Sarah N. Ahmad

Sarah N. Ahmad is a social and civic infrastructure specialist working where research meets practice.
She starts from care, asking how well neighbourhoods and public spaces serve the people who live and move through them. In partnership with local governments, cultural organisations, and communities, she uses public space strategy, civic dialogue, and the arts to create lasting social impact.

Learn More About Sarah

Sarah N. Ahmad, founder of The Caring Urbanist, social infrastructure consultant

I work alongside local governments, cultural organisations, civic institutions, community groups, and developers across Canada, the US, Europe, and the UAE.

For municipalities, developers, cultural institutions, and community organisations shaping people-centred places.
Advising on partnership strategy, stakeholder engagement, and communication approaches that root planning, policy, and development in community knowledge and lived experience — building the relationships and trust that make ambitious projects possible.
Can include:
- Partnership strategy and ecosystem mapping
- Stakeholder engagement and relationship-building
- Cross-sector collaboration and coalition development
- Communication and community engagement strategy
- Collective impact initiatives
- Social impact and community insight
- Applied research and evidence synthesis
- Place identity and belonging strategies
- Community-centred development approaches
Available as: advisory retainer, project-based consulting, one-time strategic review, or commissioned research and reporting
For municipalities, cultural institutions, and developers activating public space and public-facing programs.

Working alongside internal teams and delivery partners, Sarah helps design public-facing experiences, programming frameworks, and cultural activation strategies that strengthen community participation, place attachment, and belonging.
Can include:
- Public realm activation strategy
- Cultural and community programming design
- Festival and arts engagement strategy
- Site-responsive and temporary intervention concepts
- Audience and participant experience design
Available as: advisory or strategic consulting support alongside your existing team or delivery partners — not standalone event production or execution
Sarah helps civic and cultural work reach the people it is meant for. Working with communications, programming, and engagement teams, she shapes the stories behind plans, projects, and public events, and designs gatherings where people can listen, speak, and be heard. As a speaker and moderator, she brings a cross-disciplinary view of social infrastructure, care and civic life to talks, panels and workshops. The aim is communication that builds trust and shared understanding, not visibility for its own sake.
This includes: narrative strategy for projects and plans · storytelling for events and programmes · keynotes, panels and moderation · workshops, roundtables and community dialogues
Available as: single-session facilitation, multi-phase engagement design, or speaking/moderation

Start A Conversation

Care in a city isn't held by any one sector. It lives in streets and parks, in institutions and budgets, in culture, climate and time.
How well does a city care?

SPATIAL CARE
The physical environments that enable accessibility, comfort, safety, orientation, and inclusion.
Ask: Who feels welcome here? Who can access this space? Does the built environment reduce vulnerability, or create it?
ECOLOGICAL CARE
The reciprocal relationship between environmental systems and human wellbeing.
Ask: How do ecological infrastructures contribute to health and resilience? How are environmental benefits and burdens distributed?
SOCIAL CARE
The relationships and networks that sustain everyday life.
Ask: What opportunities exist for social connection? How are trust and reciprocity cultivated? What forms of mutual aid emerge through everyday encounters?
INSTITUTIONAL CARE
The organizations and governance structures that support everyday life.
Ask: How easily can residents navigate institutions? Are public institutions responsive and accessible?
CULTURAL CARE
The infrastructures that support identity, memory, expression, and belonging.
Ask: Whose stories are represented? Which cultural practices are supported? How is belonging cultivated through collective expression?
TEMPORAL CARE
The recognition that urban needs are experienced across different rhythms and life stages.
Ask: How does the city accommodate shifting needs over time? Are infrastructures aligned with the temporal realities of care work?
ECONOMIC CARE
The systems that enable security, resilience, and participation in urban life.
Ask: Does the city provide pathways toward economic stability? How are vulnerability and precarity mitigated?

