Siqi Zhu

Siqi is Associate Director, Public Realm at Sidewalk Labs, where his work imagines how technology transforms the design and implementation of urban streets and public realm. Before Sidewalk, Siqi headed up product design at Envelope, a NYC-based startup that visualizes development opportunities under NYC zoning. He also worked as a senior designer and project manager at Boston-based Sasaki and Utile, where he oversaw urban planning projects for a variety of public, private, and institutional clients across the US and internationally.

Siqi is passionate about great urban public spaces. He is particularly interested in how a human-centered, research- and data-intensive design process can yield fresh insights about—and build stakeholder consensus around—how we improve the urban public realm. He played a key role in creating Boston’s first Complete Streets guidelines, an award-winning design manual noted for technical and visual communication excellence; and Boston’s 2030 city-wide mobility strategy, lauded for its use of data visualization to engage a city-wide constituency in complex mobility planning decisions. Siqi has also worked extensively with municipal transportation and parks departments, the National Park Service, and other public space managers around the country.

Siqi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and a Masters in Urban Planning from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He has led research projects at MIT Senseable City Lab and currently teaches at Northeastern University’s College of Art, Media, and Design.