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For the sixth consecutive year, this international competition challenges students in all disciplines to focus on a real-world urban design problem. In the spirit of the competition’s namesake, Edmund N. Bacon (head of Philadelphia's City Planning Commission from 1949-1970), the program focuses on encouraging multi-disciplinary, visionary ideas for our urban future.

INTERSECT: What Happens When Transportation Corridors and Cities Collide? When transportation corridors such as highways and rail lines meet dense urban areas, choices must be made about how to balance the needs of the transportation modes and the lively city it intersects. Across the world, cities have found innovative solutions for addressing issues relating to large-scale urban transportation infrastructure. Recently in the U.S. cities such as San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis have transformed highways into urban boulevards. Boston buried Interstate 93 in the famous “Big Dig,” but at a huge cost. Other cities have worked to bridge highways and rail corridors that separate downtowns from waterfronts. With international precedent for design solutions, the Center for Architecture challenges the next generation of urban thinkers to propose novel solutions to integrate Philadelphia’s major transportation corridors into its urban fabric.

Awards US$ 5000 TOTAL

website: http://www.philadelphiacfa.org/