Projects

Each year the IwB’s cohort creates solutions for specific communities, called Design Proposals. This year the Design Proposals were used to showcase the possibilities of applying the Ethical Smart City Framework and the Toolkit. 

The IwB 2019-2020 cohort’s Design Proposals served as proof of concept to showcase the application of the ESC Framework and Toolkit to solving challenges. The work toward these Design Proposals began in February 2020 with the International Charrette, an event that brought 150 students, partners, and faculty together to design tangible, ethical, inclusive, and sustainable solutions for 15 communities across Canada. These challenges were first presented as part of Infrastructure Canada’s Smart Cities Challenge.

The International Charrette allowed us to further develop the ESC Framework into a holistic process that can be applied to small, medium and large-sized communities across Canada. As the ESC project evolved, three design proposals were further developed to test and evolve the ESC Framework. These proposals are the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, City of Mississauga, and County of Simcoe.

While public engagement is at the heart of the ESC Framework, due to limited resources and time, we were not able to fully engage with the members of these communities throughout the design proposals process. Moving forward, our goal is to share the ESC Framework and Toolkit with the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, City of Mississauga, and County of Simcoe. to see how these communities would create their own ESC solutions.