Sarah N. Ahmad is a social infrastructure specialist and lifelong urban researcher. Her work focuses on civic leadership, public space strategy, and caring urbanism. Sarah examines how neighbourhoods, cities, and public spaces support the people who live in and use them.
Sarah helps local governments, civic institutions, and developers create programs and environments that foster community empowerment and well-being.
Select Work
-
![The Caring Urbanist practice branding, social infrastructure and civic care consultancy]()
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 -
![Public art installation The Pavilion in David Crombie Park, Toronto]()
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 -
![Outdoor shadow puppet theatre performance Mudlark, The Esplanade, Toronto]()
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 public space advocacy campaign, Islamabad]()
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 -
![Multi-artist outdoor exhibit What We Remember, The Esplanade, Toronto]()
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 -
![Community miniature modelling project The Little Esplanade, Toronto]()
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 and community mobilization project, Punjab, Pakistan]()
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 discussion event, Lahore, Pakistan]()
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
Sarah N. Ahmad works with local governments, civic institutions, and developers across Canada, the US, Europe, and the UAE — through engagements that range from short advisory conversations to multi-year partnerships. Her work spans strategy, public realm programming, speaking and facilitation, and leadership development, each shaped to the institution she's working with.
Contact Sarah
-
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 N. Ahmad brings critical, interdisciplinary thinking on social infrastructure and civic care into the room — through keynotes, panels, and workshops that help institutions examine how well their spaces and programs are actually serving the people who use them. She facilitates conversations that bring civic, cultural, and community stakeholders together around shared questions of care and public life, drawing on her work with governments, cultural institutions, and developers across Canada, the US, Europe, and the UAE.
Can include:
Public consultations
Community engagement sessions
Stakeholder dialogue and facilitation
Artist and civic roundtables
Strategic convening, moderation, and speaking
Available as: single-session facilitation, multi-phase engagement design, or speaking/moderation
-
For institutional teams building internal capacity — and for practitioners navigating interdisciplinary or cross-sector paths into urban, civic, and cultural work.
Sarah N. Ahmad helps civic and cultural teams build leadership capacity from within, through advisory support and targeted workshops — and offers mentoring conversations for practitioners building careers at the intersection of research, policy, and community-facing practice.
Can include:
Leadership development and capacity-building workshops
Advisory support for institutional teams and leaders
Mentoring conversations for emerging and cross-sector practitioners
Available as: advisory retainer or workshop facilitation for institutions; mentoring conversations by inquiry
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 -
Urban Diagnostics of Care
Seven dimensions for reading care in the city
By Sarah N. Ahmad / The Caring Urbanist
© 2026 -
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 -
Op-Ed: Smoggy Governance
Published in The Nation
2024 -
Cycling Strategy Islamabad
Prepared by Urban Innovation Pvt. Ltd. in partnership with Graana, Urban Platform and Islamabad Cycling Association
2020 -
Op-Ed: Naya Pakistan Housing Authority
Published in The Nation
2018 -
Collaborative Planning, Governance and Resistance: Institutional Provision in Lahore
Pakistan Journal of Urban Affairs
2017 -
The Deliberative Urban
Collaborative Planning and the Search for Transformative Urban Governance in Lahore
Development Planning Unit, University College London, 2012 -
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.
-
Op-Ed: The Orange Line That Divides
Published in The Nation
2015 -
Op-Ed: Displacing Hope
Published in The News International, Pakistan
2014 -
The Space Between
co-authored
Published by openDemocracy
2011
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 is a social infrastructure specialist whose work in economic infrastructure sharpened a core conviction: social infrastructure—the physical spaces and networks sustaining human wellbeing and togetherness—is what makes all other infrastructure viable.
This conviction has taken shape through two decades of practice, from spearheading a national flood-response initiative in Pakistan in 2010 that convened built-environment professionals around disaster resilience, to co-founding an urban management and advocacy firm that became a UN World Environment Day partner, leading nationwide campaigns on mobility, walkability, and equitable public space.
Since relocating to Toronto in 2022, she has extended this work into the city's community arts and cultural sector, including advising on a 2024 public art installation in The Esplanade that illustrated how art in public space can strengthen memory, belonging, and civic connection.
She has since established a platform for civic care–based research and practice called The Caring Urbanist, through which she develops a practical framework — via research, writing, advisory work, public speaking, and collaborative projects — for recognising and strengthening the people, places, and everyday systems that sustain urban life.
Her multidisciplinary career spans government, international development, climate resilience, civic advocacy, cultural planning, public art, and community-based practice across multiple countries. She holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College and University College London, and has pursued professional development at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Toronto to deepen her expertise in city-building and urban leadership.
Her work is guided by the conviction that thriving cities depend on an interdependent ecosystem of people, places, and institutions, where care is treated as a civic resource rather than a private responsibility — a perspective she brings to every engagement through curiosity, cross-disciplinary trust-building, and a commitment to expanding opportunities for women and historically underrepresented communities to shape the decisions and places that affect their lives. For the governments, civic institutions, and developers she works with, this means environments and programming that hold up under real pressure — built with the people who will actually use them, not just for them.
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.
Quoted & Featured In
