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About
History
New York’s pandemic recovery
In 2021, Cara Eckholm—AKA Urban’s founder—was appointed to the New York Governor and Mayor’s “New” New York Panel, tasked with charting a path for New York’s economic recovery following COVID-19. The “New” New York Plan outlined a bold vision for the City, from comprehensive zoning reform to passing congestion pricing.
Never one to let a crisis go to waste, after the Panel concluded, Cara jumped at the chance to keep working to improve the nuts and bolts of how the city operates and builds things. As a Fellow at Cornell Tech, Cara collaborated with the New York City Economic Development Corporation to create and implement a strategy to revise how the City pilots, procures, and changes policy to accelerate the deployment of new technology. That plan, Pilot: New York City, prompted the City to update its decades-old-procurement code, work that Cara wrote about in an essay for the New York Times.
It also led to the establishment of two philanthropically funded programs: The Urban Innovation Fellows, a program to place mid-career technical talent into city agencies, and The Pilot Pitchfest, a program to match academic researchers with city agencies, now housed at the Social Science Research Council.
From New York City to the Nation
New York City, of course, is not alone in its struggle to get stuff built and keep pace with the 21st century. In 2023, Cara formed Eckholm Studios to expand nationally. Her sweet spot is complex strategy work that sits at the interaction of policy, finance and the built environment—where the government can leverage its purchasing power to do things differently. As the number of projects grew and others began contributing, the firm was renamed to AKA Urban. Our goal is to modernize how governments interact with the physical world. We achieve that goal through real projects, research, and writing.
We launched after the pandemic and after the release of Chat GPT. That means we operate a bit differently than a conventional consultancy (in a good way!). Our “hybrid” approach entails a lean, high-agency team supplemented by a curated expert network—which means we always have access to A-players, across urban specialties. Our model is designed for maximum flexibility and efficiency: project dollars go to quality work, not wasted down time or vacant desks on a Friday.
A growing track record
We have already had the great fortune of working with six different government agencies. Those projects have ranged from helping the Navy build cheaper, more resilient facilities for families, to helping New York State structure programs to ensure the opportunities generated by artificial intelligence are accessible to all residents. We have helped craft over $1bn in public programs, and, through modernizing outdated processes, we have also helped save over $100m in construction spending. Our specialty is getting new, major projects off-the-ground—requiring effective communication of technical topics, and effective management of cross-disciplinary teams. The fields we cover are often classified as part of the burgeoning “abundance” movement: buildings, mobility, energy, public space, digital infrastructure, and state capacity.
We believe that, with the power of its purse, the government can help spur new inventions and deliver great public works. During the industrial revolution, over 27 million people visited the Electricity Hall at the Chicago World’s Fair, which introduced electricity to the public. Today, we are at the dawn of a new industrial age—and AKA Urban is excited to be part of the solution, working to ensure ambitious ideas to improve cities see the light of day.
