Augmented Urbanism: XR for Community-Driven Design with Seattle Downtown Community Council
Julia Beabout, founder and CEO of Novaby discussed her experience using XR to help downtown communities make their stories visible and have a say in the future of public spaces. Participants learned how Novaby integrated inCitu AR in projects such as Downtown Seattle's Jane's Walk 2025. Julia also highlighted some of Novaby’s other XR-based initiatives, focusing on public art, urban storytelling and placemaking.
For inCitu's latest webinar, we were grateful to host Julia C. Beabout, P.E. from Seattle Downtown Community Council and NOVABY - The ARt of Technology, who shared insights from a decade of augmented reality placemaking projects in San Francisco and Seattle.
Julia spoke about using inCitu for the Seattle Jane's Walk event, and the importance of community co-design principles in AR activations, focusing on why designing for shared group experiences is so important in urban augmented reality. We know AR can show many possible scenarios in one location, but Julia emphasized the power of weaving them together:
"What I encourage people to do is try to work with the community to bring those stories into a common collective story. Don’t neglect the work of community building. It’s that work together to find a shared story or narrative meaning in the space, joint meaning-making, that builds the community."
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