Read the Urban Diagnostics of Care™ by Sarah N. Ahmad

Select Work

The Caring Urbanist

SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE | CIVIC ADVOCACY | THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
The Caring Urbanist is an independent social infrastructure and civic care practice.
Through collaborative work, civic storytelling, research, and strategic advisory, the platform explores how care shapes the cities we live in — and how cities, in turn, shape our ability to care for one another. The platform focuses in particular on how the city responds when dependency becomes most visible — the beginnings and endings of life, and the ruptures, like migration and displacement, that force people to begin again.
Location: International Year: 2026
The Pavilion

ART IN PUBLIC SPACE
Role: Art Advisory and Conceptual Delivery
Description: Public Art installation for Jamii, Toronto. Funded by the City of Toronto’s Main Street Innovation Fund and the Government of Canada’s Healthy Communities Initiative.
Location: David Crombie Park Year: 2024
Mudlark

PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC SPACE
Role: Creative Consultancy & Concept Research & Strategy
Description: Mudlark was a creative consultancy for Jamii, Toronto. It was an outdoor Shadow Puppet theatre performance depicting the historical evolution of The Esplanade neighborhood through the eyes of a young Mudlark girl.
Location: The Esplanade & Berkeley St. Toronto. Year: 2023
Car-Free Cycling Sundays

CIVIC ADVOCACY
Role: Project conception, management, oversight, partnerships and media
Description: In partnership with the United Nations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sarah (as Urban Innovation Pvt. Ltd.) led an officially sponsored, high-profile public space advocacy campaign focused on the reclamation of public spaces and active mobility.
Location: Islamabad Year: 2021
What We Remember

ART IN PUBLIC SPACE
Role: Contributing Artist
Description: Creative Contribution and Participant in multi-artist outdoor exhibit highlighting the role of memory in creating place. Supported by the Metcalf Foundation. Location: 264 The Esplanade. Year: 2024
The Little Esplanade - Phase 1

PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITY ART
Role: Concept & Delivery
Description: Project coordination and conceptual support for Jamii, Toronto. The Little Esplanade is a community-driven miniature modeling project designed to strengthen social bonds and relationships with the built environment. Location: 264 The Esplanade Year: 2024
Flood Rehabilitation Through Design

CIVIC ADVOCACY AND COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION
Role: Lead Convenor
Description: A crisis response advocacy project bringing together Architects, Engineers, Urban Planners and the Aid sector to address the devastation of the 2010 Floods across Punjab, Pakistan. Location: Lahore, Pakistan Year: 2010/2011
City Dialogue Series

CIVIC DIALOGUE
Role: Project Management & Coordination
Commissioned by the Urban Unit, Government of Punjab, the City Dialogue series was organised to create civic dialogue on pressing urban issues. Speakers included prominent scholars, local politicians and activists. Location: Quaid-e-Azam Library, Lahore, Pakistan. Year: 2018
Rooted پیوستہ (Paivasta)

ART IN PUBLIC SPACE
Role: Project Coordination and Delivery
Description: Paivasta was/is a socially engaged public art project by artists Matt Kushan and Unum Babar and Glasgow-based creative studio Pidgin Perfect .he project was curated and commissioned by Lahore Biennale Foundation (LBF) and British Council Pakistan with generous support from Parks & Horticulture Authority (PHA) Lahore. Location: Lawrence Gardens, Lahore. Year: 2016
Lahore Music Meet

CULTURAL PLANNING & EVENT ACTIVATION
Role: Advisory & Programme Development
Programme Direction and consultancy for inaugural Lahore Music Meet. A first of its kind music festival bringing together musical talent from the grassroots across Pakistan. Location: Lahore, Pakistan Year: 2015
Shadman Market Revitalization

URBAN REVITALIZATION
Role: Project Lead
Proposal developed for Lahore Development Authority
2020
Lahore Literary Festival (LLF)

CULTURAL PLANNING & EVENT SUPPORT
Role: Event-wide logistics, volunteer training and VIP personnel management
Description: The Lahore Literary Festival is the premier free-to-the-public cultural event in Lahore.LLF explores the dialogue and interface between literature and the arts that shape our cultural, social, economic, and political frameworks.
Year: 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

Research & Published Work

© Sarah N. Ahmad

An Urban Atlas of Care - Toronto, Volume One

An Urban Atlas of Care: Toronto, Volume One is the first public field volume from The Caring Urbanist — 21 real, operating sites across the city, assessed against the seven dimensions of the Urban Diagnostics of Care™ framework.

