Awards • Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards
The Sustainable Solutions Workshop has been recognized in Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards, winning in two categories:
Politics & Policy
Urban Design
Led by Carlos Teixeira, Deaa Bataineh, Chris Rudd, and Ruth Schmidt, this collaborative design initiative reimagines the relationship between residents and government in Chicago. Grounded in systems thinking, the project tackled how civic technologies—like red light and speed cameras, parking enforcement, and zoning—often reinforce racial and economic inequities in the city, particularly for BIPOC and Latinx communities.
The workshop applied design-led methods to envision new, equity-centered civic infrastructures, prototyping tools such as:
These proposals aim to reshape how power, data, and investment flow through the city—shifting from punitive systems to regenerative, community-centered governance.
Through agile prototyping, and cross-sector collaboration, students and facilitators explored how Chicago can transform its urban systems to serve all residents more equitably. The result: a vision for public infrastructure that is anti-racist, sustainable, participatory, and intelligent by design.
This recognition by Fast Company affirms the transformative potential of design when used not just to deliver services, but to infrastructure systemic change.
Learn more about the project here.