Perfect City
New York, NY | Participatory Urbanism & Youth Organizing | Civic Imagination, Spatial Justice, Public Engagement
Mission:
Perfect City is a long-term, participatory art and planning project based in the South Bronx that activates young people to become urban theorists and civic leaders. Through collaborative research, dialogue, and storytelling, they envision what a “perfect city” would look like—one rooted in equity, community voice, and systems change.
Key Focus Areas
Youth-Led Participatory Planning
Trains and pays young people as cultural strategists to reimagine the systems and structures that shape their neighborhoods.
🔗 Meet the Team
Collective Urban Theory
Explores power, ownership, housing, and public space through facilitated dialogues, public art, and participatory design labs.
🔗 Perfect City Work
Narrative Change & Imagination
Uses creative and political storytelling to challenge urban injustice and generate public dialogue rooted in local lived experience.
🔗 Perfect City Values
Why It Matters
Perfect City repositions young people—especially from marginalized communities—as architects of the future. It shifts the narrative of who holds expertise in city planning, and opens civic design to those most affected by inequitable systems. The project also models what sustained, creative, power-sharing engagement can look like in practice.
Relevant to The Change Lab
Perfect City exemplifies Change Lab principles: participatory democracy, civic belonging, and reimagining systems through grassroots imagination. Their approach to youth organizing and public storytelling offers a tangible roadmap for cross-generational civic engagement and community-rooted design.
