This year’s winners Bloomberg Mayors Philanthropy Challenge They create innovative projects to improve the basic services of their cities – many using a combination of artificial intelligence And the wisdom of its inhabitants.
That’s what South Bend, Indiana, Mayor James Mueller has done with his initiative, which uses artificial intelligence to interpret data about residents, such as a family’s default on their water bill, and to help provide them with services and support that could prevent bigger problems.
“Technology is not necessarily good or bad — it is how you use it and how you protect against abuse,” said Mueller, a Democrat who has been mayor since 2020. “We are trying to use cutting-edge tools to deliver city services in a proactive way that meets the needs of our residents.”
The 24 winners announced Tuesday range from Boise, Idaho, where they are using geothermal energy to lower residents’ heating bills, to Beira, Mozambique, where they are moving fishermen and their families from flood-prone coastal homes to safer inland homes. Each of them will receive $1 million to implement the program, in addition to support from Bloomberg Philanthropies experts to help the new initiative succeed.
Hope, says the former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloombergfounder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Bloomberg LP, is that the successful programs offered by Mayors Challenge winners could be used in other cities.
“The most effective city councils are bold, creative and proactive in solving problems and meeting the needs of residents — and we’ve launched the Mayors Challenge to help more of them succeed,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
Many of this year’s winners are incorporating AI technology into their work in cutting-edge ways, bringing municipal governments closer to the residents they serve, said James Anderson, head of government innovation programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies.
“Testing, learning and adapting new ideas is generally not funded with public funds,” Anderson said. “It is up to philanthropy to support experimentation.”
Vico Sotto, Mayor of Pasig City in the Philippines, said that being one of the winners of this year’s Mayors’ Challenge will accelerate his project to build floating parks in the Pasig River that will become a new community space and reduce flood threats in the area. Without Bloomberg Philanthropies’ support, the initiative wouldn’t be able to get off the ground for another year or two, Soto said.
“The government doesn’t have a good reputation when it comes to infrastructure maintenance,” Soto said. “So we will create a board of directors, including people who live in the area, so they will certainly not abandon these parks. They will take care of them because they use them, too.”
In Lafayette, Louisiana, the city diocese faced the opposite problem. The City of Lafayette wanted to upgrade parts of its sewer system, but because some parts were owned by homeowners, the city was not allowed to pay for them.
Mayor Monique Blanco Paulette said the mayors’ challenge encouraged her administration to find a solution that will now allow Lafayette to make repairs and, as a result, encourage development in the city. The plan was also named a winner of the Mayors Challenge.
“The Bloomberg philanthropies, the staff, Michael Bloomberg — all of them — have a global impact in ways that most people will never know,” said Pollitt, a Republican elected in 2023. “They bring a level of agency and they give you the space to be really creative and to come up with solutions that can change lives.”
South Bend’s Mueller said the mayors’ challenge comes at a time when more and more global problems need to be solved at the local level.
“Trust in government is at an all-time low, but local governments consistently perform better in surveys of their residents’ trust,” Mueller said. “It’s important for us to maintain this level of trust with our residents and build it further. That’s why we’re always looking for innovative ways to do things better and make the city a better place to live.”
The winners of the 2026 Bloomberg Philanthropy Competition are: Salt, Jordan; Barcelona, Spain; Beira, Mozambique; Belfast, Northern Ireland; Benin City, Nigeria; Boise, Idaho, United States; Budapest, Hungary; Cape Town, South Africa; Cartagena, Colombia; Fez, Morocco; Fukuoka, Japan; Ghaziabad, India; Ghent, Belgium; Kanifeng, Gambia; Lafayette, Louisiana, United States; Medellin, Colombia; Netanya, Israel; Pasig, Philippines; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; South Bend, Indiana, United States; Surabaya, Indonesia; Toronto, Canada; Turku, Finland; Visakhapatnam, India.
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