Deep_Future Manhattan 

Visionaries have often dreamed of airborne and elevated structures, of cities floating above the earth, metaphysical concepts as much as physical projections. From Wenzel Hablik’s Colony in the Air and Georgy Krutikov’s Flying City to Constant’s New Babylon, Buckminster Fuller’s Cloud Nine and Paolo Soleri’s Babel IID and Hexahedron among others, the idea of ‘floating’ and ‘lofting’ infrastructure and city space, has persevered as an asymptotic trajectory for architects and city planners seeking new forms of urban inhabitation.

Throughout the 20th century the growth of urban dense centers such as Manhattan have emerged out of the opportunities provided by dense populations set against the maximization of property value. Consequently urban form has been shaped by both the extrusion of lot lines, setbacks and rights of way inscribed onto the ground plane, as well as by the push and pull between private and collective rights to infringe upon or