Zencity has acquired Commonplace, which sells “engagement” software used for zoning, planning and other tasks.
Clients include the city of London, Westminster Council, Leeds City Council, Camden Council and London’s mayor, according to a statement announcing the deal.
Terms were not disclosed.
In 11 years, customers have used Commonplace software for more than 3,500 projects in the U.K., according to the statement.
Zencity, which launched in 2016, says it serves more than 400 public agencies in 45 states and six countries. The company has its headquarters in New York City and also maintains offices in Tel Aviv, London and Vancouver.
“Commonplace has unique expertise and capabilities in engagement around zoning and land use, and we’re excited to roll this out to our U.S. customers as well,” Zencity CEO Eyal Feder-Levy told Government Technology via email. “We’re also excited to strengthen collaboration and idea exchange between local governments of both countries.”
He said the company recently hosted a London symposium that included “key leaders” from Louisville and Chicago, with a similar U.S.-based event in the works.
Like the case in the U.S., government officials in the U.K. are “grappling with the same challenges around public safety, housing, social services and others,” Feder-Levy said. “From a technology perspective, historically, U.K. governments were quicker to adopt software in government operation than the U.S., but over the last few years that process has slowed a bit and now we see a lot of similarities between the two markets.”
The acquisition follows news last year that Zencity had raised $40 million in a Series C funding round.
Since then, the company has been “doubling down in AI,” Feder-Levy said, and increased its engineering team by more than 50 percent.
“Our mission is to set the standard for how local governments understand their communities’ needs and use that to take effective action,” he said. “This year we are planning to make that a reality.”
That work includes investment geared toward making the Zencity platform what he called the “source of truth for public sentiment and input,” a goal that AI will help the company achieve, he said.
