New Urban Mechanics Labs

Designing in the cracks, fissures, and in-betweens of civic life: where jurisdiction is unclear, struggles and taboo subjects abound, and the unexpected is a building block for beginning something New. The is the place the New Urban Mechanics work. 

The New Urban Mechanics Lab is a new, emerging place where these mechanics, these civic innovators, these caregivers standing alone on limbs trying something new, can call a living room. A place to share, to be seen, to rest, to refuel, to be inspired, to experiment, to find the next right thing to do in building a more peaceful, equitable, and curious world.

A LITTLE More ABOUT US

New Urban Mechanics Labs is a hybrid startup, spun out of local government into civil society with the mission to make institutions more Human(e). We are dedicated to engaging the people and predicaments at the intersections, the margins, the thresholds, the in-betweens of our world. 

We are stuffed with more than 20 years of experience bringing innovative approaches to the places where Community, the Private Sector, and Civil Society collide. All of us started working together at the Boston Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics, which continues to push the R&D envelope inside government and iterate on its methods and tools. 

Now, a few of us have started thinking about how these approaches might work outside the confines of a government institution. The Lab aims to support Community-led approaches to tough challenges that honor all collaborators and focus on people’s lived experiences. 

By using the tools of design, prototype-driven public policy, and a dedication to rolling up our sleeves and, you know, “trying-things,” we want to help build new communities of inquiry, communities of practice, and communities of care that include all those doing innovative work inside the mechanics of democratic life.