By Jacob Apkon, Superstar SeeClickFix Intern

After seeing a 40% increase in population in just five years, the Leduc city government recognized the need to address the multitude of traffic challenges caused by this drastic increase in population. Local officials wanted to engage residents and encourage them to voice their opinions on ways to improve the flow of traffic. Luckily, there's an app (and online platform) for that!

On July 22, 2011, the City of Leduc (Alberta, Canada) announced its “Transportation Master Plan,” a way for citizens of the city to suggest ideas, solutions, and opinions based on four major categories: vehicle congestion, transit improvements, walking and cycling improvements, and other transportation related issues. Anyone is able to go on to their website and enter a suggestion or solution on how to improve transportation using the SeeClickFix map.

In less than one month, over 15 suggestions have been made. Leduc also offered a physical map of the city during one of the its festivals, so people without access to Internet or people who may have not seen the website were able to submit suggestions.

Earlier this year, Huntsville, AL also allowed citizens to suggest improvements to the city using SeeClickFix’s platform. The City of Huntsville used SeeClickFix to decide what stores and businesses to bring to town based on the citizens’ suggestions.

While Leduc is not the first city to use SeeClickFix’s maps as a platform to hear the suggestions of the citizens in order to improve the city, Leduc certainly expanded on the idea by allowing the people to voice their opinions on what the city could physically change, not just what the city could add. Hopefully, Leduc’s example will be replicated in the future, and cities will turn to the SeeClickFix map to hear suggestions and opinions on how to improve the city not just what needs fixing.