2015 Better Philadelphia Challenge Winners Announced

Photo credit: Doc Searls via Wikipedia.

The annual Better Philadelphia Challenge is a university-level competition in which contestants create a plan that addresses “real-world urban design issues” in Philadelphia, but which is easily transferable to other cities.

This year, Bacon Prize honoree Dr. Judith Rodin will give a speech to the winners who were asked to “reimagine” Petty Island, a vacant island between Camden and Philly. Rodin is the former president of the University of Penn and current president of the Rockefeller Foundation. During her time at Penn, Rodin encouraged revitalization in University City.

The winners of the challenge were a team of students from Cornell University whose FOODWORX project involved a mix of agricultural sustainability and riverfront redevelopment. From the Center for Architecture:

Serving as a catalyst for sustainable, innovative, and long-lasting growth, the proposal includes “the creation of an agricultural college, seed bank, sky farm, discovery center, and farmers market on the island while upgrading the Philadelphia riverfront with food distribution warehouses, marina, common buildings, and recreational fields. Reasserting the ecological and economic importance of Petty Island and the Delaware River through creative programming and uses, FOODWORX imagines a self-sufficient and prepared Philadelphia over the course of the next 100 years

2015 Beter Phladelphia Challenge Winners Announced [Center for Architecture]