CleanCity

Inspiration

While attending a Des Plaines City Council meeting, I heard residents voice a recurring frustration: street litter and graffiti were degrading the community, yet there was no streamlined way for the city to visualize the problem or for neighbors to coordinate a response. As a Political Science major, I saw a gap between civic complaint and community action.

What it does

CleanCity is a "Nature-meets-Urban" hub that transforms passive reporting into active restoration.

Report: Users drop color-coded pins—from Option 1 (Low/Yellow) to Option 5 (Complete/Green)—to map pollution hotspots.

Organize: It auto-generates events based on high-severity clusters.

Incentivize: It bridges the gap with local government by tracking community service hours and tax credits.

How we built it

We utilized Google Gemini as our primary collaborator. AI assisted in every phase: from generating the UX wireframes and writing the React architecture to troubleshooting complex state management for the interactive map.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating expertise from Web Development, Education, and Engineering was a hurdle. We faced accessibility challenges, we used colorful icons to make navigation more direct and simple. We also tackled low turnout (a common civic issue) by implementing "Friendly Competition" through city-wide leaderboards.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

We successfully built a full-featured prototype that feels both "urban" and "organic." We were able to create a solution (reports and organized events) to a social issue that is directly related to real life problems in our daily life through the use of the most advanced form of technology.

What we learned

AI is the great equalizer. This project proved that a Political Science major can lead a technical team to solve real-world infrastructure issues. We learned that the most effective civic tools are those that turn "Policy Problems" into "Gamified Solutions."