EVENT: Hear Five Brilliant Ideas Vying to Improve Urban Life at ‘Pitching the City’

New urban development and redevelopment proposals get thrown around on a daily basis, but very few ever come to fruition. With an overload of ideas floating around, it’s hard to keep track of what’s worth giving a second thought to—let alone cash. Enter Pitching the City, a biennial gathering that pits the creators of five genius plans to improve the contemporary city against one another. This year’s summit will bring an array of innovative urban strategies from across the globe under one roof for a high-octane pitching session happening in Nolita on Friday, May 29th (that’s tomorrow!), and you’re invited.

The event marks the start of the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY Festival hosted by the Municipal Arts Society and Architizer. The pitching session will take place at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Nolita and will be judged by a panel of urban design and development experts including urban-revitalization strategist Majora Carter, OMA principal Shohei Shigematsu, and cofounder of the design and technology company Control Group, Scott Anderson. The panel will offer up their thoughts after each pitch, which includes some suggestion on how to make them a reality, but a live audience (YOU) will decide which idea is the winner.

This year’s presenters include:

• The Miami Underline – Meg Daly, founder, Friends of the Underline, and Hamish Smyth, Designer, Pentagram. This proposal will look at turning the underutilized land below Miami’s MetroRail into a linear park akin to the High Line.
• Open Lobby – Lindsey May, creator. Open Lobby is a network of affordable, public co-working spaces located in the underused, overlooked lobbies of office towers in Midtown East.
• East River Skyway – Daniel Levy, president and founder*. Get from Brooklyn to Manhattan in less than five minutes. This proposed transportation system uses high-speed aerial cable-cars that link the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts to Manhattan.
• Melbourne Docklands Surf Park – Damian Rogers, creator. Damian Rogers Architecture and Arup Engineering have collaborated to bring surfing into the inner Aussie city with a large manmade surfable wave.
• NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative – Interim Steering Committee and Facilitation Team: Mark Scott, duendenatural; Paula Z. Segal, 596 Acres; and Caroline Woolard, NYCTBD and OurGoods. The cooperative wants to create a fund that will make loans to groups that take on vacant public buildings to serve community-oriented purposes and be held in community land trusts.

Don’t miss out on this incredible event. Past ideas presented here have included the + POOL, which is on its way to becoming a reality. And although the event is free, you do need to RSVP. You can do that here.

Friday, May 29, 7:00 – 8:30 PM
Doors at 6:30 PM
St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, 263 Mulberry Street

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*Disclosure: Dan Levy is the president of CityRealty.com, 6sqft’s publisher