Crowdsourcing can be used to obtain services, ideas, funds or content by soliciting contributions (generally on a voluntary basis and online) from a large group of people. It can also be used as a voting platform to express preferences between different policy/project alternatives. This is the second of a series of posts on how crowdsourcing initiatives are being used for Urban Development. On the first post I discussed the OpenIdeo platform; here I will focus on Mi Medellin.
Mi Medellin is an open innovation platform recently launched by the Mayor’s office (Alcaldia de Medellin) in partnership with Ruta N[1]. Its purpose is to create a place where citizen can interact directly with public authorities, bringing their own ideas to solve Medellin’s urban challenges. It is organized across two areas: Challenges and Questions (Retos y Preguntas). The Challenges work in a similar fashion than the Openideo platform: a challenge is created; users can propose ideas and vote for the best ones. The first challenge that appears on the platform is how to manage the areas below the bridges near the Medellin River. The top 10 (voted) ideas will be presented in the World Urban Forum which will take place in the city in April, 2014. Questions (Preguntas) on the other side, are organized across a set of policy/project options and users can vote among them. The image below shows an example of a question.
[1] Ruta N is a corporation created by the Mayor’s office and the city’s utility company (UNE/EPM). Its main objective is to promote the development of businesses (Entrepreneurship) and increase the competitively of the city and region.
{FAVEL issues} 
Really interesting Paula, thanks!
I think that you would be really interested in some recent research that I have come across explaining crowds, open innovation, and citizen science. In particular I feel you may find these two emerging pieces of research very relevant:
– The Theory of Crowd Capital
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2193115
– The Contours of Crowd Capability
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2324637
Powerful stuff, no
In Rio de Janeiro they start to use one app for evaluating the buses: http://nopontocerto.com