Starting in Chicago over the past few weeks and then moving on to San Jose, Memphis, New York and other cities next year, the project asks the public a simple and direct question about city services and public life, through ads in the paper and the public spaces of the city. It then invites everyone to respond with their ideas by text, tweet or direct post on giveaminute.info...

As they exist now, most contemporary forms of participatory activity in the public sphere invite critique: if you put forward a plan and put a microphone in front of it, people are going to critique it. And, because community meetings happen in physical space in a very restrictive amount of time, the only people who go are those who already care about the issue at hand, who have the time and disposition to make their voices heard, or the people who are most polarized on either side of the debate. For Give A Minute, we wanted to lower the barriers for entry into constructive dialogue focused around positive collective change rather than specific complaints...