Noble

Client

Sidewalk Labs

Industry

Technology

Website

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewalk_Labs

At Noble, we bring a legacy of shaping the early foundations of smart cities. Before Noble was formed, members of our leadership team played pivotal roles in Sidewalk Labs’ most formative initiatives—helping articulate its urban tech vision and prototyping its flagship interventions. As part of the founding team at Intersection and Control Group—later acquired by Alphabet—our team led the design and development of LinkNYC, the world’s largest public Wi-Fi and civic engagement platform. This system replaced New York’s payphones with street-level kiosks offering free high-speed internet, maps, and city services. Beyond its utility, LinkNYC served as a proof of concept for embedding technology in public space. This work became a cornerstone for Sidewalk Labs, demonstrating what real-time urban infrastructure could achieve at scale. It also shaped public understanding and regulatory approval for Sidewalk’s more ambitious initiative: the Toronto Eastern Waterfront project.

Strategy, Visioning, and Tactical Design Support

Working across Alphabet-affiliated companies and later at Arup, we contributed across multiple fronts:

LinkNYC: We led interface design, hardware strategy, and field operations for the kiosk network, making civic tech tangible for millions of daily users.
Project City / Yellow Book: Our team helped craft this internal strategic vision for Sidewalk Labs, defining what a tech-enabled urban district could be. We created journey maps, speculative personas, and service blueprints that laid the intellectual foundation for Toronto.
Strategic Storytelling: We developed design narratives and visual frameworks that Sidewalk used to align stakeholders, guide early policy conversations, and shape public engagement.

Urban Design Integration at Arup: Later, we collaborated with Sidewalk Labs through Arup to build frameworks for participatory urban design and infrastructure planning, reinforcing the connection between tech and the public realm.

Sidewalk Labs

A foundation for digital cities