From November 10-21, the city of Dublin will host the second Innovation Dublin festival where venues throughout the city region will open their doors to showcase and promote all facets of innovation in the city. The festival provides Dubliners, entrepreneurs, students, researchers, artists and large corporations with an opportunity to discuss, promote and celebrate innovation in the city.

For more information, click here.

These days, as people use Facebook to support Haiti, end hunger, and stand behind other causes, social networks have become the place to make a statement.

Yet those clicks don’t necessarily turn into a movement to better communities. At least not yet.

With the Knight Foundation’s focus on fostering informed and engaged communities, they started looking at ways to take that online energy a step further, and transform it into on-the-ground action.

The result is the Knight Technology for Engagement Initiative. CEOs for Cities is one of the five recipients of a combined $2.23 million to help residents take action, using the latest digital tools, to strengthen their communities.

The CEOs for Cities project, to be developed in Grand Rapids and San Jose, will test whether residents can help create solutions to local problems, filling a gap left by shrinking municipal budgets. This project will build a crowd-sourcing platform that invites residents to work with city hall to identify problems and find answers.

Knight believes that harnessing digital technology is one way to inspire neighbors to work together to solve their most entrenched problems.

Knight Foundation is looking for more high-quality ideas that use technology to cultivate community engagement.

Learn more about the initiative, and how to submit an idea, by visiting www.Technologyforegagement.org.

By the time the sun sets on October 7, Indianapolis will have ten acres of new natural area. Even more amazing: it will happen in just eight hours. More than 9,000 Eli Lilly and Company volunteers will plant 72,000 native shrubs and perennials, and another 1,600 trees along a path traversed by 100,000 vehicles a day.

The project, A Greener Welcome, will naturalize six interchanges between our airport and downtown, and emerging public artists have been commissioned to add sculpture to four.

“It's a vigorous demonstration of Keep Indianapolis Beautiful's aim to engage the community in creating a city with a flourishing environment, and an aesthetic that lifts the spirit,” said David Forsell, President of Keep Indianapolis Beautiful.

An innovative urban development project, spearheaded by the Harlem Community Development Corporation, could bring new energy and excitement to Harlem.

Tentatively called La Marqueta Mile, the proposed mile-long, open air market under the Metro North tracks would span 22 blocks and house as many as 900 vendors, providing enormous opportunity to local entrepreneurs.

This commentary, by the Center for an Urban Future’s David Giles, argues that the proposed market could do wonders for a neighborhood lacking in affordable retail space and a city struggling to retain independent businesses.