Press Kit

Everything a journalist or partner needs to write about Cittopia accurately. If something is missing, email press@cittopia.com.

Version 1.0 Updated 2026-05-31 Maintainer Tunç Meriç

One-line description #

Cittopia is civic infrastructure for European cities — a SaaS platform that gives every municipality, district, and region a public profile built on open data, plus paid tools for administrators to act on it.

Quick facts #

Name
Cittopia (cit-TOH-pee-ah)
Founder
Tunç Meriç (tunc@cittopia.com · LinkedIn: /in/tuncmeric)
Founded
2025
Headquarters
Warszawa, Poland
Stage
Pre-seed (pursuing EU funding alongside private investment)
Category
Civic-tech · GovTech · SaaS · Open data
Audience
EU cities and regions; individual citizens; civic-tech NGOs; journalists
Pilot scope
30 European cities at v0.1 — target 500+ at v1.0
Pilot cities (full data)
Warszawa, İstanbul, Sofia, Berlin, plus 26 EU capitals + candidate-country capitals
Languages
English now; Polish + Turkish in Q3 2026 (see methodology page)
Pricing
Free public profiles for every city · Paid SaaS for administrators (pricing page)
Methodology
Open and versioned at cittopia.com/methodology
Press contact
press@cittopia.com · response within 24h on weekdays
Partnership contact
partnerships@cittopia.com

Elevator pitches (use any) #

15 seconds

Cittopia gives every European city a public profile built on open data, with paid tools for administrators. Think of it as a citizen-readable, weekly-refreshable urban indicator nobody else publishes in that form.

60 seconds

Cittopia is civic infrastructure for European cities. The free public profile shows any city's score on The Pulse — a nine-dimension composite indicator built on Eurostat and city open-data feeds — plus its sister cities, citizen-engagement signals, and regional EU-funding pipeline. City administrators pay for tools to claim and customise their profile, find partnership opportunities, and track funding calls. The methodology is open. The pilot covers 30 cities; the roadmap targets 500 plus. Cittopia operates at the gap left by SDSN's academic index, Numbeo's crowdsourced ratings, and the Eurostat data layer — none of which are simultaneously citizen-readable, methodologically transparent, and weekly-refreshable.

Quote-ready statements #

Five statements you can quote verbatim. Each is attributable to Tunç Meriç, founder of Cittopia:

"Most participation metrics measure inputs — how many citizens responded to a consultation. We measure whether the city actually responded to them. The gap between 'collecting input' and 'closing the loop' is the story of European municipal democracy in 2026."
"Every city says it listens to its citizens. Almost none can prove it. The Listening Score makes the proof, or the lack of it, visible."
"SDSN's European Cities SDG Index is the academic reference. Cittopia is the citizen-and-administrator workbench. The same data flows partially populate both, but the questions they answer are different."
"We publish the methodology before it's audited. That's deliberate. The score is more useful if civic-tech practitioners can attack it now than if we polish it for two more years and ship something fewer people trust."
"The voivodeship marshal offices manage one to three billion euros each across a seven-year EU funds cycle. They're the most important entities in the Polish economy that most non-Poles have never heard of. Civic-tech in Poland is a regional-government conversation, not a national one."

Founder bio #

One sentence

Tunç Meriç is the founder of Cittopia, a civic-tech SaaS platform building open-data urban indicators and citizen-participation infrastructure for European cities.

Paragraph

Tunç Meriç founded Cittopia in 2025 after recognising the gap in the European urban-indicator landscape: tools that were either academic and inaccessible (SDSN, JRC), or accessible but methodologically thin (Numbeo). Based in Warszawa with Turkish heritage, he bridges the EU's largest civic-tech regional ecosystem (Poland's 16 marshal offices) and one of its most under-mapped (Türkiye's 30 metropolitan municipalities). Cittopia's pilot scope reflects this — deliberate coverage of mid-tier and candidate-country capitals that existing tools deprioritise.

Full bio (200 words)

Tunç Meriç is the founder and CEO of Cittopia, a civic-tech SaaS company building open-data urban indicators and citizen-participation infrastructure for European cities. He founded the company in 2025 after recognising that the existing landscape of urban indicators left a structural gap: none combined open methodology, citizen readability, and weekly refresh rhythm in a single tool readable by both a citizen on mobile and a mayor's chief of staff. Cittopia's flagship indicator is The Pulse — a nine-dimension composite score for European cities — complemented by The Agora citizen-participation product and the proprietary Listening Score measuring administrative responsiveness. Based in Warszawa with Turkish heritage, Tunç bridges Poland's marshal-office ecosystem and Türkiye's metropolitan-municipality landscape. He is pursuing EU funding (Horizon Europe Cluster 2 Democracy, Digital Europe GenAI in Public Administration) alongside private investment, with publication of the methodology white paper, the Listening Score formula, and the Cittopia Insights research pipeline as the foundation of the credibility stack required to operate as a public-sector vendor in the EU. Tunç speaks English, Turkish, and conversational Polish.

Datapoints worth knowing #

How we describe our position vs adjacent tools #

If your story needs Cittopia in context:

vs SDSN European Cities SDG Index
SDSN is the academic-anchor reference (annual report, ~80 cities). Cittopia is the citizen-readable workbench (quarterly refresh, weekly Listening Score updates, 500-city target). Full comparison.
vs Numbeo
Numbeo is crowdsourced opinion (broad coverage, methodologically thin). Cittopia is open-data-derived (narrower coverage today, methodologically transparent).
vs Living-in.EU
Living-in.EU is data infrastructure (the plumbing 130+ EU cities publish through). Cittopia is the indicator + UI layer that sits on top of that and similar infrastructure.
vs JRC Statistical Audit framework
JRC is methodological gold standard for composite indicators. Cittopia's methodology v0.2 is on track for JRC audit submission.

Logos & assets #

Embargo & interviews #

For data-study or major-announcement coverage, we offer 48-72h embargo to qualifying outlets. Email press@cittopia.com with subject Embargo request.

For interviews: Tunç does approximately one press interview per week. Email press@cittopia.com with subject Press interview request, your outlet, your specific angle (one paragraph), and three time-window options. We respond within 24h on weekdays.

One more thing. If you find an error in any data point on this page or anywhere on cittopia.com — we treat that as a press-quality issue and want to know. Email methodology@cittopia.com. Corrections get a public note and credit.
Last updated 31 May 2026 by Tunç Meriç Suggest an edit