New Model City: Designing (New) New York in Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange and Red

Studio Context

The Urban Design Fall Studio 007, will re-envision New York’s multiple scales and territories of operation to challenge an underlying assumption that the coherence of traditional forms of the city (core and edge) have been thrown into question by processes of distribution and collection linked to broader global transformations, such as changes in environment or emerging economic forces. An increasing proportion of the urban economies of western post-industrial cities, such as New York City, are related to the production of new social and cultural spaces, with an evolving sense of new perceptual and experiential relationships to the natural environment.

From housing density to transportation infrastructure, from air/water quality to energy/waste management and open space, this studio will investigate the complexities of the city’s future with designed strategies for adaptation and resilience over time. The design groups will develop urban models, i.e. the studio’s collective explorations of the"new model city,”with clear consideration and precise positioning of site specific projects in relation to broader concerns such as sources & resources, geography & cartography, capacity & flow, density & intensity, quality & quantity, territory & boundary, vitality & equity, etc…

Since considering “model city” as a metaphor alone has little power to advance urban design practice if the term “model” itself remains blind to new paradigms in applied disciplines, we catalyze the studio’s imagination by employing relatively current terminologies added to our national consciousness - Threat Management. As a conceptual positioning, initially the research teams will symbolically interrogate and re-define the term Threat as it may apply to urban landscape. In order to develop robust, multiscalar urban and architectural proposals, each design team will frame their argument and strategy according to a highly precise premise, informed by redefinition of this inherently questionable advisory system, i.e., Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange and Red.

Our intention is to put forth ”urban design” as a strategy to address quantitative forces that threaten qualitative habitation in extreme and inclusive scales, from person to planet. In this respect, although we emphasize spreading wide our discussion and territories of investigation, the final urban design proposals will focus on site specific conditions of New York City’s changing waterfront and their adjacent contexts, with an on going emphasis on ’bodies’ of water surrounding the city’s core and edge.