Dear Mayor Bill de Blasio: Along with many other architects and urbanists, I'm looking forward to your taking office this month as mayor of New York City, and working to implement the theme of your campaign, the elimination of the increasingly radical disparities that underlie that 'tale of two cities' you so frequently spoke about—a tale, increasingly, about two nations.
As the world's population of informal-settlement dwellers races to the 1.5 billion mark, designers and planners must play a central, if redefined, role.