A flower garden. An outdoor concert facility. A monument to the modern Penn student.
The possibilities are endless for what could replace some of Philadelphia's abandoned spaces in the coming years as part of a new international design competition, "Urban Voids: Grounds for Change."
The competition offers people, including students, from all over the world the opportunity to brainstorm creative ways to transform Philadelphia's vacant land into usable property that can revitalize the community and influence city planning in the future.
"Urban abandonment in Philadelphia has become very apparent," said Jonathan Cohen-Litant, whose non-profit organization, the Van Alen Institute, is managing the competition. "The reason the competition is so broad and open is because we don't want to limit anything."
While urban abandonment is a common problem across the country, Philadelphia, with more than 40,000 vacant properties, struggles with the issue more than most American cities.
"The numbers just balanced out this year, but population has been decreasing in the city for many years," City Parks Association President Deenah Loeb said. "That and the shifting of industries and manufacturing [from the area] has left a lot of vacancy."
City and Regional Planning professor Thomas Daniels said that urban abandonment inhibits private investment and hurts the local economy.
"The thinking is if you can improve the physical environment, that will encourage people to buy houses, and hopefully it will also encourage business investment," he said. "If Philadelphia can have some success [with the competition], it will certainly be noticed by other cities."
The competition represents the second part of a multiphase LANDvisions program, formulated by the City Parks Association, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the Reinvestment Fund.
The program hopes to promote innovative, long-term solutions to urban vacancy that take into account Philadelphia's ecology, natural resources and neighborhoods.
Regular registration for the competition ends Oct. 7, costs $150 and can be done at www.vanalen.org/urbanvoids. After that, prospective participants can register for $180 until Nov. 14. Primary registrants must have a design degree, unless a team acquires a professional adviser.
After the submission deadline in early January, a team of judges from around the country will select up to five finalists in a process that should last around a month.
In the third phase, the finalists will each receive $5,000 to draw up plans for implementing their ideas on a specific site. Judges will narrow these submissions down to a single winner, who will receive recognition and an undetermined monetary award.
Chris Jurek, who graduated from Penn's School of Design in May, said that he and a group of his former classmates are planning on entering the competition, though they have yet to formulate any concrete ideas.
"Right now we are looking to assemble a crew," he said. "We have a diverse group of city planners, and it would be nice to pull in people from outside the city-planning field."
Daniels said he hopes current Penn students follow Jurek's lead.
"It's an excellent opportunity to wrestle with real-world problems that are literally in their own backyard," he said.
