Migration is not a singular event but an ongoing negotiation between people and place. It is the generative metamorphosis of urban DNA, a testament to how cities adapt, endure, and reinvent themselves. Critical perspectives on the built environment argue that human movement is not merely a backdrop to urban life, but a central force shaping its material reality and collective consciousness. In an era of heightened mobility, displacement, and shifting borders, practitioners are rethinking how planning and architecture engage these flows, not as problems to be solved, but as openings to ask: Who designs belonging? To who a crisis? To whom an evolution? And how might urban practitioners un-design these hierarchies?
In Fall 2023, GSAPP students, faculty, practitioners, experts, and community members with lived experience joined a collaborative effort to confront these questions, examining the right to shelter, New York City's migration histories, and the evolving narratives of migration in the city.