7. Sidewalk Labs
"Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company working to make cities more sustainable and affordable for all. We create products, invest in new companies, and help plan innovative places around the world."
While at Sidewalk, I worked under Ariel Kennan on the Civic Assembly which made up 1/3 of the Social Infrastructure for Toronto being proposed at the time.
Summer / 2019
Internship Sidewalk Labs
The 'community programming thesis' compiled after completing a widespread search for both visual and programatic (spatial + social) inspiration from around the world on civic tech on a more granular level and civic engagement design at the spatial level. I built upon the roughly 45 slide deck that Ariel Kennan had already created. The final 70 slide presentation deck focused on sketches of spatial configurations for collaboration and civic or communal gathering and curated precedent images from global inspiration.
My role was in highlighting the potential operational capacities of both activities (programming) and amenities (features) and their relevant use cases for the Civic Assembly concept, which was originally planned for development in the Toronto proposal and ultimately remains unbuilt. The Civic Assembly plans and research can still be applied in another location.
I was especially delighted to come up with a framework for designing spaces for people within this programming mix. I focused on expanding accessibility of understanding to residents who might want to know how or why their space was being constructed.