AECOM - Urban SOS 2017: hOUR City

AECOM - Urban SOS 2017: hOUR City now is over!

The 8th Urban SOS, a global student design challenge this year themed ’hOUR City’ presented by AECOM and Van Alen Institute in partnership with 100 Resilient Cities has recently been launched for 2017 asking students to propose new solutions to tackle housing, transportation, or economic development challenges and to re-imagine what a future “hour city” boundary can be.

About Competition

Presented by AECOM and Van Alen Institute in partnership with 100 Resilient Cities, Urban SOS is the design challenge this year themed "hOUR City" in its 8th edition.

The Urban SOS is a global competition that challenges multidisciplinary student teams to propose solutions to urban issues and support more equitable access to resources, improve the built environment, and enrich quality of life.

The organizers are asking students to propose new solutions to tackle housing, transportation, or economic development challenges and to re-imagine what a future “hour city” boundary can be
Students are encouraged to propose policy strategies, business models, and other solutions to address their chosen challenge, but these proposals must be accompanied by a physical intervention at a specific site in a city within the 100 Resilient Cities network.

Teams should propose design, planning, policy, and other strategies that address unequal access to opportunity by offering people better options for where to live, how to move around, and how to make a living.

The challenge asks you to imagine:

• Multidisciplinary approaches that marry design, planning, business, engineering, policy, or other kinds of expertise to produce strategies that could increase the production or preservation of high-quality affordable housing.

• How increased mobility can offer greater access to jobs, affordable housing, markets, services (e.g., healthcare, education), and other opportunities or resources.

• Economic development strategies that can be broadened to offer opportunities to a wider range of people (e.g., with limited skills and education; living in remote, rural areas).

• A combination of housing, transportation, or economic development strategies that complement each other to improve people’s quality of life.

Students must form a multidisciplinary team of two to five members to enter, and include students from two disciplines at a minimum.

Jurors will evaluate proposals based on the following criteria:

– Demonstrates a deep and nuanced understanding of the chosen site(s), the people the proposal addresses, the specified infrastructural problems and opportunities, as well as its social, economic, physical, and political context.
– Demonstrates interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration between sectors.
– Resourcefully addresses real-world constraints (e.g., the proposal builds on existing public- and private-sector initiatives, and considers economic, social, and political feasibility) and offers implementable solutions.
– Develops innovative design, policy, or other strategies that strengthen physical, economic, political, ecological, or other connections within urban communities, and between urban and outlying communities, improving the quality of life of the people affected.
– Communicates its ideas clearly, succinctly, and compellingly using both words and visuals.

Entrants must be enrolled in a certified program during the 2017-2018 academic year to participate.

In summer 2017, they will select up to 16 semifinalist teams from around the world to participate in a feedback session with AECOM and Van Alen Institute that will help student teams further develop their proposals. After they will be reviewed in fall 2017 by juries of experts in Hong Kong, London, New York, and Sydney. These juries will select teams to advance to the final jury in Los Angeles. Up to two representatives from each finalist team will then present their proposals to the final jury in late January 2018.

There is no entry fee for this competition!