BiodiverCity Challenge (Alberta)
Regional spin-off of the City Nature Challenge model run by Nature Alberta. Residents in participating Alberta cities/towns use iNaturalist or eBird to log observations during the challenge window. Specifically calibrated for the Leduc-Edmonton-St. Albert corridor.
Cities and towns within Alberta compete on observation/species/participant counts. Explicitly modeled on CNC but at sub-national scale, so neighboring municipalities have direct rivalries (Edmonton vs St. Albert vs Leduc).
Within each city, Nature Alberta organizes guided walks, photo workshops, and expert ID sessions. Local naturalist groups and parks coordinate volunteer outings. Strong intra-municipal collaborative scaffolding.
Useful regional/sub-national variant. Proves CNC's mechanic works at neighboring-town scale, not just global. A model BelongHub can show as 'how to localize an international competition pattern.'
Others in the same family
Beat the Street
Free 6-7 week walking and cycling game played across a town. Contactless RFID Beat Boxes are mounted on lamp posts across the playing area; players (children, families, workplaces, voluntary groups) tap cards on boxes to score points. Over 1.9 million participants have played in 5,000+ schools to date.
City Nature Challenge
4-day global bioblitz run by California Academy of Sciences and Natural History Museum of LA. Cities compete to record the most observations, most species, and engage the most people via iNaturalist. 2024: 2.4M observations, 65,700+ species, 83,000+ participants in 675 cities.
Capitales Françaises de la Biodiversité
Run by Plante et Cité + Office Français de la Biodiversité. Annual themed competition (2026 theme: nature restoration) where French municipalities document their best biodiversity practices through regional workshops and a national jury.
Stridekick / Big Team Challenge / Step Count Challenge
Paths for All / Walking Scotland's national 4-week team walking challenge. Teams of 5 (workplaces, community groups, council departments) compete on cumulative steps. Big Team Challenge and Stridekick are commercial backends used by councils to run city-vs-city or department-vs-department editions on virtual maps (London, Route 66, Great Wall etc.).
Tidy Towns (Ireland)
Department of Rural & Community Development annual competition, organised since 1958, where ~900 towns/villages compete on environment, biodiversity, tidiness, and community participation. Studied by Interreg Europe as a 'good practice' for community-led regeneration; 30,000+ volunteers logging 1M+ hours annually.
Walksy / WalkOff (fog-of-war walking games)
Your city map starts under a mist; every step clears fog around your GPS position and reveals streets, parks, and landmarks. Add friends, join/create guilds, fight guild territory wars over city sectors.