Our modern cities are a very new social experiment. Having only been around for two centuries- a mere blip on the timeline of human history, they have completely reshaped every facet of daily life for their residents. Today we live our lives within a city grid that was not necessarily designed for us; it was the widespread diffusion of the automobile in the early 20th century that gave way to the modern streetscape, all of which are delineated by the curb.
Recurb is an intervention strategy that challenges established modes of urban interaction by introducing a new relationship to something we take for granted; the concrete curb. Hidden right below our feet, the curb is normally considered a mundane object. Yet its effects on our cities, and by extension our lives, are massive. As such, to reshape the curb is to reshape our relationship with our futures. As we understand it, the traditional means of streetscape design is both inequitable for city residents and unsustainable in terms of its environmental implications. To alleviate these conditions, recurb takes a holistic approach at rethinking our relationship with the commonly accepted city grid by implementing long term changes designed to slowly alleviate via a sequential biogenic remediation.
This intervention strategy imagines New York City’s 125th Street and the adjacent Morningside park as a candidate for intervention, but this strategy can be applied to any major city center suffering from the same urban design issues. The modular nature of the multipurpose units allows for programmatic needs to be fulfilled by each respective community as needed over time, and the addition of new greenspace provides flexible outdoor areas of connection while also working in cohesion with the units to close down the streets and lessen vehicle circulation in the area. This intervention serves to challenge our established modes of urban interaction by rethinking how we do something as simple as laying down a concrete curb- and to reshape them can reshape our cities and our futures for the better.
