Urban Omnibus is less than a week old, and already it’s generating conversation. Our sincere hope is that the conversations that start in response to our features begin to advance the understanding, appreciation and application of design to the physical environment of our city. But perhaps we should first ask what ‘design’ means anyway?

For some, the word inspires, invoking Vitruvian qualities of durability, utility, and beauty. For others, design means a Michael Graves toaster on sale at Target. Part of our objective here is to encourage all of you out there – the ones for whom New York City infects the psyche, gets under the skin – to recognize the design intentionality behind aspects of the city we all may otherwise take for granted. Of course, all things man-made are human-designed. We’re interested in the ones with implications for urban life: from affordable housing to infographics, from public space to infrastructure technology. Design, when we talk about it, is neither an abstraction nor the descriptor of a specific commodity: it is the language in which our city is rendered, the process by which the decisions that determine the social experience of the city life layer upon each other to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Luckily, this expansive definition can accommodate others. So tell us, what’s yours?

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