We looked at five cities and the steps and policies that are bringing new technology to city hall.

It’s summertime!

You know what that means: it’s the only time when the Middletown and Hamilton campuses of Ohio’s Miami University can stock the vending machines with the products of Pepsi’s competitors!

Last month, San Francisco became the first municipality in the country to ban the use of facial recognition by city departments. Later today, Somerville, Massachusetts may join its ranks. Agencies in other cities, however, aren’t waiting for city councils to weigh in, implementing policies that bar the use of facial recognition. Though the agency-level limits are not subject to the public development and enforcement that support city or state-level rules, they can be important measures in an agency’s own relationship with residents.

More than 4,500 individuals at federal and local law enforcement agencies currently have access to a facial recognition database hosted by the Ohio Attorney General’s office, including at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Much of urban America is in the market for ways to handle the pressures that come with growing and changing populations. Enter “smart cities:” The movement to make municipal planning more efficient and effective for residents, which has a lot of champions but no one-size-fits-all program.