TOPIC

Speculative

Urban Omnibus Writing Competition: Common Shares

A Shared Life

Presenting the second of two runners-up in our Common Shares writing competition: Yen Ha brings us the story of a pair of strangers navigating the extremes of the sharing economy.

Anti-Fragile: The Uncertain Future of Arverne East

Jonathan Tarleton and Gabriel Silberblatt consider the future of Arverne East — 81-acres of vacant, City-owned land in the Rockaways — and tease out distinct visions of how this public asset might be put toward public purpose.

Rebuild by Design Proposals Unveiled

Ten final plans presented for Rebuild By Design.

Growing Long Island's Downtowns: The Regional Benefits of Better Parking Design

Kaja Kühl and June Williamson explain how improved parking design can spur suburban downtown development in line with community goals of attracting young people, providing affordable housing, and stimulating local economies.

Competition Report: Stormproof

Maria Aiolova of Terreform ONE discusses the design group's ONE Prize, an annual design and science award that this year focused on how cities can adapt to future challenges of extreme weather, yielding winning proposals that address coastal conditions from Staten Island to Tokyo to Sumatra.

The Five Thousand Pound Life

The Architectural League announces an ambitious initiative to raise our collective discussion of living sustainably to a higher register, imagining the systemic change needed to live well, and to live well within the carrying capacity of the planet.

Studio Reports

Flux City

Chris Reed shares work from a Harvard GSD landscape architecture studio that considers how productive ecologies drive the development of urban form and uses Jamaica Bay as a case study for exploring the opportunities of richly fluid territories.

Studio Reports

Future Bronx(es)

In the latest installment of their Crisis Fronts degree project, Michael Chen and Jason Lee ask students to use the specific urban challenges of the Bronx to investigate the intersection between public policy and speculative design.

Urban Omnibus Writing Competition: Fuzzy Math

The City That Never Shouts

Announcing the winner of our Fuzzy Math writing competition: Steven Higashide imagines a near future in New York, in which a new City agency — the Department of Externalities — monitors and evaluates the social and environmental effects of everyday actions.

Air Futures

Theo Games Petrohilos shares a darkly comic vision of an imagined future where the sale of air rights for Manhattan properties develops into economic hysteria.