The Work We Dream Of
Every project we take on teaches us something. This page is about what we've learned — the problems we keep circling back to, the gaps we think are solvable, and the work we'd start tomorrow if the right partner walked in the door. If something here resonates, we'd love to talk.
Coordinated Home Repair
The Problem:
Homeowners who qualify for repair assistance often never receive it — not because programs don't exist, but because the service experience is built around program logic rather than the person trying to get help.
Cities Reimagined would map the end-to-end homeowner journey, identify where people fall out of the process, and prototype the tools and touchpoints that move residents from awareness to completed repair.
What we’re working toward:
A measurable increase in program completion rates; a service model that other cities and programs can adopt.
Ideal client:
City housing departments, community foundations, CDCs, health systems with home stability as a program goal.
Corner Store as Civic Infrastructure
The Problem:
Corner stores are disappearing from neighborhoods across the country, and with them the daily, low-stakes social interactions that build trust, connection, and community resilience. Their absence is a design failure as much as an economic one.
Cities Reimagined would design the service conditions — physical, regulatory, and financial — that allow neighborhood commercial to exist and persist, with a real storefront as the demonstration artifact.
What we’re working toward:
Neighborhoods where small commercial operators can open and stay open; physical environments that generate the kind of incidental social contact that policy alone can't produce.
Ideal client:
Foundations funding social cohesion or economic inclusion, business improvement districts, CDCs, city planning departments.
Public Space Built for Floods + Wind
The Problem:
Most public spaces are designed for ideal conditions and sit empty in rain and wind, which in many cities means they're unusable for a significant part of the year. A space that only works on a perfect day isn't really working.
Cities Reimagined would lead a co-design process that prototypes public spaces where wind and rain are features, not problems. Spaces that fill up after a heavy rain or on a gusty day because they were designed to, with a built demonstration site that makes the case by being experienced firsthand.
What we’re working toward:
A replicable design framework for weather-resilient public space; a demonstration site that shifts what communities think is possible.
Ideal client:
Parks departments, private developers with public realm obligations, foundations funding climate resilience or public life.
The Home Repair Corps
The Problem:
Most households can't afford to wait for a contractor or a city program every time something breaks, but they also don't know where to start, and repair knowledge rarely gets passed down in ways that stick.
Cities Reimagined would design a service that educates intergenerational family teams together — so younger members can do the hands-on work, and seniors stay meaningfully involved — building household repair capacity that compounds over time instead of disappearing after one job.
What we’re working toward:
Families with real, transferable repair skills; a service model that reduces dependence on outside contractors for outsized home repair needs.
Ideal client:
Community foundations, CDCs, city housing departments, health systems investing in housing stability.