The Office of New Urban Mechanics (ONUM) at Utah Valley University serves as a civic innovation hub, rapidly prototyping new ideas for cities in our service region to radically improve the quality of community services and engagement.

Our students create value for communities by running experiments, conducting research, and by building capacity through training and consultations. These activities equip graduates with a unique professional skill-set and portfolio. To design, conduct, and evaluate pilot projects in these areas, ONUM builds partnerships between constituents, academics, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and cities across the Wasatch Front.

If you would like to work with us on an idea you have to make Utah’s communities better, we would love to hear from you. You can learn more about our work below, or follow our work through our blog.

 

Recent Projects:

• FutureScapes – A new approach to solving the issues of our time. FutureScapes is an annual writing competition that asks writers to envision a particular sort of world, and tell us a story about it. How did we go from where we are to what we could be? To learn more about the contest visit FutureScapes.
• PolicyHacking Lab – Working to translate the ideas of legislators into concrete solutions, the PolicyHacking Lab works with legislators and policy makers on research and innovation.
• Creative Benchmarking – Cross-sector benchmarking on behalf of local cities to identify novel solutions to administrative and policy challenges
• Reinventing Downtown Provo – Working to build a user-focused downtown for Provo City. One result of this initiative is PlayStreet Provo.
• Read-a-Difference – In partnership with local schools, read-a-difference tests innovative approaches to advancing literacy, particularly among “reluctant readers.”