The Yankee Approach to the Future

While New York may be a land for the dream-filled and ambitious, Big Think’s recent guest Mitchell Joachim is taking this stereotype to a new level—a level in which the Big Apple is entirely self-sufficient and its dull skyscrapers and wayward taxis have been brilliantly replaced with “nerf-like” soft cars, jet packs, vertical farms, and homes made from living organisms. Oh, and the suburbs…those ‘futureless’ plots have been uplifted and placed along a line that links our downtowns, never stops, and is “connected to a smart, renewable grid.”

Sound sustainable? It’s not. Joachim’s projects are based on a much less ‘bland’ and defeatist notion that recognizes humanity’s capacity to not merely ‘scrape by’ in the future, but to answer our global challenges as an ‘evolving, intelligent, and heroic species.’ Let’s not aim to be like the Chicago Cubs, Joachim warns–let’s be like the Yankees.

While many of the architect, designer, and Columbia professor’s designs—several of which can be seen in Big Think’s interview—may appear like a whimsical blend of a sci-fi movie and a ‘J.R.R. Tolkien novel,’ Joachim argues that in times such as ours, our ideas must be as large and unprecedented as our problems: “It’s our job to be clairvoyant. It’s our job to propose something that doesn’t exist.”