Last Updated on January 5, 2022
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), through its Cities Laboratory, has launched the challenge Cities for All, which seeks to identify urban challenges that accentuate inequality in Latin American and Caribbean cities.
The initiative will support challenges that can be solved through experimentation processes, such as prototype schemes, pilots, iterative models of solutions, among others, to design innovative, replicable, and scalable solutions. Cities from the IDB’s 26 borrowing member countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are eligible to participate, specifically, entities that promote urban innovation as part of or in partnership with city governments.
The call focuses on identifying problems in the following areas:
- Poor access to financing and quality housing solutions;
- Inadequate access to basic services;
- The socio-spatial disconnection of informal neighborhoods from formal ones;
- Limited or no access to information and communication technologies;
- Vulnerability and resilience to climate change and natural disasters; and
- Limited formal employment opportunities.
Funding
- Six semi-finalist teams will be selected to participate in a mentoring process to improve the definition of the challenge, which will be presented at a pitch day.
- From these, three teams will be selected to receive technical assistance from the IDB, up to $35,000, to work on an iterative process of experimentation consisting of the co-design, implementation, and evaluation of a prototype or pilot project that will contribute to solving the posed challenge.
Eligibility
Cities from the 26 IDB borrowing member countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, specifically entities that promote urban innovation, as part of or in partnership with city governments, may participate. For example:
- An urban innovation lab or an innovation office / unit that is part of a city government.
- A national, regional or local innovation agency or laboratory that is associated with one or more city governments.
- A university or civil society group, working on innovation in cities, that is associated with one or more city governments.
Application
The applicant entity must complete the online application, taking into account the following points:
- Complete the application form and submit it through the online platform within the specified deadline. The deadline is February 6, 2022 (11:59 p.m. EST).
- In the application form, applicant entities must attach the supporting documentation detailed in the requirements section: letter of endorsement from a city government authority (use Form A), and the applicant entity’s innovation-related experience form (use Form B).
For more information, visit IDB.
Deadline: February 6, 2022