Messy Cities: Plan Less, Include More

14:30 - 15:00

La Centrale

There is a widespread obsession with wanting to plan and control every centimetre of our cities, mistaking geometric order for collective well-being. Zahra Ebrahim, a Canadian urban planner and co-founder of the practice Monumental, takes to the stage at Utopian Hours to challenge this perspective.

Co-editor of the book Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything (2025), Ebrahim analyses “scrappiness”: the informal adaptability and spontaneous creativity that emerge in neighbourhoods when top-down planning gives way to citizen initiative. Through Monumental, she translates this thesis into concrete actions, such as FutureBUILDS, the incubator that accelerates the representation of BIPOC developers in the property sector. An invitation to embrace complexity and co-design truly inclusive neighbourhoods.

Toronto

Zahra Ebrahim Co-Founder

Monumental

A public interest designer and urbanist, her work is deeply focused on shifting power to people who are underrepresented in decision-making processes. She champions participatory and community-led approaches to policy, infrastructure, and service design. Prior to Monumental, she built one of Canada’s first social design studios and led Deloitte’s human-centred design practice. Today, alongside her role at the University of Toronto and teaching at MoMA, she serves on the boards of key civic institutions, consistently co-designing with communities to achieve better social outcomes and address complex organizational challenges.

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