Urban Data Hackathon: Code the City — technological solutions for a digital city
On October 4–5, at the Kyiv School of Economics, the Urban Data Hackathon: Code the City took place as part of the BRIDGE project — a two-day intensive event that brought together students, researchers, IT professionals, urbanists, and analysts around the idea of creating innovative digital services for the development of Ukrainian cities.
The event was a joint initiative of the Kyiv School of Economics and the Department of Information and Communication Technologies of the Kyiv City State Administration. Participants worked with open data from the city of Kyiv, published on the official government portal. Thanks to KCSA’s updated approach, all datasets are now available through a “single window” in a standardized format.
Teams used open data from the Accessibility Map in the Kyiv Digital app, citizen requests from the 1551 hotline, public petitions to city authorities, and dashboards from Kyiv’s official portal. Their goal was to develop solutions to improve the methodology for populating the Accessibility Map and analyzing petitions and public requests, in order to identify priorities for the city’s development better.
The hackathon clearly demonstrated how open data can serve as a foundation for innovation, transparency, and community engagement in shaping the urban environment.
Over the course of two days, 10 teams worked on developing their own projects, combining analytical thinking, creativity, and technical execution. Each team built its own strategy — from data collection and system architecture to data visualization and final presentations. Participants explored urban processes, analyzed data, created algorithms, wrote code, and presented their visions of how digital tools can improve the quality of life in cities.
One area of focus was developing solutions within the Accessibility Map service in the Kyiv Digital app. Participants explored ways to involve citizens in verifying data on the accessibility of the urban environment — through photo documentation, computer vision algorithms, and citizen science mechanisms. These solutions aim to transform the Accessibility Map into a dynamic, real-time tool that actively engages with residents.
Another key direction involved building an analytical system that merges data from two city services — Kyiv City Council’s electronic petitions platform and the 1551 city call center. Teams developed prototypes using Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms and GIS visualization tools to analyze the content of requests and petitions, identify thematic overlaps, pinpoint locations, and measure public interest. Such tools enable city departments and services to respond more efficiently to community needs and plan priorities based on real data.
💡 Urban Data Hackathon: Code the City showcased how collaboration between students, researchers, technical specialists, and city administration can spark ideas and solutions that may not have been obvious at first glance. Participants created prototypes and strategized — exploring how to integrate their proposed systems into the existing city infrastructure, discussing models for support, updates, and scaling.
This type of learning format provides students with hands-on experience in interdisciplinary collaboration, while fostering critical thinking and teamwork — all essential skills in today's tech-driven environment. These values align with the ethos of the Urban Studies and Post-War Reconstruction program at KSE, and the hackathon will become an integral part of the curriculum going forward. This will allow students’ creative potential to be directly applied to the real needs of the city.
The event was held in a hybrid format, enabling jury members from partner universities — the Technical University of Berlin and the University of Tartu — to join remotely.
We sincerely thank all the participants who took part in the hackathon, as well as the jury members and experts who provided invaluable guidance and feedback to the teams.
The Urban Data Hackathon: Code the City is organized jointly by the Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Kyiv School of Economics within the framework of the BRIDGE project.
The BRIDGE project is implemented by Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine), the Technical University of Berlin (Germany), the University of Tartu (Estonia), Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands), and the Center for Innovation Development (Ukraine), and is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe program. Any related publications reflect only the views of the project.