Seven cities have the chance to change the world—or at least their section of it.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx recently announced the finalists in the U.S. Department of Transportation's Smart City Challenge. Now Austin, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Denver; Kansas City, Mo.; Pittsburgh; Portland, Ore.; and San Francisco must duke it out to become the first city to "fully integrate innovation technologies…into their transportation network."

Announced in December, the Smart City Challenge invited any mid-sized U.S. city to present ideas to make transportation safer, easier, and more reliable—with an eye toward self-driving and connected vehicles.

The DOT received "an overwhelming response," according to Foxx, who said the agency collected 78 applications in total. "We chose to select seven finalists instead of five because of their outstanding potential to transform the future of urban transportation," he added.

In this second phase of the competition, each city will receive a $100,000 grant to further develop their initial proposals, details of which were not published online.

The winner will be announced in June, selected based on their "ability to think big," and a provided roadmap detailing how the municipality will integrate the future of transportation into their city.

The Smart City champ will receive up to $40 million in funding from the DOT, while Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan will provide another $10 million. Plus, new partner Amazon Web Services promised $1 million in credits toward AWS Cloud and Professional Services.

"The creativity and determination of the applicants to envision a greener future represents the best of American ingenuity," Barbara Bennett, COO of Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc., said in a statement. "We hope to catalyze a transportation transformation across the country that will dramatically drive down emissions from this leading source of carbon pollution."