How might we reanimate strip mall parking lots to honor and delight local communities?

The plazaPOPS project was a design-driven effort to animate a strip mall parking lot in the Wexford Heights neighborhood of Toronto, Canada. The main street businesses in this area rely almost exclusively on customers reaching them by car, but lack the amenities for a transit-friendly and pedestrian-friendly environment. PlazaPOPS aimed to create a pop up gathering space by taking over parking lot spaces and animating the space through measures such as movable furniture, integrated public art, and all-ages programming these spaces through tactical urbanism and community engagement, with an eye towards replicating the model city-wide.

This project was a huge undertaking, with many players:

• 2 urban planning experts as project leads 
• advisors from the Wexford Heights Business Improvement Area organization 
• urban planning undergraduate students 
• my team of 4 strategists
  

My team was responsible for determining what data-driven methodology and metrics can the plazaPOPS team use to measure the efficacy of its upcoming popup installation. Our team researched data collection methodologies, methods of measuring city life, analyzed census data, performed site observations, interviewed key stakeholders, observed community co-creation workshops, and more.

My team’s deliverables included:

• 3 stakeholder personas 
• 1 control site scorecard 
• 1 metric dashboard template 
• 1 stationary mapping template 
• 1 pedestrian count template 
• 3 survey templates 
• 1 recommended assessment timeline