City Accelerator

The Citi Foundation and Living Cities launched the City Accelerator in March 2014 to foster innovation and promote collaboration between urban leaders to tackle some of their cities' most pressing issues. The City Accelerator has selected 17 U.S. cities to pilot innovative efforts that generate economic opportunities for low-income populations and help municipalities run more effectively. Participating cities also benefit from ongoing interaction with leading practitioners from around the country and share lessons learned to help other cities advance similar work. The City Accelerator builds on the Project on Municipal Innovation (PMI), a collaboration between Living Cities and Harvard's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, which brings together mayoral chiefs-of-staff and policy directors from 35 cities across the U.S. to discuss challenges facing their municipalities, including inefficiency in city government and inequality. The City Accelerator helps translate dialogue into action by giving cities seed funding to adopt many of the ideas discussed during the PMI sessions.