Call for Ideas: By the City / For the City

UPDATE June 27, 2011: Calling all designers! IfUD and PPS are now accepting submissions for a “collaborative re-imagining of New York City’s public realm.” Through July 14, 2011, individuals and teams are invited to submit designs inspired by the more than 500 ideas submitted by the general public for improving the city’s public spaces, systems, and social fabric. Ten projects will receive cash prizes and all of the entries will be published in an exhibition and book: An Atlas of Possibility for the Future of New York. For more information and submission guidelines, click here.

Wouldn’t it be great if…?  With By the City / For the City, the Institute for Urban Design (IfUD) and Project for Public Spaces (PPS) are offering you the opportunity to finish that sentence with suggestions for the future of the physical fabric of New York City, its neighborhoods or even a specific block. We can all think of some element of our beloved city that could use some fresh thinking or that holds unrealized potential. From now through April 30, you can propose the part of New York you think needs some re-imagining on the By the City / For the City website. To enter your idea, click here.

Get your suggestions in while you can – from May 16 – June 17, IfUD and PPS will invite architects, planners and designers to respond to the sites and challenges nominated by the public. The ideas generated from this two-part call will be compiled in a publication and exhibition By the City / For the City: An Atlas of Possibility for the Future of New York. This dynamic exchange will also set the stage for the first-ever Urban Design Week, “a public festival created to engage New Yorkers in the collaborative process of city-making, including the complex issues of the public realm, and to celebrate the streetscapes, sidewalks and public spaces at the heart of city life.” Urban Design Week will take place from September 15-20, 2011.

“Urban Design Week is aimed at connecting the personal scale at which many of us think about the physical spaces of the city — the experience of about one’s own corner or block — to larger civic issues such as access to the waterfront or congestion pricing,” says Anne Guiney, Executive Director at IfUD.

Rethink your New York here. Or browse through other people’s ideas, in list form or on the project’s interactive map. And stay tuned for more information from IfUD and PPS about Urban Design Week 2011.

The views expressed here are those of the authors only and do not reflect the position of The Architectural League of New York.