Website, Local government, digital participation
apkaimes.lv, the portal of Riga's neighbourhoods
apkaimes.lv is Riga City's portal about the city's 58 neighbourhoods, their residents, associations and civic participation. CreateIT built the portal and has developed it since 2017. It has an interactive neighbourhood map, a page with statistics for every neighbourhood, a room booking system for the Riga NGO House and, since 2026, Riga's participatory budget projects too.
- Client
- Riga City Council
- Sector
- Local governmentdigital participation
- Period
- since 2017
- Services
- DevelopmentInteractive mapBooking systemData migrationMaintenance and security
- Platform
- WordPressPHPFullCalendarOpenStreetMap
- Link
- apkaimes.lv
01, Chapter
The map and neighbourhood pages
The portal is built around an interactive map of Riga. Clicking a neighbourhood takes visitors to its page, with statistics, news, projects and local associations. Each of the 58 neighbourhoods has its own place in the city's digital space.
We built custom plugins for projects, neighbourhood coordinators, seminars and funding calls, so that city staff can publish this content themselves.
02, Chapter
Development in releases
Since 2023 the portal has been developed in versioned releases. Every change starts with a request and an estimate, each release passes acceptance tests before going live, and the work is signed off with a handover report. That way the city always knows what is changing and when.
In 2023 we ran a performance diagnosis, redesigned the funding call and integration sections, and added a newsletter, a new home page and a print view.
03, Chapter
Room booking at the NGO House
We built a room booking system for the Riga NGO House. A public calendar shows how busy each room and all rooms are, and rooms can be filtered by neighbourhood and capacity.
Booking takes four steps. Rooms can be booked once or on a recurring basis, time is chosen in 30-minute slots, and the chosen slot is held for 10 minutes so nobody else can take it in the meantime. Every request has a status, the person booking gets an email about any change, and a confirmation is also produced as a PDF.
We handed the system over in 2025, together with data migration from the previous solution and training for administrators.
04, Chapter
The participatory budget on apkaimes.lv
In 2026 we moved Riga's participatory budget projects from balso.riga.lv to apkaimes.lv. Using migration scripts, we carried over the projects with their progress logs, images and attachments, and the projects can now be filtered by year, neighbourhood and status.
The same year we reinstalled the portal in a clean environment, hardened its security and moved it to a new server. Content editors sign in with two-factor authentication, and the portal has accessibility tools.
05, Video
The neighbourhood map in action
06, Chapter
The result
apkaimes.lv is one of CreateIT's longest-running projects, and the portal keeps growing with the city.
- An interactive map and a page for each of Riga's 58 neighbourhoods.
- A room booking system for the NGO House, with a public calendar, recurring bookings and email notifications.
- An archive of participatory budget projects, moved over from balso.riga.lv.
- Versioned releases with acceptance tests, and hardened security.
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