Visions of a future city

CityVi­sion – an annual design com­pe­ti­tion that chal­lenges design­ers to envi­sion dis­tinct urban futures – chose New York City for this year’s inspi­ra­tion. The entries, which can be seen here, focused on a “New York City shaped by an alter­nate his­tory, a com­plete fail­ure of mod­ern urban pol­icy, or any com­bi­na­tion of the two themes.”

Most final­ists devel­oped com­plex plans that com­bined utopian or dystopian themes. The first place win­ner imag­ined the island of Man­hat­tan con­verted into a trash dump where garbage is used as a power source for res­i­dents in the outer bor­oughs. (And fea­tures a redrawn ver­sion of Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover.)

Another entrant drew inspi­ra­tion from the city’s cur­rent mythol­ogy, imag­in­ing NYC as an island of respite for a col­lec­tive of artists and out­casts. Oth­ers were far more sci-fi, includ­ing a design in which all the of the city’s land­marks flee the city to find other homes.

The range of entries demon­strates just how var­ied and open we believe, or hope, the future to be. The competition’s orga­niz­ing ques­tion – “If the future is gone, what past is expect­ing us?” - chal­lenges us to recon­sider the dimen­sions of space and time that we often per­ceive to be fixed. In a rad­i­cally and rapidly chang­ing world, what future New York City are we cur­rently creating?

Images cour­tesy of: CityVi­sion.