Sidewalk Labs

Project team

Client
Sidewalk Toronto

service

Consulting, Facilitation & Engagement

Completion

2019

The Project

Human Space collaborated with Alphabet City’s Sidewalk Labs – a Google-based company – with a goal to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions in a built environment. The plan for Sidewalk Toronto was to provide an inclusive gateway into Toronto’s eastern waterfront and to connect the city fabric together.

The team provided various consulting services to Sidewalk Labs. This work included the onsite accessibility review and recommendations of Sidewalk Labs’ 307 Lakeshore Blvd., which housed meeting areas, interactive spaces and exhibition spaces. We informed the guidance and principles for accessibility and inclusion within the Master Innovation and Development Plan; hosted co-design jams with stakeholders, the public and user groups to explore the accessibility parameters for the fabrication of hexagonal street pavers; the integration of audible, visual and tactile sidewalk posts to support wayfinding and researched options for dynamic curbs to create flexible and adaptable pick-up and drop off zones.

While the master-planned community is no longer moving ahead, the project served as an experimental testing ground for what is possible when integrating new accessible innovations into the physical environment, with the ultimate goal of improving people’s lives.

Project Images

a woman uses a walking stick to detect tactile floor patterns made of tape in a workshop environment

Human Space facilitated co-design sessions to explore what is possible when integrating accessible solutions with the built environment.

Members of the community from all walks of life attended the co-design sessions to collaborate on possible integrated accessibility features for the proposed Sidewalk Labs community.

someone feeling a tactile floor design made out of tape

Ideas for different tactile floor designs was one of the many accessibility features participants tested out during the co-design sessions.

colourized sketch of a master planned mixed use community on Toronto's waterfront

The Sidewalk Labs proposal for the project reflected 18 months of public consultation that reached more than 21,000 Torontonians in person, as well as robust engagement with Waterfront Toronto, Indigenous communities, and public officials at all three levels of government. (image and caption via Sidewalk Toronto website)