1) In 2015, Stuttgart was lacking open data standards and APIs, but looked to examples set in Ulm and Zurich to begin establishing air quality monitoring networks. 2) Citizen empowerment workshops and open hardware sensor kits were developed to engage the public and collect air quality data via crowdsourcing. 3) Successful public relations helped scale the project and results from the combined efforts included a growing air quality dataset and opportunities for civic participation like data visualization contests.