How I Ended Up at Maximum City
The first time I heard about Maximum City was in 2017 in connection with the Global Urban Citizens exchange between the University of Toronto Schools and my high school, Carl-Schurz-Schule in Frankfurt. I got very enthused by the project and what was being offered because it included many of my interests like politics, exploring other cultures and perspectives, travelling and creating something completely new as a group. The project’s challenge, which Frankfurt and Toronto students collaborated on, was to create a tool to make it easier for newcomers to orient and settle in Toronto. Several groups had different ideas -- some people thought about building facilities, others created an app or info stands at the airport or Union Station. During the project, I recognized we were basically tackling similar issues to those that urban planners and designers deal with everyday, and by the time I got back home to Frankfurt and did some research about urban planning, I was convinced I would like to study the subject when I finished high school two years later in June 2019.
I always had the idea of doing a gap year after high school to do some volunteer work and travel. I decided to ask Maximum City, the roots of my idea to study urban planning, if I could do an internship for a few months at the company that inspired me. Thankfully they accepted and I have spent the last three months living and learning in a new city and working as an intern at their office in downtown Toronto.
In the past three months working at Maximum City, I learned a lot about the work of a consulting and engagement company working to improve the child-friendliness of cities, and about how people can actually see themselves reflected in the projects and decisions that affect their everyday life. In several projects, I learned to change my perspective and got to know various indicators which can tell me about how certain public places make people feel, and why they make them feel that way. In public life studies, I observed people’s behaviour on particular streets using tools adapted from Gehl Architects. I also learned a lot about researching, coding and analyzing data, using tools like Esri’s Survey123 and ArcGIS.
The Three Main Projects I Worked On
Project #1: We led an online and in-person stakeholder engagement program for one of Canada’s largest school boards, reaching thousands of students, staff, parents and community members about their values and priorities for school and school life. My role was to support facilitating the engagement events for gathering information and opinions from all stakeholder groups, and collect and analyze the obtained data afterwards.
Project #2: We led an investigation and assessment of the child-friendliness of nine Toronto communities using Maximum City’s KidScore platform, working directly with kids as researchers and data collectors in their neighbourhoods. My role was to lead groups of kids and guide them through a neighbourhood walk, helping them to pay attention to their surroundings to find out how they feel in certain places and situations, and what about the social and physical environment makes them feel that way. Back at the office, I sorted and outlined the data we gathered from the surveys and observations kids completed after the walk.
Project #3: We assisted with community relations on a large infrastructure project to improve commuter rail service in the region. My role was to inform the public about the project through door-to-door flyer delivery and helping to organize and facilitate a public open house event. Again, I collected people’s feedback and coded the data to help capture the public’s questions and comments about the project.
Next Steps
When I return to Frankfurt, in the new year I will start another internship at BSMF, an interdisciplinary architecture and engineering company that focuses on modernization and building restoration. Afterwards, I will apply to Urban Planning programs at universities to continue my journey to become an urban planner to tackle the problems I first learned about in the Global Urban Citizens exchange in 2017. I will always remember my experience as really educational and eye-opening. In Toronto, I found out what I want to do and achieve in life. I got a huge insight in the “first steps” of developing and planning -- how to collect and process data, and why engagement and data collection are important for planning and policy. I also gained a lot of confidence about being and living independently and adjusting to unfamiliar situations.
Toronto as a city was in my opinion the perfect place to explore - with its cultural diversity and huge growth in the past years, the city has to deal with a lot of urban challenges, like housing, sustainability or traffic and is thereby the hot-spot for creative projects to solve these issues.
I would like to thank Maximum City and everybody I was able to work with for this amazing experience!
Lenia Barth
