Ciudad Saludable / Healthy Cities (Bupa)
Free 'Healthy Cities' app: register 6,000 daily steps, choose a city/commune to support. Bupa Foundation channels funds into local nature-restoration projects in each participating district. Chile 2025 funded 7 commune legacies: San Bernardo, La Florida, Coquimbo, Maipú, Renca, Viña del Mar, Huechuraba.
Participants vote-by-walking for which commune/borough gets a tree-planting site, plaza or climate refuge. Communes compete to attract the most steps and unlock their local project. Cross-country leaderboard between participating cities (Madrid vs Santiago vs London).
Within a commune, residents pool steps toward the local project (their commune's new plaza), giving neighbours a shared goal. Weekly in-app challenges and city marches alongside athletes (e.g. Saúl Craviotto in Spain) create real-world meetups.
Translates walking into TANGIBLE local infrastructure your neighbourhood gets. Strong civic-pride feedback loop. Bilingual EN/ES corp backing means it's well-documented and replicable as a community pattern.
Others in the same family
City Nature Challenge
Started 2016 as LA-vs-SF friendly competition; now an annual end-of-April 4-day bioblitz where cities compete on most observations, most species, most participants. Using iNaturalist. Run by California Academy of Sciences + Natural History Museum LA.
Plant Your Street! (geogame)
Location-based geogame by Alenka Poplin (Iowa State / now Cornell) where neighbourhood residents play tree-selection and tree-placement scenarios over their actual block. Part of a broader Geogames research agenda (Poplin 2012/2018/2025) including Climate Geogames for urban heritage sustainability. Validated through workshops in Ames, Iowa.
2zero Klimathon (Mannheim, Glienicke, Hufeisen-Region, Schleswig-Holstein)
6-week 'Klimathon' run by Berlin-based 2zero (formerly Klimakompass). Each week features 4-6 challenges across themes (mobility, food, energy, consumption, digital, leisure). Mannheim ran as a CoLAB pilot under the EU '100 climate-neutral cities by 2030' Mission starting Jan 2025.
Climathon (EIT Climate-KIC)
24-48 hour citizen hackathon run by EIT Climate-KIC. Each participating city sets its own local climate challenge; teams of citizens, students, and entrepreneurs develop solutions. Best team in each city receives Climate-KIC coaching post-event. Over 30,000 participants since 2015.
Cool Block / Cool City Challenge
Block leaders recruit 5-8 neighboring households into a 'Cool Block' that runs a 9-meeting, 5-month program across carbon, water, resilience, livability, and empowerment themes. 'Cool Neighborhood' = ~10 Cool Blocks in geographic proximity.
BetterPoints
Council-funded mobile app that auto-detects walking, cycling, bus, train, car-share trips and converts to BetterPoints redeemable at local retailers. Councils customize challenges per borough.