By The City / For The City: Calling All Architects & Designers

Back in April FIPS reported the announcement of the Institute for Urban Design's By the City/For the City competition. We jumped on it again when the eccentric ideas for Park Slope started trickling in. The two months since have brought hundreds of additional contributions, some of them even more useful than dog cabanas. Actually, MUCH more useful. In fact, if reading through the suggestions for Park Slope has taught me anything, it's that my neighbors hate and fear cars as much as I do (see this, this and this) and actually have some good ideas on how to deal with them. Someone on my block actually even recommended eliminating traffic from the service road in front of our buildings! Where are you, my kindred spirit!  

While these short, initial ideas are grand (mine: Tourist Free Week New York : New York for New Yorkers!), the competition now needs more full fledged design proposals. IfUD is calling for architects, planners, designers and urbanists to visit the website and develop a proposal for their favorite ideas. A jury will choose the top ten, which will be celebrated at an exhibition and companion publication during Urban Design week in September.

The specs are pretty simple: Just 250 words and attach any relevant drawings, plans, etc. You can win $500 -- not quite enough to build a pedestrian bridge from Park Slope to Fort Greene that bypasses the Atlantic Center (I just thought of that!) but more than enough to take your friends out to discuss your brilliance over drinks and dinner. Even better, the winning ides will be published in a .... wait for it... book! Which is actually pretty cool... 

So yay for thinking about things that make our neighborhood better... but if you want to feel really positive take a minute to ruminate on elements of civil engineering we should be glad we have in the first place -- like have you ever considered what New York City would be like if we allowed right on red? We'd all be dead.