Gieß den Kiez (Water Your Neighbourhood) is an award-winning civic technology project developed by Technologiestiftung Berlin and CityLAB Berlin that empowers residents to help care for the city's urban trees during increasingly frequent drought periods. The interactive web platform displays a detailed map of Berlin's approximately 800,000 street and park trees, showing each tree's species, age, water needs, and recent watering activity. Citizens can register on the platform, adopt trees near their homes or workplaces, and log their watering activities, creating a collaborative, crowd-sourced urban tree care network. The project addresses a critical urban environmental challenge: as climate change brings hotter, drier summers to Berlin, the city's tree population faces increasing water stress, leading to premature leaf loss, declining health, and tree deaths that reduce urban canopy cover and its associated cooling, air quality, and biodiversity benefits. Municipal watering budgets are insufficient to maintain all trees, making citizen participation essential for urban forest resilience. Gieß den Kiez combines multiple open data sources including the Berlin tree registry (Baumkataster), rainfall data from the German Weather Service, soil moisture information, and pump location data to provide users with actionable information about which trees most urgently need watering. The platform's gamification elements and community features encourage sustained engagement, transforming a mundane task into a shared civic activity. Built entirely on open-source technology, the project has been replicated in other German cities and inspired similar initiatives across Europe. It exemplifies Berlin's approach to smart city innovation — using open data, participatory design, and lightweight digital tools to address real urban challenges while strengthening community cohesion. Gieß den Kiez has received multiple awards for civic innovation and digital participation.
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