as on online forum,  this site is a "technology-enabled" way of "connecting people" and "empowering" constituents and stakeholders to participate;
• The approach is open, transparent and cooperative--all characteristic of the "sharing economy";
• Smart Oakland is fiercely competitive, not in the sense of having to win at any cost, but in the sense of doing as well as possible. 

It follows, then, that the City of Oakland wins if its efforts create a kind of network effect that increases the capacity of other cities to envision, plan for and implement smart transportation solutions that improve safety, enhance mobility and address climate change.