Future Imperfect

There's a fun little article in the New York Times today about a design competition sponsored by the History Channel, of all people, challenging architecture teams to imagine what NYC will be like 100 years from now. There are a lot of fun ideas, considering they only had a week to put their presentation together. They range from the extremely plausible (a future Manhattan without cars) to the insultingly ridiculous (all of Manhattan built up to 65 stories with the outer boroughs turned completley into parkland.)



Some of the better ideas sound like a lot of fun, though. One imagined a floating city in the sky above Manhattan, which would become a giant park. Another imagined a bunch of modular units floating in the waterways around the city that could dock where they were needed. This is actually about to really happen, when the Neptune Foundation brings their "Floating Pool" to the city next summer.



The winning idea imagined Manhattan swamped by global warming, so their future city was built up over the newly created canals, no doubt using them in a lot of sustainable and green ways.

I love thinking about the future, and I love the idea of this competition. The teams were only given a week to work on their presentations, and I'm impressed with some of the stuff they came up with.

But of course I can't spend all this time on Manhattan without finding something to say about my beloved Brooklyn, so I'll leave you with this shot of Alexis Rockman's mural "Manifest Destiny" which imagines a waterlogged future version of the Better Borough.