Updated Abstract 10/8

Cities hold great promise for new modes of living and personal expression by the dynamics of exchange and closeness their inhabitants experience each day. Shared contentiousness within cities can generate a creative and just use of urban resources whether they be physical or cultural systems.  However, the 21st century city in North America (specifically New York City)  has sold its potential out from under the feet of its inhabitants, opting for repressive structures that spatially control and exclude many from the critical discourse necessary to build an equitable city. The corporatization of public space is strategically fashioned to serve only the dominant power base, its whims, and those who tangentially hang on. Landscape Architecture must leverage its own marginal status to re-imagine public spaces that are curious and unexpected, and reflect the idiosyncratic accretion of urban life;  both socially and physically. What if the rebuilding of crumbling urban infrastructures became a means/site(s) to reinvent social relationships through revealing a collective need for resilience, empathy, and knowledge ?