New York City was once a network of self-sustaining enclaves, each with an identity playing part to a whole. As the city evolves, those individual neighborhoods continue to lose some of their identity, growing more dependent on Manhattan’s Central Business Districts (CBD) and the transit networks that serve them. Through this competition entry, Dattner Architects explores and proposes deconcentrating our CBDs through strategies that catalyze and encourage development of underserved neighborhoods.
Efficient, inexpensive infrastructure is deployed along vacant right of ways; available, automated technologies and employed; and existing transit routes are linked. With a more robust and resilient transit network, neighborhoods can thrive with more diverse job opportunities, local amenities, and scales of housing—supporting a life and identity apart from the CBD.