APIs are increasingly being released by city authorities around the world as a programmatic way for community organizations and businesses to interact with city open data. Cities are running hackathons or civic hacking events to encourage reuse of city datasets. APIs are discussed in terms of their benefits to civic engagement through greater transparency, for more efficient delivery of government services, and as an enabler of a new wave of local industry innovation. The growing international focus on the “smart city” — in which open data, e-government, and real-time sensor feeds contribute to more automated and sustainable city functioning — will also rely heavily on APIs in order to make much of that agenda possible.

But the truth is, cities around the world are only starting on the API journey. Many have commenced with open data portals that were published with an ad-hoc collection of historical data released, and then left to stagnate as uptake was limited. Others focused on civic hacking events that gave rise to sporadic events that built some app prototypes and not much more. Few cities are focused on creating transactional APIs that would enable citizens and local businesses to engage with services directly via API, with perhaps Open 311 being the only example of civic engagement and service delivery provided via API. While there are many successes across the globe, there is also much more work to do.

Here is a look at four city examples from around the globe. We look at some of the key trends demonstrated by these case studies, and highlight the progress that is emerging and the challenges ahead.

Barcelona

Barcelona continues to win international awards as one of the most innovative smart cities in the world. Some of their recent acclaimed projects include:

• A CityOS project that enables tech makers and devs to prototype sensor and API-enabled projects using an area of the city as an experimental lab
• The business incubator BDigital program for apps development 
• New models of procurement for city services, like Citymart (which posts a city’s urban problems, and then facilitates submissions from businesses who are encouraged to create innovative solutions, rather than the usual city tendering process where the city completely defines the service they want to contract in advance).

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New York City

New York City has 8 APIs available via its developer portal, including a geoclient, an Open311 API, an event calendar, city government spending data, and several news and data feeds, including transport.

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Melbourne

Australian city open datasets can be accessed via the Australia Government’s open data CKAN catalog (which enables all datasets to be called via the CKAN API). Alongside this, open data platform OpenDataSoft has local agents keen to sell their product to Australian city authorities. Meanwhile, Melbourne has opted for Socrata as their data portal, which — like New York City — means all datasets are available as Socrata Open Data API endpoints.

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Singapore

Singapore has a longstanding partnership with UP Singapore, a non-government collective that regularly runs hacklab events aimed at fostering API skills development amongst community organizations, independent developers, and entrepreneurs making use of Singapore APIs. From May 11th to May 16th, UP Singapore will host the Smart Health CoLab, aimed at encouraging skills development around civic apps focused on citizen health. A week-long series of events includes workshops on city health data, smart health services, and a group hack day.