Residents
Take part in local life
- Events, spaces, businesses and second-hand between neighbours.
- Proposals, consultations and participatory budgeting.
- Reports with photos and updates you can follow.
Your town's digital piazza
Municipality and residents, closer every day.
A shared space for clear communication, participation in local life and care for the commons. Alongside associations and local businesses, through events, services and opportunities to meet.
The pilot project is in Monteprandone. A piazza designed to bring the administration and local community closer.
The same piazza in the app and on the web: every building is a section.
How it works
Clear dialogue, a shared process
The municipality organises communications and participation processes; residents contribute ideas and reports. Updates help everyone understand how the work is progressing.
Residents contribute
An idea for the neighbourhood, a contribution to a consultation or a report with a photo and location.
The municipality coordinates and informs
Staff organise requests, update statuses and share information and assessments.
The community follows progress
Residents and the administration can consult published updates and outcomes in the same space.
Local life, every day
The ten sections, along the town's road
Ten places to explore services, participation and local life. Hover over a building: the people show you what happens there.
Concerts, festivals and gatherings bring the community together. For events requiring a booking, find your QR-code ticket here.
Information about offices and services, helping you find your way and the right municipal contact.
Official communications in a recognisable place, with reactions and comments to support dialogue.
Proposals and discussion of ideas, consultations and participatory budgeting: tools chosen by the municipality to involve its community.
A space to plan activities together and gather useful contributions to local life.
Photos and location help staff identify what needs attention. The municipality can share updates on the work.
A shop window for local businesses and a second-hand market between neighbours, supporting relationships and the local economy.
Spaces and equipment to share, with bookings and collaboration pacts for the care of the commons.
Official data and links to civic monitoring, helping people understand the area and discuss issues using shared information.
Municipalities sharing initiatives and opportunities, each with its own piazza and publishing choices.
Who it's for
For residents, businesses and the municipality
Businesses and associations
Bring the local community together
- Shop window, orders and chat with customers, no commissions.
- Events with booking and tickets.
- More opportunities to meet and exchange locally.
Municipality
Communicate and organise public input
- Requests and activities gathered in an operational view.
- Participation processes with objectives and tools chosen by the municipality.
- Data and analysis to support municipal staff.
From listening to outcomes
Support proposals, step by step
A clear process for gathering contributions and sharing municipal updates.
- Idea
Signed proposal
Title, explanation and the author's name.
- In discussion
Arguments for and against
Arguments for and against, signed.
- In voting
The community participates
Consultation or voting, following the rules and objectives of the process.
- Closed
Published outcome
The municipality can publish outcomes and explain its choices.
- Not accepted
Decision and reasons
The municipality can explain the reasons for its decision.
The same goes for reports and for proposals about the platform itself.
For municipalities
A working space for the municipality and its community
Utopolis brings together communications, services and participation tools. The same functional foundation is designed for municipalities of different sizes, with configurable modules.
- One priceAll included, free for residents and businesses.
- SPID and CIEIntegration to be configured with the municipality, where applicable.
- Accessible designAttention to readability, navigation and people’s different needs.
- Several municipalities, one installationUnions and networks, each with its own piazza.
- Federation, your choiceDecide what to share and with whom.
- Simple procurementWe can explore adoption and the municipality’s procurement options together.
Utopolis decides
Ideal because citizens designed it.
Administrations and residents can suggest improvements to the platform and discuss development priorities.
Example: three proposals about the platform and their status
Real-time co-design of eventsin development
Every closed process linked to a municipal actplanned
Public report generated from the analysis dataunder evaluation
The phone app
What the phone app does
Follow municipal communications, take part and discover local activities from your phone. The web app also works in a mobile browser.
A piazza with a camera
From building to building; in the evening the lights come on.
Map of the area
Differently shaped markers, readable without colour.
Geolocated reports
Photos and location to describe the issue and follow updates.
Tickets and bookings
QR code in your profile, checked at the door.
“Create”, within thumb's reach
Event, proposal, report, listing.
Accessible
Readable text, recognisable controls and attention to assistive technologies.
Screen by screen
The screens
Ten screens exploring the main features, with Monteprandone data. Swipe through the gallery or use the arrows.
01 / 10The piazzaAn overview of Utopolis places and features. 
02 / 10EventsUpcoming, calendar, categories and bookings. 
03 / 10ParticipateProposals, consultations and participatory budgeting. 
04 / 10ReportsReports and updates shared by the administration. 
05 / 10MarketSecond-hand between residents and verified businesses. 
06 / 10Municipal notice boardThe municipality’s profile, also followed from the fediverse. 
07 / 10MapResults within 10 km, by distance. 
08 / 10CreateA starting point for contributing to activities and local life. 
09 / 10Network of municipalitiesConnected towns on the map, shared events and listings. 
10 / 10ObservatoryPopulation, funded projects and local risks: official sources to understand the municipality and support discussion with shared data.
Our mission
Caring for our community, together.
Give every municipality a shared digital space to listen to residents, communicate effectively and support participation in local life. Utopolis connects the administration, residents, associations and neighbourhood businesses.
We believe in everyday collaboration and care for the commons. We want to make it easier to find information, share ideas and organise initiatives, so technology supports the municipality’s work and the relationships between people.
