Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities is a 14 month long project commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. For this exhibition, Cohabitation Strategies is addressing the ongoing uneven development across New York City’s boroughs by designing a radically new affordable housing program (Cooperative Housing Trusts) and by exposing— through local narratives— the economic, social and spatial inequalities mirrored in the unprecedented housing crisis. The narratives describe the experiences of local advocates for housing justice —citizens, activists, artists, writers, community organizers, academics and urban experts. They reveal the other New York City by exposing some of the agents and outcomes of illegal conversions, homelessness, foreclosures, land values, vacancies and re-zoned inner city areas.
Besides depicting dramatic inequalities, the narratives provide potential instruments already taking place in the city to counteract the biggest housing crisis in the modern history of New York City. Some of these approaches were incorporated into the actionable permanent-affordable housing program we designed. A series of local and international workshops with participants engaged in housing and urban activism were organized to envision and discuss such tactics.