FROM LEGO TO LEADERSHIP: DESIGNING CITIES WITH YOUTH
Growing up, I found myself gravitating towards Lego and craft supplies to build 3-D models of anything my creative childhood brain could think of. This often took the form of made-up arcade games and pop-up books. I even remember creating interactive activity books for my younger sister and cousins to play with during family gatherings.
Throughout high school, I enjoyed drafting, design and technology classes, as I learned to create work with my hands, building physical models and working with different materials, often diving deep into the intricate details of each project.
My interest in designing and building interactive models grew even stronger throughout university as I created prototypes of shading structures and building skins that responded to the movement of the sun and people.
As I entered the professional world, I realized that this child-like wonder and youthful energy were often missing in the adult-dominated design process of our built environment, even for spaces that were meant to serve children and youth. At the same time, reflecting on my own experiences as a camp counsellor in my teenage years, I saw a strong interest among youth to create change in their communities. So, I thought, why not use my passion for design-build projects to help youth tackle challenges in their communities?
That’s what led me to co-found Urban Minds. Urban Minds is a Canadian non-profit organization with a mission to create meaningful ways for youth to shape equitable and sustainable cities. My partner and I created the 1UP Youth City Builders Program to educate and engage high school students in city-building. Through this program, I’ve mentored youth to realize their own design-build projects to address their community challenges. I’ve also worked alongside them to create fun engagement experiences, including #WouldYouRatherTO, which was an interactive community voting poll that brought people together through friendly banter. This project truly brought me a great sense of fulfillment as it combined my love for creating playful experiences with my detail-oriented personality to work out how it could be constructed.
#WouldYouRatherTO was an interactive community voting poll at King St and Spadina Ave in downtown Toronto from May 2018 to April 2019.
Through Urban Minds, I’ve had the privilege of working with youth in communities across southern Ontario that have experienced years of disinvestment and are often unfairly stigmatized. What continually inspires me is not the challenges they face, but the pride they have in their communities and their determination to create positive change.
Even when I don’t fully grasp the complexity of the issues they navigate daily, their resilience and creativity give me hope. Working alongside them has reshaped how I see design, not as delivering solutions, but as listening, collaborating, and building with communities. It has also deepened my sense of responsibility to use my own education and access to address inequities embedded within our built environment.
Urban Minds hosted a visioning workshop to understand youth’s experiences and ideas related to parks, the public realm, and mobility in their neighbourhood as part of the Jane Finch Initiative for the City of Toronto in February 2023.
Now in 2026, Urban Minds is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. What began as a small idea has grown into a team of over 60 members and has engaged more than 1,000 youth.
One of the most rewarding parts of this journey has been mentoring youth, many from BIPOC communities, and watching them pursue city-building careers and step into leadership roles themselves. I’m conscious that leadership in this field has historically been dominated by white men, so seeing the young people I’ve mentored step forward with confidence and clarity reassures me that meaningful change is not only possible — it is already underway.
Volunteers and youth participants at the 2025 1UP Leaders Lab organized by Urban Minds
Angela Ng – Co-Executive Director of Urban Minds Toronto, ON, Canada
Aside from her involvement with Urban Minds, Angela shares —
I am an aspiring architect, designer, and youth advocate.
As well, she shares that she is a Junior Intern Architect at RevelHouse, a visonary studio committed to strategic planning and guest-centered solutions in entertainment and retail / mixed-use projects; her education:
Master of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | May 2016 Champaign, IL
Bachelor of Architectural Science, Ryerson University | April 2014 Toronto, ON