Happy 2024 from Team Cityfi! We hope your New Year is off to a fantastic start and cannot wait to ideate, strategize, implement, and collaborate with you in the months ahead. January is ripe for new beginnings, renewed focus, and, of course, resolutions. Your inspiring vision boards and robust checklists of goals will lay a sturdy foundation for your organization’s success and impact this year and beyond. Proactive planning is essential and invaluable. This week, Partner Story Bellows provides some food for thought on organizational strategy and invites you to share your experiences with or aspirations for goal setting here.

In January, we also celebrate the transformative impact of Martin Luther King Jr. and recognize the work that remains to achieve our vision for equity. His tireless advocacy for civil rights left an indelible legacy on the nation and continues to inspire the missions and work of numerous individuals and organizations. Cityfi has been honored to partner with value-driven teams like MoCaFi, a fintech company committed to closing the racial wealth gap through innovative banking solutions for the under and unbanked. Check out Founder and CEO Wole Coaxum’s Newsweek op-ed on the opportunity for guaranteed basic income to help realize Dr. King’s vision.

Cityfi’s Commitment to Equity

By Sahar Shirazi

As we look forward to 2024 - a number that sounds more like the setting of a sci-fi movie from my youth than an actual year - the Cityfi team renews our commitment to people: the communities, agencies, and organizations we support to create implementable, beneficial outcomes for all. We honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and others who fought for civil rights, human rights, and a more equitable future by focusing our work on human-centered outcomes and needs. We recognize that equity is not a buzzword or a check box; that climate change events disproportionately impact historically underrepresented communities; that access to health, education, employment, and economic opportunity is limited in these same communities; and that environmental burdens such as poor air quality are highest in them.

As we continue pushing to address the inequitable realities and harms caused by past policies and investments through our work, such as supporting the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) and Columbus region through trainings and toolkits for Justice40 implementation, we also look internally, at ourselves and our organization, to identify gaps, needs, and actions that ensure we foster a community of inclusion, belonging, and valuing diverse life experiences. Each of us has value in our work but also our selves, the way we experienced the privileges and barriers we were given. Our strength is in bringing that whole, authentic self to the work we are passionate about, and learning from each other as much as from our technical and academic work. We are excited to continue this journey in 2024, and grow alongside our communities and partners.

Score a Goal in 2024!

By Story Bellows (with kudos to Alex Kapur and Nicole Davessar for their goal setting leadership at Cityfi)

Goal setting often feels like one of those annual ‘check the box’ activities that’s a prerequisite for moving from December to January or January to February…or Q1 to Q2 for the real procrastinators among us. As teams or agencies or organizations, goal setting should be a much deeper and more committed process than we use to develop our individual (often failed) resolutions. If done well, goal setting exercises can set the direction and ensure alignment across an organization or agency and, perhaps even more importantly, create the foundation to ensure accountability. Goal setting can take organizations from talking a big game about bold and audacious goals, to making sure that the work being done each day by each team member is leading to the achievement of those goals.

Doing this well doesn’t mean it needs to be incredibly intensive or time consuming, but it does need to be focused, inclusive, and thoughtful. Goal setting is critical to ensuring that the actions being prioritized are building towards the delivery of more strategic outcomes. It also creates the structure that connects each individual on a team to higher level priorities and serves as the backstop needed to say no to distractions. The specific framework need not be overthought, but should be consistent to enable improvement and support collaboration among team members.

At Cityfi, we remain better at managing this process for others than we are for ourselves. Much of this is related to our irrational belief that we can somehow prioritize five times as many goals or objectives than we’d ever endorse for a client. Each year, however, we’re building the muscle to both set better goals and value the follow through needed to fully realize the investment in this work. When done right, goal setting can be one of the most impactful activities of the year for your team and the work you deliver. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like to explore a more intentional and effective (and enjoyable!) approach to goal setting or performance management more broadly. We actually like doing this.

The Design Thinking Approach to Happy Hour

By Carolina de Urquijo, Karina Ricks, and Chrissy Anecito

Last week, at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, also known as the transportation nerd prom, Cityfi and ITS America tried something new. Uniquely drawing membership from private industry, transit agencies, and state and local DOTs, ITS America provides a unique forum to bring these groups together in real collaboration to identify key needs and constraints in the transportation technology space and ideate innovative new solutions to address them.

The opportunity for this kind of truly open collaboration and conversation is rare, but we heard a real hunger. Competing with scores of receptions, poster sessions, and enticing hallway coffees, Cityfi and ITS America created space for product engineers from five leading technology companies to come together over a happy hour with a select group of federal leaders, state DOT commissioners, transit agency executives, and city DOT directors and engineers to dig into the hard problems faced by people at intersections - especially the most vulnerable travelers - understand the technology constraints faced by public agencies, and together build new responsive solutions that just might work!

How did we do it? We used a design thinking sprint to take them through the first steps of the process: empathize, define, and ideate. By the end of the session, the attendees had identified gaps in service and opportunities for continued cross-sector collaboration.

At Cityfi, we employ design thinking as a dynamic approach to problem-solving. Our extensive toolkit of exercises, games, and facilitated conversations enhance collaboration and uncover innovative solutions. Addressing the complex problems of cities requires strategic problem-solving, empathizing, and understanding the needs, behaviors, and experiences of the diverse stakeholders within a city. This process helps comprehend their perspectives and challenges, enabling the design of the best solutions for them. Design thinking promotes a systems thinking approach that fosters an understanding of the complexity of the urban environments and identifies interconnected factors. We utilize creative thinking when designing collaborative experiences to assist our clients in finding the best approach to creating beautiful, livable cities for all. Reach out to learn more about how Cityfi can help you use design thinking as a catalyst for innovation and collaboration

The Impacts of Drone Delivery

By Chelsea Lawson

As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) moves toward allowing Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) “beyond the visual line of sight,” we can expect to start seeing delivery drones being used for a range of services to the American public, including delivering critical supplies, life-saving medicines, and commercial products. State and local governments are preparing accordingly by designing pilots and studying the potential impacts in different contexts.

Over the past two years, Cityfi has been helping the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) to do just that, working with a team of consultants led by Airspace Link. Our role in the project was to analyze the impacts a delivery drone corridor would have in both the urban context (Detroit area) and the rural context (Traverse City).

In sum, our analysis finds that the projected benefits vastly outweigh the costs in either context. Specifically, our context-independent model finds that the benefits of drone delivery in Michigan outweigh the costs by a ratio of 6-to-1. However, context is important in determining the types of impacts that residents can expect. Read more on our blog!