For tech nerds
Software and method, supporting dialogue.
Utopolis is an application developed for municipal life, integrating open-source participation software. Here are its technical foundations and the references informing its design.
- Application · Web and mobile
- The web uses React and Vite; the mobile app React Native, Expo and TypeScript. The piazza combines SVG and Three.js views; maps use Leaflet.
- Services and data · APIs and Supabase
- The backend uses Node.js, TypeScript and Express, with Zod validation and OpenAPI documentation. Supabase provides PostgreSQL, authentication and file storage; the APIs enforce permissions per municipality.
- Proposals · Your Priorities
- To collect and discuss proposals, we integrate Your Priorities, by Citizens Foundation, on an instance we manage. Proposals, support and arguments for and against are available through the Utopolis interface.
- Opinions · The Pol.is approach, with red-dwarf
- Consultations collect agreement, disagreement or a pass on statements. Our Python/FastAPI service uses red-dwarf’s Agora pipeline for Pol.is-style analysis of opinion groups and common ground across groups. With limited data, it returns simple counts. Analysis helps people understand contributions; decisions remain with people and institutions.
- Search · Semantic embeddings
- Search can combine text matching with embedding similarity: numerical representations of meaning. The code uses them to rank second-hand listings and find affinities between contributions, people and associations. The service exposes an OpenAI-compatible API with a configurable model. In the second-hand market, text search remains available if the service is unavailable. Matching personal contributions requires consent; without configured embeddings, it can use declared topics.
- Semantic Web · Linked data in JSON-LD
- Deliberation data uses JSON-LD and the deliberation vocabulary. Proposals, arguments, supporting or opposing relationships and processes can be described in a format other software can read, providing a basis for civic data interoperability.
- Federation · ActivityPub and Fedify
- ActivityPub, through Fedify, enables public content to be shared with the fediverse. The municipality configures channels, content and sharing rules.
- Co-design · Yjs and WebSocket
- Collaborative tools use Yjs and WebSocket synchronisation. The CRDT structure merges concurrent changes in the same workspace.
Participation designed with care
The design draws on participatory and deliberative democracy research. Information, consultation and collaboration are different forms of involvement: our aim is to clarify rules, objectives and the use of contributions in each process. Reasoned discussion, access to information and feedback on outcomes inform the tools, respecting the roles of residents and the administration.
References: Arnstein (1969), levels of participation; De Cindio and Trentini (2014), digital citizenship; Goñi, Hughes and Lynn (2026), civic ecosystems. These references inform the design of processes and interactions.
The project evolves module by module. Integrations depend on municipal configuration and connected services; some views may contain demonstration data.
The European framework
Civic services, rights and shared responsibilities.
Participation and care for the commons also call for attention to data, accessibility and communication between systems. These European references guide the design of Utopolis; the requirements depend on the modules enabled and the use agreed with each authority.
- GDPR · Personal data protection
The APIs enforce permissions by municipality. Semantic matching of personal contributions provides for separate, revocable consent.
The authority and its data protection officer need to define legal bases, privacy notices, roles, retention periods, rights handling and, where necessary, an impact assessment. Consent to matching does not replace the legal basis for other services.
- Interoperable Europe Act · Connected systems
Documented APIs, JSON-LD and a vocabulary for deliberative data help other software understand and exchange information.
The regulation addresses interoperability of trans-European digital public services. The authority needs to check whether the service requirements trigger an interoperability assessment: open formats and APIs provide a technical basis, alongside agreements and procedures.
- Accessibility · Participation without barriers
Keyboard navigation, readability and use with assistive technology are design criteria. Checks completed so far cover selected views, rather than the entire platform.
The public service being launched requires technical and manual checks, an accessibility statement and a feedback channel, in line with the obligations that apply to the authority.
- AI Act · Tools that serve people
Embeddings and opinion analysis help people find content and understand contributions. Each participation process should explain the role of these tools and of the people using their results.
Each use needs its own assessment: risk classification, provider and deployer roles, and applicable transparency, literacy and human oversight duties. The technology’s name alone does not establish compliance.
- eIDAS · Identity for public services
Regulation (EU) 910/2014, amended by 2024/1183
The code provides a connection to an identity broker for SPID/CIE sign-in. Activation and configuration are agreed with the municipality.
Assurance levels and access arrangements depend on the service. The European Digital Identity Wallet is a reference for the project’s development; EUDI Wallet integration is not currently available.
- Open Data · Useful, reusable information
APIs and structured data can support the reuse of public information and links to its sources.
Ownership, licence, provenance, freshness and reuse restrictions need to be checked for each dataset. Publishing open data does not mean making participants’ personal data public.
A service’s compliance depends on its software, configuration and the authority’s procedures. This section sets out the references and the work to undertake together; it does not certify the platform. The EU emblem identifies the European framework; it does not imply sponsorship or endorsement by European institutions.
The app
How to get in
- Open Utopolis
From your phone or computer, the same piazza. Today at cloud.carnivalsociety.com/utopolis/app, soon at app.utopolis.it.
- Sign in with your email
Sign in with your account. Any SPID or CIE integrations need to be activated and configured with the municipality.
- Choose your municipality
The piazza fills with your town's notices and events; the menu adapts to your role.
