Vol. 01 / Issue 01

Spring · 2026

● Drafted in Saint Paul, Minnesota — for every American downtown.

A civic-technology atelier · Saint Paul, MN

The American downtownisn't over.It's being rewritten — from Saint Paul, outward.

Open-Civ is the civic-software studio that grew out of the Saint Paul Skyway Map. We build, prove, and replicate the digital infrastructure of downtown life — wayfinding, community programming, and the data they generate — and ship it city to city, at municipal-budget pricing.

§ 01Where this thinking lives

Saint Paul is one of the few American cities still treating its downtown as worth investing in. The map at spskyway.com is the result. Open-Civ exports the method.

Read the thesis↘See the work travel→

Fig. A

Saint Paul's skyway, rendered as legible civic infrastructure — a network of bridges, tenants, and decisions you can actually see.

Open · Civ — Saint Paul, MNFrom one city, to every cityPrivacy by architectureCivic-fundedContinue

From Saint Paul, outwardA new manual for the American downtownWayfinding · Activation · InsightsCivic software that travelsPrivacy by architectureCommunity-owned, not extractiveFounder-led · Saint Paul, MNFrom Saint Paul, outwardA new manual for the American downtownWayfinding · Activation · InsightsCivic software that travelsPrivacy by architectureCommunity-owned, not extractiveFounder-led · Saint Paul, MNFrom Saint Paul, outwardA new manual for the American downtownWayfinding · Activation · InsightsCivic software that travelsPrivacy by architectureCommunity-owned, not extractiveFounder-led · Saint Paul, MN

§ 03 — What Saint Paul Built

Three reinforcing streams. One codebase. Built where it's used.

The map produces the data. The data funds the next city. The next city deepens the network — and Saint Paul stays the place this thinking is sharpened.

Fig. B — Wayfinding

For: cities, downtown alliances, BIDs

§ 03 / I — Stream I

Wayfinding

Skyway Maps — public navigation utilities for downtown pedestrian networks.

A live, web-based map of every block, bridge, tenant, restroom, and event in your skyway. Multi-tenant by design — each city is a configured instance with local branding. Built first for Saint Paul, designed to deploy in any North American skywalk city.

→In-skyway proximity wayfinding
→Live tenant directory and operating hours
→Event activations surfaced in-context
→Quarterly public impact reporting

Fig. C — Activation

For: nonprofits, neighborhood orgs, chambers, faith communities

§ 03 / II — Stream II

Activation

Storefront and restaurant programming software for community organizations.

Software-as-a-program-service. Eat App operationalizes progressive dinners — participant matching, host logistics, RSVPs, dietary handling, day-of coordination. Skyway Social powers mixers and skyway-wide social hours. Each tool ships with the playbook that made it work.

→Eat App — progressive-dinner operations
→Skyway Social — community mixer logistics
→Tiered licensing for nonprofits and chambers
→Method + software, not just a database

Fig. D — Insights

For: cities, retailers, academic researchers, consultants

§ 03 / III — Stream III

Insights

Anonymized downtown foot-traffic data, generated by the network itself.

As cities adopt the map, the deployments produce a privacy-respecting record of how downtowns actually move — without individual tracking, without third-party data brokers. Skyway Insights makes that record subscribable to anyone with a use case: planners, retailers, researchers, consultants.

→Aggregated, on-device anonymization
→Cross-city benchmarking as the network grows
→Tiered access by use case — civic, commercial, research
→First publicly-backed downtown dataset of its kind

§ 04 — Origin

Where the work is proven

The Saint Paul Skyway Map — the prototype for what comes next.

A live, public wayfinding utility for one of the country's most experimental skyway cities — built and operated from inside it, then packaged for everywhere else.

Live · spskyway.comField specimen, embedded

Open in new tab↗

Loading specimen…

Fig. C — Specimen 01 · Saint Paul, MN · Live in productionBuilt & operated by Open-Civ · running on the network it serves

Cutline 01 — by the numbers

Network

01 / 04

5 mi

71 city blocks · skyway-connected

Tenants Indexed

02 / 04

200+

Live public directory

Funder Model

03 / 04

2-Way

City + Downtown Alliance

Build vs. Custom

04 / 04

≈ ⅒

Same code, multiple cities

Underwritten by

The City of Saint Paul
Saint Paul Downtown Alliance

In service since

2024 — running every day on the network it serves, learning what travels.

Cutline 02 — operator's note

The map shows up at every skyway event, every winter freeze, every closure — quietly, the way good infrastructure should. It just keeps working.
— Operator's note · spskyway.com

Saint Paul didn't wait for a national vendor to build this. It funded it, ran it, and let an operator-led studio carry the lessons outward. That's the model Open-Civ exports.

