Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Stop by the streets around the  New Museum between Thursday May 28th and  Saturday May 30th, and you'll see the invisbile city come alive with new, progressive ideas as part of the Ideas City festival for the future. This three-day festival will feature over 100 free events, culminating with a street fair around the New Museum on Bowery/Prince Street on Saturday May 30th. Some of the highlights of the festival include talks and panels at the Cooper Union  on the future of cities and urban spaces. See what an artist can do with repurposed hot air balloons, or check out the future of mobile workspaces. There will be film screenings, poetry readings, panels, workshops, and slide projections in the more unexpected of places (this year on a basillica!).  

To tie in with the theme of Invisible Cities, we polled our patrons at the Mulberry Street Library to see how the library helps them uncover hidden resources that make the city seem less invisible.  Here is a sampling of some of the responses:

"I like watching movies at the library."

"The library is very quiet in the morning. It has a lot of books and series for me to read. It is a good place for homework. Librarians help me with homework. It is a relaxing place to play and talk to friends."

"I like to use the library for books and DVDs."

"Gives me a voice as an artist that I would not ordinarily have."

"I would like the library to have a snack cart for kids. I like that all the staff are helpful and nice, and fun."

"I like that I can be nice to my friends at the library."

"The library lets me use laptop computers, plus all the options of the audiobooks and other resources." 

"The library has made me more aware of the homeless situation; the library is where they hang out when they get out of the shelter." 

The Ideas City festival is a bienniel celebration started in 2011, and has bought over 50,000 people each year to the streets around the Bowery location of the New Museum. The festival challenges us to come together and celebrate a thriving urban life, and dares us to dream, think about and design our cities of the future.