The Caring Urbanist / Sarah N. Ahmad
2026

Explore the Atlas
Urban Diagnostics of Care

Seven dimensions for reading care in the city

By Sarah N. Ahmad / The Caring Urbanist
© 2026

Read
Holding The City Gently: Trauma-informed Urbanism in a City of Arrival

An Anthology - Traumed-Informed Practice: Care in Global Contexts

Chapter 5, Collective Healing: Community, Resilience and Rebirth

published by Global Arts in Medicine
2026

Read
Op-Ed: Smoggy Governance

Published in The Nation
2024

Read
Cycling Strategy Islamabad

Prepared by Urban Innovation Pvt. Ltd. in partnership with Graana, Urban Platform and Islamabad Cycling Association
2020

Read
Op-Ed: Naya Pakistan Housing Authority

Published in The Nation
2018

Read
Collaborative Planning, Governance and Resistance: Institutional Provision in Lahore

Pakistan Journal of Urban Affairs
2017

Read
The Deliberative Urban

Collaborative Planning and the Search for Transformative Urban Governance in Lahore

Development Planning Unit, University College London, 2012

Read
Big City Wishes, Demolished Dreams: A Housing Story from Lahore

A Lahore laborer's decades-long search for a home reveals how sprawl, informal settlements, and arbitrary urban planning shape — and repeatedly unravel — housing security for the city's working poor.

Read
Op-Ed: The Orange Line That Divides

Published in The Nation
2015

Read
Op-Ed: Displacing Hope

Published in The News International, Pakistan
2014

Read
The Space Between

co-authored
Published by openDemocracy
2011

Read

Press | Media | Webinars

Interview with Hatch Pakistan explaining challenges faced as a multidisciplinary urban entrepreneur.

Toronto based Placemaking collaboration covered by BlogTO.

Urban Policy lecture given to Fellows of Learners Republic.

Interview segment for Soch Videos on the possibilities of making Lahore

green again

Webinar hosted via Urban Innovation on Cities, Trade and Informality.

Interview with Geo Television highligthing active mobility and public space project

More about Sarah

Sarah N. Ahmad began her career in economic infrastructure and saw, again and again, that it only works when people and communities are supported too. That lesson shaped her focus on social and civic infrastructure: the spaces and networks that sustain people's wellbeing and connection, and make all other infrastructure viable.

She has spent close to fifteen years putting that conviction into practice. In 2010, she led a national flood-response initiative in Pakistan that brought built-environment professionals together around disaster resilience. She later co-founded an urban management and advocacy firm that became a UN World Environment Day partner and led nationwide campaigns on mobility, walkability, and equitable public space.

Since moving to Toronto in 2022, she has brought this work into the city's community arts and cultural sector, including advising on a 2024 public art installation on The Esplanade that showed how art in public space can strengthen memory and civic connection.

She has since founded The Caring Urbanist, a research and practice platform focused on civic care. Through research, writing, storytelling, advisory work, public speaking, and collaborative projects, she works with partners to recognise and strengthen the people, places, and everyday systems that keep cities running, and to show the social impact of investing in them.

Her career spans government, international development, climate resilience, civic advocacy, cultural planning, public art, and community-based practice across six cities on three continents. She holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College and University College London, and has continued her professional development at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Toronto.

Her work rests on a simple idea: cities thrive when people, places, and institutions support one another, and when care is treated as a civic resource rather than a private responsibility. She brings this to every engagement through curiosity, trust-building across disciplines, and a commitment to giving women and historically underrepresented communities a real say in the decisions and places that affect their lives. For the governments, cultural organisations, civic institutions, and developers she works alongside, that means places and programs that hold up under real pressure, built with the people who will use them, not just for them.

Sarah N. Ahmad in conversation with former Toronto mayor David Crombie, Urban Strategies co-founder Frank Lewinberg, and photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo, December 2024

Sarah N. Ahmad in conversation with David Crombie, former Mayor of Toronto and Federal Cabinet Minister, Frank Lewingberg, Co-Founder of Urban Strategies, and renowned Canadian Photographer, Vincenzo Pietropaolo.
December, 2024.