As a geography student majoring in urban studies and minoring in environment, pondering the development of built spaces and their impact on their inhabitants intrigues and inspires me. Through the eye of a fledgling urban planner, I am fascinated by how the design of a city can influence a person’s life and potentially make them feel ‘at home’, positively affecting their health and wellbeing. Through what I am learning in my sociology classes, I am discovering how built environments also impact different social groups, both positively and negatively. In my environment classes, I seek to view the potential of (re)building cities and urban settings to promote sustainable development.
In addition to my McGill-offered classes, I have motivated myself to undertake an independent research project to deepen my understanding of the built environment. From January to April 2022, I learned under the tutelage of Esther Greenhouse, CEO of Silver to Gold Strategies. I wrote a paper that discusses the real impact of the built environment on the health and wellbeing of its inhabitants and how this can contribute to the rise of inequalities within groups of aging adults, marginalized racial communities, and women. As I discovered through the NewCities website, wellbeing cities & public health, as well as city planning and racial equity, are some of NewCities’ focus areas. These are topics I had been focusing on for over four months during the independent research project, and I was eager to put what I had learned into action through urban projects in the real world. I knew my internship at NewCities would contribute to my growth as an urban studies student and deepen my understanding of this domain.
My objectives for this internship were initially to build my professional confidence and expand my knowledge about the urban domain and current trends. As a student, I hoped that my developing expertise and fresh perspective would positively contribute to NewCities in their ongoing projects.
NewCities is a Montréal-based nonprofit organization committed to shaping healthier, more inclusive, and resilient cities through meaningful collaboration. The organization produces events, creates engagement opportunities, carries out actionable research, and disseminates knowledge through its editorial platform. Focusing specifically on housing, environment, mobility, and wellbeing, NewCities aims to bring together every sector to spark innovative and future-proof solutions.
As an intern, I was allocated the project and research assistant role, and I was trusted with many responsibilities. The NewCities team is relatively small, with three project managers, an operations manager, a content strategist, a creative lead, and a senior development and strategy director. I had the opportunity to work closely with the project managers, where I was tasked to do research for their ongoing initiatives and missions. Some exciting developments I worked on include the Learning Expedition, a weekend event sponsored by Engie that brings together an intimate group of curated participants from worldwide cities to Florence, Italy. I had to research hot topics and urban trends that would fuel innovative and meaningful conversations, as well as exciting site visits and workshops. I also worked with the ‘communications team’, composed of the content strategist and creative lead. I was given a project to curate a summer reading list for their website. I researched books about cities and urban trends, wrote captions for the books, created social media content, and contacted the authors and publishers to access the book covers. I was also given more minor tasks, such as working on the newsletter, writing up social media posts, editing their masterclass content and sorting lists of partners. I would like to note that I did not receive academic credit for this internship.
The greatest highlight of my internship was the opportunity NewCities gave me to write an article for their website. My work is entitled The importance of biodiversity in cities - how to foster healthy habitats for the species living in our urban areas, and they have uploaded my piece to the blog post page of their site. Another positive aspect of this internship was that I could apply my knowledge and previous research to the projects I was developing at NewCities. While working on the Housing for Care project, I could share my findings from my research paper on built environments and the health and wellbeing of its inhabitants; I also put NewCities in contact with Esther Greenhouse, with whom I was working when I wrote that paper, as an interesting potential partner for the Housing for Care initiative.
Overall, this internship not only confirmed urban studies as the right domain of study for me; it also generated excitement and and revealed the passion I have for this domain. I experienced actual urban projects, and the knowledge I learned not only makes my studies more fascinating, but it will also help (I hope) me make a difference in urban development.
The funding I received through the Arts Internship Award was incredibly valuable to me, since NewCities would not have been able to take in an unpaid intern, and they had no means to finance my expenses. Therefore, without the funds, I would not have been able to enjoy such a fruitful experience at NewCities over the past two months.
