The idea of “Utopias and Dystopias,” the theme for this issue, is a preoccupation of most urban planners. Whether through transformative land use policy or mere changes to a bus schedule, planners strive to create perfection out of untenable dysfunction. It’s a difficult time for anyone interested in transforming our cities. Climate change, lack of housing affordability, crumbling infrastructure, and seemingly intractable inequality across many of our systems make it feel as though dystopia is on our doorstep. A couple of our pieces in this issue confront those bleak realities head-on, helping deepen our understanding of what ails our cities. But we also have imaginative, optimistic pieces in this issue. Hunter is filled with visionary planners and policy experts determined to steer our cities toward utopia. As city and state leadership shy away from bold attempts to reshape our lives and redistribute justice to all, Hunter students engage with the radical and work hard to make it possible. Let’s see how close we can get.
We are delighted to share five thoughtful, challenging pieces that grapple with our cities’ shortcomings and offer detailed visions of how they can evolve:
Adam J Bailey’s “A World Without Robert Moses” engages with an alternative history where the often-vilified Moses made no impact on New York City, challenging us to engage with some of his positive contributions to NYC.
Jordan Engel makes the case for shared green space in “Backyard Commoning: Lessons from New York’s 1920s Garden City Experiments and Contemporary Retrofit Cohousing,” describing how removing barriers between property lines can modernize our city structure through cohousing techniques.
David Oke tours a pair of neighborhoods in “The World’s Borough” for “Queens-Topia: The Duality of New York’s Urban Spaces,” offering a detailed contrast between car-centric and transit-accessible neighborhoods and how they shape an area’s function and desirability.
In “From Bustling, Human-Scaled Streets to Mountaintop Ghost Towns: Exploring the Evolution of Medieval Italian Villages,” Taylor Richards reflects through observations from her travels and research on how old city forms became obsolete as the changing economy required new functions from urban spaces.
Katie Zhang’s “Surviving NYC’s Housing Programs,” confronts the immensely under-supplied housing voucher system and its efficacy for people in crisis, wondering how we can improve the system to offer comfortable, immediate housing solutions to domestic violence survivors and other people in crisis.
Each article here offers a timely reflection on our lingering troubles and the solutions that could finally quash them. We hope it stirs your imagination to create a better world.
Jenn Hendricks, Katelin Penner, & Will Greenberg Co-Editors in Chief
