In the Loop: Megan Marini and Vanessa Monique Smith

Collaborative Platforms: Designing New Tools for Livable Cities

Today, urban livability is challenged by a gridlock of issues ranging from shrinking populations and tax bases to extreme socio-environmental vulnerability. To remain viable, our cities require integrated and imaginative approaches for addressing these emergent issues. 3x3 Design co-founders Vanessa Monique Smith and Megan Marini will lead an interactive discussion to demonstrate how collaborative methodologies, interfaces, and techniques can expand the livability of our cities by creating more responsive frameworks.

About Megan and Vanessa

As an urban planner and designer at 3x3, Megan Marini has taken a keen interest in how local knowledge and systems thinking can be incorporated into the design of vital city services. She has honed her design research experience at Reboot, the Center for Sustainable Urban Development, and ARCHIVE where she investigated issues ranging from technological innovation in postdisaster Haiti to the spatial efficiency of New York City’s polling places. Megan holds a BS in architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MS in urban planning from Columbia University.

Vanessa Monique Smith leads ethnographic research, multi-stakeholder outreach, and communication strategies at 3x3 Design. Prior to 3x3, she facilitated research initiatives and programming at UN-HABITAT, El Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, and the City of Chicago.  She has conducted extensive fieldwork and community organization efforts with diverse stakeholders to expand entrepreneurialism and cultural vibrancy in Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and New York. Vanessa holds an MS in urban planning from Columbia University and an AB in anthropology from the University of Chicago.