Super(mid)town

Super(mid)town is a forecast of the effects of large-scale developments in New York City. By the year 2050, the trend of superblocks destabilizes the organizing principles of the 1811 Manhattan grid. As streets continue to be de-mapped and deviant pathways begin to cut through the city, physical boundaries begin to blur. A new scale emerges that fuses together architecture and urbanism – Super-ism.

The forecast supersizes present day POPs (privately-own public spaces). These spaces are a collection of urban oases detached from the grid. Smart technology allows private corporations to find new means of way-finding and “herding of people” in and around the city. This allows them to control the movement of consumers and citizens for their own profit. As a result new pathways allow citizens to penetrate into previously private domains. Super-ism reimagines how privately-public developments, super-infrastructures, and smart technology will affect the urban experience in Smart New York.