Seattle is one of five U.S. cities that have been chosen by the Code for America initiative to receive free development resources to create new web applications. Organizers say Seattle and the other cities -- Boston, Washington, D.C.; Boulder, Colo.; and Philadelphia -- "demonstrated not only cutting-edge thinking and a willingness to invest in long-term change, but also a fantastic idea for a web app that will make their city (and any other city who wants to use it) more efficient, transparent and participatory."

Sounds interesting. So what does our fair city have in mind? For the answer, we turned to Bill Schrier, the city's chief technology officer, who responded with this explanation via email.

The City is interested in an application which will help mobilize neighborhoods and communities to civic action. Ideally, the application would identify civic groups, non-profit organizations, social service and community organizations active in each neighborhood. It would serve as a continuous calendar of meetings, events and volunteer opportunities in neighborhoods, and then allow individual people to volunteer and connect with each other to do work on behalf of their neighborhoods.

Part of this would be better connecting the City government to individuals in neighborhoods, but it is really, also, more about giving communities a tool to connect groups and individuals with each other. Example projects might include clean green, maintaining traffic circles, blockwatches for drug dealing, connecting people to organizations like the rotary or local chamber of commerce or to resources such as senior centers. Ideally social media such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter would be used as well.

There would be an 'information' aspect for City government, e.g. getting the word out about a paving project or a community meeting about a proposed land use action.

Keep in mind that it's a vision at this point, not a specific blueprint, but still, it sounds very cool. Schrier says that normally such a project would cost in the range of $200,000. The development work will be free to the city under the Code for America initiative, with the city helping to guide the process. Code for America is currently seeking web developers, designers and project managers to work on the projects as fellows between January and November 2011.

Mashable broke the news of the municipal winners earlier this week.

Thanks to @isaacada1 for alerting us to this.