Ideas

With a forthcoming environmental cleanup and neighborhood rezoning, Gowanus is changing.

The Gowanus Field Station embodies hands-on learning: it is an outdoor classroom designed to also be a storm-water “eco-machine” that will host a green roof, sit next to a bioswale, capture rainwater for reuse, and use a vegetated rain garden to clean sink water before discharging to the canal.

Optimism, skepticism and cynicism on new technologies designed to make housing safer, sustainable and efficient.

A close read of Fifth Avenue in the Trump era and Mother Gaston Boulevard in Brownsville.

Two proposals: A preservation layer on Google Maps, and a psychosocial therapy that utilizes collective imagination in Brownsville

Three Forefront Fellows write on the current lack of public transit in Red Hook, Brooklyn and propose new ways for the City to utilize emerging technologies to improve neighborhood accessibility.

How can designers and planners influence residents in coastal regions to adopt new behaviors and technologies?

Three Forefront Fellows write on how technology is influencing the City's economic development agenda for Sunset Park.

Our inaugural Forefront class spent the past year meeting with Carto, Intersection, Kickstarter, Sidewalk Labs, and NYU CUSP to discuss how smart city technology is changing the way we experience and build cities. We are excited to publish the cohort's proposals, ideas and critiques on design in the digital era.

The Urban Design Forum is the proud curatorial partner for the 2017 Times Square Valentine Heart Design competition, led by Times Square Arts. Designed by The Office for Creative Research, We Were Strangers Too, is a public data sculpture highlighting the role that immigrants have played in the founding, development and continued vibrancy of New York City.

Open (Your) Heart is about the greatest love of all - the love of self and what follows - the ability to love others, particularly the most vulnerable amongst us.

Heart to Heart is a temporary public structure that symbolizes how New Yorkers depend on each other, especially at a moment where opening our hearts is more important than ever.

Blind Love is a participatory art project inviting New Yorkers to write love letters to those people who remain in our nation's blind spots during the current era of mass incarceration.

Heartfelt is a participatory public art project which prompts two or more participants to put away their phones and hold hands to light up Times Square, the Heart of NYC.

This installation for Times Square Valentine rethinks the Sacro Bosco for the 21st century: a labyrinthine experience of unexpected encounters with others and with oneself.