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What Do We Reimagine When We Reimagine Infrastructure? Akron's Innerbelt Master Plan

Siqi Zhu is an urban planner, technologist, and strategic designer who seamlessly integrates cities and technologies as dual focal points in his practice. With a strategic design mindset, he finds creative overlaps between place-, community-, and technology-based solutions to complex, systemic urban challenges, such as climate change, infrastructural renewal, equitable development, and technological disruptions.

As a partner at Sasaki’s NYC office, Siqi leads many of the firm’s civic planning and urban technology efforts. He also heads Sasaki Strategies, an award-winning team focused on technology innovation, data science, and research and prototyping. His recent projects include a pioneering Technology Action Plan for Great Rivers Greenways in St. Louis, where he guided the organization’s mission-driven technology investments to advance socioeconomic equity, and a community-driven master plan in Akron aimed at addressing the historical and racialized impacts of a major Urban Renewal-era highway.

Before joining Sasaki, Siqi worked as Director of Planning and Project Delivery at Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, where he oversaw key aspects of the Quayside development and technology incubation programs. He serves as a board member of Urban Design Forum, and is a lecturer at Harvard, where he mentors students in incubating mission-driven place- and technology-based projects.