CityVoice | Devpost

Inspiration: Our project was inspired by the daily struggles of Houston residents navigating poorly maintained roads that pose safety risks and damage vehicles. We recognized that traditional reporting systems are often slow, bureaucratic, and disconnected from the communities they serve, leaving potholes, road hazards, and infrastructure issues unaddressed for months or even years. By creating a community-driven platform that allows residents to instantly report road conditions with photos and precise GPS coordinates, we're empowering citizens to take ownership of their neighborhoods and hold local governments accountable for infrastructure maintenance. This project transforms passive frustration into active civic engagement, ensuring that every voice in the community can contribute to making Houston's streets safer and more accessible for all residents. Our project addresses the critical issue of poorly maintained roads in Houston, which pose significant safety risks and cause vehicle damage. Traditional reporting methods are often ineffective, leading to prolonged neglect of potholes and other infrastructure problems. Our community-driven platform empowers residents to report road conditions instantly with photos and precise GPS coordinates. This system enables citizens to actively participate in improving their neighborhoods and holds local government accountable for infrastructure maintenance, transforming passive frustration into active civic engagement and making Houston's streets safer and more accessible for everyone.

What is does:

CityVoice is a civic engagement platform that empowers Houston residents to improve their community by allowing them to propose new ideas, vote on initiatives, and report local issues. Through the platform, users can submit detailed proposals for neighborhood improvements, which are then put to a community vote. To ensure fairness, a simple verification process confirms participants are Houston residents before they can contribute. In addition to shaping policy, residents can use an interactive map to report infrastructure problems in real-time, pinpointing the exact location of issues like potholes or broken streetlights and uploading photos for clarity. This data creates a live heatmap of problem areas, giving city officials clear, actionable insights to prioritize repairs. Ultimately, CityVoice transforms confusing bureaucratic processes into a single, transparent system where every resident can directly help shape a better Houston.

How we build it: CityVoice is built on a modern, scalable architecture that combines React's component-based frontend with Supabase's real-time PostgreSQL database, creating a seamless civic engagement experience that feels as responsive as your favorite social media app. The platform leverages PostGIS for precise spatial data handling, allowing residents to report issues with GPS accuracy while the system automatically validates locations within Houston's city boundaries using geospatial queries. Our intelligent backend integrates classification to instantly determine if proposals fall within city jurisdiction, while implementing robust authentication through Auth0 and KYC verification to ensure only legitimate Houston residents can participate in civic decisions. The entire system is designed with real-time updates using optimistic UI patterns, so when you vote on a proposal or submit a road report, the changes appear instantly across all users' screens, creating a truly connected community experience that transforms passive residents into active civic participants.

Challenge we ran into: As our first-ever hackathon, this weekend was an intense and rewarding learning experience from start to finish. The initial challenge was brainstorming a project that truly fit the social impact track, pushing us to think critically about our goals. From there, we dove headfirst into a steep learning curve with unfamiliar technologies like Supabase and Auth0, which led to that classic developer rite of passage: spending hours debugging what seemed like a simple database connection. Alongside these technical hurdles, we were also learning to manage our team workflow on GitHub, coordinating our code and communicating effectively under pressure. Every obstacle became a valuable lesson in perseverance and collaboration, making the final result even more meaningful.

Accomplishment proud of:

Our greatest accomplishment from this hackathon was transforming a series of challenging lessons into a single, tangible, and functioning product. We are incredibly proud that every feature is a direct reflection of a hurdle we overcame: the secure user sign-in page stands as our victory over learning Auth0 from scratch, and every successfully stored proposal in our Supabase database is proof that we conquered that frustrating connection bug through sheer perseverance. This integration was only possible because we quickly learned to manage our collaborative workflow on GitHub, turning individual efforts into a cohesive whole. Ultimately, we aren't just proud of the final app, but of the fact that we translated the intense pressure of our first hackathon into a finished product built upon a brand new foundation of skills.

What we learned:

This hackathon was a powerful, hands-on lesson in translating new technologies and teamwork strategies into a functional product under pressure. We learned how to implement a complex service like Auth0 from scratch, building a secure user sign-in from documentation to deployment. Perhaps more importantly, we learned the critical value of perseverance in debugging; conquering a frustrating Supabase database connection taught us systematic problem-solving for what is now our application's core feature. On the collaboration front, we learned how to effectively manage a shared workflow on GitHub, turning individual coding efforts into a single, cohesive project. The ultimate lesson was seeing how these distinct skills—technical implementation, debugging, and teamwork—interlock to rapidly transform a concept into a real-world application.

What’s next for CityVoice:

The future of CityVoice focused on making the platform smarter, more trustworthy, and ready to scale. Our next step is to introduce an AI-powered assistant to help analyze new proposals, ensuring they are practical for the city and constructive for public discussion. To further boost the platform's credibility, we plan to launch an enhanced verification system, giving residents a way to confirm their identity and making the community's feedback even more reliable for city officials. Underpinning these advancements will be a focus on scalability and user experience, optimizing our entire system to support a growing community while continually refining the interface to ensure CityVoice remains fast, intuitive, and seamless for everyone.