Photo by Jessica Hodder. Nine advisers arrived in Miami this week to help us review the finalists in the first Knight Cities Challenge. One hundred twenty ideas moved forward, with emerging themes that included bringing public life into public spaces; supporting a changing urban economy; building connections between communities; and more. The challenge asked the question, What’s your best idea to make cities more successful?

With the help of these civic innovators, community activists, city planners, strategists and designers, we will identify a group of winners. We’ll announce the winners of the Knight Cities Challenge at the end of March.

If you are one of those finalists, you can expect to hear from us by mid-March. We may also follow up with several projects individually if we believe it is better suited to another funding option at Knight.

We’d like to thank the following people who have taken two days to join us:

• Stonly Baptiste, Urban.US
• Kate Catherall, 270 Strategies
• Amy Chiou, #WTFWeVote
• Fred Dust, IDEO
• Cesar Garcia-Pons, Perkins+Will
• Mejay Gula, PlaceLab, University of Chicago
• Bobby Martin, Original Champions of Design Agency
• Sarida Scott, Community Development Advocates of Detroit
• Teresa Tomlinson, mayor of Columbus, Ga.

The Knight Cities Challenge closed on Nov. 14 with over 7,000 applications. Jessica Hodder is the digital communications associate at Knight Foundation.