‘URBAN MECHANICS’

Since 2010, the program has worked to launch several initiatives aimed at streamlining traditional city services.

One of its innovations is a iPhone app called “Street Bump,” which uses data from car trips to identify potholes. “Adopt-A-Hydrant” is another. The mobile application allows citizens to adopt a fire hydrant to shovel out after snowfall. The office has also launched “Discover BPS,” a web app modeled on the platform for travel websites like KAYAK or Orbitz. It helps parents better compare public school options available for their children.

The projects share in the broader philosophy embraced by the office: that ideas of entrepreneurship and innovation can be applied to tangibly improve city services.

“New Urban Mechanics is about the power of innovative partnerships inside government and outside government,” said Weiss.

‘A NOVEL PARTNERSHIP’

As New Urban Mechanics designs and launches new technologies to streamline city services, Harvard has continued to offer guidance and support to its staff.

Susan Crawford, currently a visiting professor at the Law School, has collaborated with the Office of New Urban Mechanics on a number of projects. In 2012, as a visiting professor at the Kennedy School, she taught a course at Harvard’s Innovation Lab called “Solving Problems Using Technology.” Students worked alongside staff from New Urban Mechanics to brainstorm ways to promote cultural activities around Dudley in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, and to encourage local children to become involved in the neighborhood association.

“It was an extremely creative course and very constructive both for the students and the neighborhood,” Crawford said. “It changed the lives of several students who’ve gone on to have jobs [in this field].”

Crawford hasn’t stopped there. As a visiting professor at the Law School, she collaborated with the program on projects that connect Harvard Law students with the City of Boston to examine policy issues like the potential for video surveillance by drones.

“These are big pieces of policy...what the students do becomes part of the resources that the city is drawing on,” Crawford said. “What all of us are trying to do is build the pipeline of people who see serving in government as part of their careers.”

Other Harvard affiliates have contributed academic literature to the project. Daniel T. O’Brien—the research director of the Boston Area Research Initiative at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, whose mission is to “foster original urban research in age of digital data”—has collaborated with the New Urban Mechanics to produce several papers, including one on how residents use Boston’s City Service Hotline.

Business School professor Michael I. Norton has also partnered with New Urban Mechanics when conducting research. He has worked with the office to find a better way to display city services, including a streamlined new website that lets constituents see how the city spends its money. He is also working on a tool that would track how and where tax dollars are spent, along the lines of Domino’s online pizza tracker. The interface, Norton said, should help improve transparency and educate citizens about city budgets.

The Office’s emphasis on public-private collaboration and innovation, some say, has made academics more willing to partner with the office.

“Government agencies aren’t always known for flexibility or open-mindedness,” Norton said, noting that he has found New Urban Mechanics to be the opposite.