The Invisible City

We interact with our city everyday, yet the infrastructure that runs them is often invisible. Let's walk through a day of the Invisible City.

The Story of our Invisible City

The first thing you do in the morning is take your dog for a walk. There's a local dog park a few blocks away that your golden-doodle loves, so that's where he immediately beelines. You've never seen anyone actually clean the dog park, but usually there's poop bags in the dispenser and the park is relatively maintained. It's especially hot this morning and you notice the dog water fountain doesn't seem to work today.

Who takes care of the dog park?

How is it funded?

Next to the dog park, there are tennis and pickleball courts. People hang their racquets and paddles on a physical queuing system to determine who gets to play next. You've seen in some cities there's a mobile app that lets people queue for courts. In your city, it's a bit more old school. There's even a paper pinned behind a plastic board that has regular season long reservations. In order to make one for yourself, there's a number to call.

Why do some cities have apps for their parks, but others use an informal system?

How come you still have to call a number instead of going to a website?

After your walk, you get ready to head into work. Your car is parked on the street with a resident parking permit. Your office downtown has garage parking. When you pull into the garage, the arm automatically raises because it detects your RFID parking card. A digital sign hangs from the ceiling, indicating occupancy levels on each floor.

Who manages the parking permits in the city?

Who maintains the physical hardware for a parking garage?

Before you've even sat down at work, you've interacted several times with your Invisible City. In some cases, the interactions are pleasant (your golden-doodle whines if you don't go to the dog park). Other times, it's downright frustrating (you can't find parking on your street, despite your resident parking permit). City governments are traditional institutions, but their residents increasingly use technology in their day to day lives. The idea of having to use a website instead of a mobile app— and heaven forbid actually having to speak to someone on the phone— feels medieval. We expect smooth experiences and technological infrastructure from our Invisible City.

How the Invisible City Adopts Technology

Let's say our Invisible City would like to adopt a mobile app for our tennis and pickleball courts. Residents can reserve the next available court time for $5 from the comfort of their home, instead of putting a physical racquet into the queuing board. In turn, the city generates a meaningful about of revenue from this convenience and can afford to install and maintain overhead lights on the courts. Seems like a win-win!

The procurement department of the Invisible City puts out a "Request for Proposal" (RFP). The 46 page PDF indicates the scope of work for this mobile app, the types of vendors the city prefers to work with, and the timeline for the project. The city promises to award this contract to the vendor who is the combination of the best provider with the lowest price offer.

Local agencies see the RFP posting. Some qualified firms don't bother bidding because the contract award process can take months to years. In that time, they'd be better off finding private enterprise clients than risking the time spent on an uncertain contract. Other firms decide to invest the time to bid, but account for the risk in their price. One firm is unsure if they can actually deliver on the contract, but they think they could probably hire subcontractors if they actually win the bid.

The city reviews a dozen bids from different firms with different histories and price proposals. After many rounds of debate, the city moves a few vendors into an interview stage. There's gridlock on a decision. One senior city official strongly favors the most expensive firm. He's golfed with the firm's CEO regularly for the past decade and trusts the firm to deliver on time and on budget. He argues that the other firms may have a lower price proposal, but they may not be able to deliver.

After a few months of dissent, the contract is finally awarded to the highest price bidder. The firm begins developing our tennis and pickleball queuing app. A year later, your park now has a QR code to scan for securing a court reservation.

The Problem with the Invisible City

Because the selection process for RFP awards are subjective, despite the public rubrics, it's always a toss up on who wins these contracts. More often than not, a single person can influence the outcome. The outcome could be a subpar firm, an expensive firm, or just a delay in delivering to the city's residents. Regardless, today's Invisible City is not efficient at adopting new technology.

Software for cities should be just like software for businesses. Instead of thousands of bespoke software builds made to varying degrees of quality, cities should be able to reliably use a single platform to manage their city and improve the lives of their residents. We expect high degrees of customer success and consideration from private businesses, yet we accept inconvenience and frustration from our public cities.

We created FSH Technologies to build better software for cities because we live in these cities too.