Open the live map in a new tab↗

§ 05 — The Travel

From one skyway city, the conversation is already moving.

Open-Civ is multi-tenant from the first commit. The Saint Paul deployment is the prototype — every other city is a configured instance of the same platform, with local branding, local tenant data, local events. We're in early conversations with peer downtowns across North America, on their terms, on their timing.

Fig. E — How the work travels outward from Saint Paul

Joint sponsorship

Each deployment is co-funded by the city and the downtown alliance — proven first in Saint Paul. Neither side carries the full cost; both stay accountable.

A 90-day runway

From “we're interested” to a live tenant-ready instance, typically a 90-day pilot. The deployment playbook was written in Saint Paul and travels with the code.

Built for civic budgets

Pricing is scoped to network size and ongoing support — tiered, joint-funded, structured for municipalities and nonprofits, not enterprise software. Open a conversation.

§ 06 — Three Tracks

Built for the people who actually run downtowns.

Track 01

For peer downtowns

Bring the Saint Paul method to your city — without rebuilding it from scratch.

Joint sponsorship between the city and the downtown alliance, scoped to your network. Quarterly reporting. Annual renewal tied to deliverables. Shared ownership by design — no single-funder risk, no extractive vendor relationship.

//Joint city + alliance funding
//Documented deployment playbook
//Quarterly public impact reporting
//Multi-tenant, locally branded

Open a city conversation→

Track 02

For nonprofits & community orgs

Run your programs the way Saint Paul runs its skyway socials.

Eat App and Skyway Social are sold with the playbook that made them work — community programs proven over years of real-world use, packaged so a small team can run them without building software from scratch.

//Eat App — progressive dinners, end-to-end
//Skyway Social — mixers + activations
//Tiered by org size and program count
//Optional program-support retainers

License a program→

Track 03

For data subscribers

The first publicly-backed, privacy-respecting downtown foot-traffic dataset.

Skyway Insights starts with the Saint Paul deployment and grows with the network. Anonymized at the device — no individual records, no third-party brokers. Useful today; uniquely valuable as cross-city coverage compounds.

//Aggregated, on-device anonymization
//Tiered access: civic, commercial, research
//Cross-city benchmarking as the network grows
//Sample data brief on request

Request a sample brief→

§ 07 — Architecture

One codebase. Three streams. Privacy-respecting by architecture.

The map produces the data. The data funds the next deployment. The next deployment deepens the network. Each stream reinforces the other two — and no individual-user data ever leaves the device.

Layer 01

Multi-tenant core

Each city is a configuration of the same platform — local branding, local content, shared engineering.

Layer 02

Reusable program logic

Eat App and Skyway Social use the platform's identity, scheduling, and notification primitives.

Layer 03

On-device anonymization

Foot-traffic signals are aggregated locally; only aggregates are ever transmitted. No PII, ever.

Layer 04

Documented playbook

The deployment runbook ships with the code. Replication is configuration, not reinvention.

§ 08 — From the Studio

I build civic software where I live.

Founder & operator

Jacob Ramos

Builder of the Saint Paul Skyway Map · based in Saint Paul, MN.

Saint Paul is one of the few American cities still treating downtown as worth fighting for. I started Open-Civ to make sure the software for that work didn't have to come from somewhere else.

The Saint Paul Skyway Map is the prototype: a public web utility, jointly funded by the city and the downtown alliance, live every day on the network it serves. I run it. The codebase, the content updates, the uptime, the impact reports — all of it.

Open-Civ is the studio that grew up around that work. We package what Saint Paul figured out so the next downtown doesn't have to figure it out alone — and we keep the studio rooted here, where the work is sharpened by use.

Founder, full-time

VC dollars taken

Live deployment · St. Paul

∞

Skyways yet to map

§ 09 — Inquiries

If your downtown is worth fighting for, we should talk.

Open-Civ works with cities, alliances, and nonprofits who believe their downtown is worth investing in — and who want the work proven somewhere first. There's no pitch deck. There's a working map in Saint Paul, and a documented way to bring the same thinking to your network.

Direct line

jacob@open-civ.com↗ open thread

See the work in Saint Paul

spskyway.com↗ live deployment

Quiet inquiries welcome

Conversations stay confidential until both sides decide otherwise.

What to send

For city staff
Your downtown context, your alliance counterpart, and the rough budget cycle you're working in.
For alliances / BIDs
What's underserved by your current wayfinding — and who at City Hall already knows it.
For nonprofits
What program you run, how often, and the operational pain you'd most like to delete.
For data subscribers
The use case. We respond with a sample brief — no NDA gymnastics.

Replies typically within 48 hrs. Studio hours: Saint Paul time.