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The City College ASLA-NY Student Chapter hosted its 5th annual Rising Urbanists conference on Sunday, April 3 at 12pm. In the past, these conferences have explored topics including green infrastructure, coastal resilience, urban forestry, and uncovering the hidden aspects of the urban landscape. This year’s theme was Negotiating Urban Citizenships.

 

This event was held remotely. Click here to view the video.

The word ‘citizen’ is derived from the Latin civitas for city. Citizens, bound together through law and social agreement – and of course, land – create the city. How does this idea of citizenship stretch as urban life becomes more complex, entangled now with modern technology, existential threats of climate change, and the threaded tangle of ever-growing infrastructure? How do we negotiate our belonging amongst each other and the landscape while the fundamental inequities inscribed in our system of law become increasingly illuminated? As landscape architects in New York City, our role is to design pathways through which citizenship may be expressed within the dynamic political landscape centered around this charged term.

In the 2022 installment of Rising Urbanists, we will open conversation with experts to understand the relationships between urbanity, design, and what it means to be a citizen in New York City. Who is permitted to occupy this role? Whose labor upholds the civitas? How can we situate the landscape as a medium through which the meaning of citizenship is continually negotiated toward more equitable outcomes?