I launched this platform in February. Three weeks later a post took off, the first interviews arrived, and I got my first taste of what visibility does for work like this. Then I went back to building, mostly quietly, for months, and along the way I kept relearning the same lesson: the work moves when it is loud. Two weeks ago I went loud for the second time, deliberately this time, with far more to show. I want to put on one page what those fourteen days produced, partly so you can see it, and partly so I can.
The loop closed. That is the headline and it deserves plain words. In Toronto, a report you file now carries its whole story on one public page: sent to the city and your councillor at the same time, the city’s reference number captured so you never have to keep it, the city’s response when it comes, and the moment the city marks the work complete, checked against the city’s own records. And because “complete” is the city’s word, not yours, the page then asks you the question that matters: is it fixed, or is it still there? You get the final word. Toronto’s Auditor General first asked for outcome tracking in 2011. It exists now, and residents use it every day.
The report page itself was rebuilt around one idea, that you should be able to see what happened without knowing anything about how cities work. There is a section that says plainly what was done for you. The conversation and the record live in one place, and the design carries the reason the platform exists in the first place: you reported because you care about your street.
Somewhere in the middle of those fourteen days, the platform passed a thousand resident reports, across seven Ontario cities, on top of more than two million pieces of public infrastructure mapped underneath them.
Then the noise, and what it brought back. John Tory spent eight minutes with me on Newstalk 1010 and described the missing piece before I had said a word: you cannot track the outcome of your complaint. CTV Kitchener covered the platform inside a story about a repair residents had been waiting on for months. MiltonToday told its readers that reporting local issues just got easier. I published an open letter that comes with ready-made share cards, your ward, your city, two clicks and they are on your feed. I published a media kit for anyone who writes about cities, the full timeline of how this got built, and a newsletter for residents who want to follow the work. I gave a talk at Civic Tech Toronto about how one pothole became a reporting platform for any Canadian city, and I am arranging talks in two more cities now.
I also kept building the part that is pure joy. Pulse lets you fly over your city, the infrastructure, the reports, the life of the place, all on one living map. It is a different way to see where you live: from above, whole, worth taking care of.
And people came, which is the part I did not plan. I wrote to councillors in all seven cities to show them what their residents now have, and sat down with a few of them. I reached out to BIA managers whose strips this helps most. A residents’ association offered its channels to its own members. People from companies whose names you would recognize reached out, some with congratulations, some with questions I am still thinking about. Residents in cities I have not launched asked when their turn comes. On air, I was even offered credit for something the city built before me, and I corrected it, because a platform about accurate records cannot start its own record with a borrowed line.
Here is what two weeks like that teach you.
Obsession and stubbornness are the whole game. I wrote about that after my Civic Tech talk, and the fortnight confirmed it. Believe the idea, hold it while reasonable people tell you to soften it, and grow thick skin, because attention delivers pushback and applause on the same afternoon and you have to be able to take both without changing course.
Volume is my unfair advantage. I cannot outspend anyone, so I outwork them instead: features shipped because residents asked for them, posts written daily, showing up in every room that will have me. When you are one person working against slow systems, volume is not a tactic. It is the only lever, and it compounds, because every visible piece of work becomes a place for the next unexpected door to open. A former mayor. A professor. Executives. A stranger in Waterloo who knew exactly who I should meet. Luck needs somewhere to land, and work in public is the landing strip.
The platform has also outgrown its first description. People think of it as the pothole app, and I understand why, but seven cities of infrastructure, reports and outcomes have quietly become something larger. I am building on top of what the platform now knows, for the people who build and manage the places cities are made of: developers, property owners, businesses. That work will not be public the way the platform is. When it is ready, the people who need it will hear from me directly. And Solve Canada is open to partnerships with organizations that want this loop closed where they are.
All of it goes back to one belief. A city is not its buildings. A city is the people who decide to take care of it, and every screen in this platform exists to make caring take thirty seconds instead of an afternoon. The loop in Toronto had been asked for since 2011, by residents, by councillors, by the city’s own auditor, and now it is closed, working, public. That is not the end of anything. It is proof that when a resident speaks and the city answers, both start acting like the city belongs to them, because it does. Every Canadian heard in thirty seconds or less, city by city, town by town.
I am not slowing down.
Ahmed Nadar
Founder, Solve Canada
