Cities have long been fertile grounds for romance: chance encounters in the street, furtive glances on the subway, long meandering walks with a new crush, and introducing loved ones to favorite neighborhood haunts. Traditional urban planning and urban design practices often don’t provide the space to think critically about the ways that cities can be designed to foster love, be it romantic, familial, or platonic. What would cities look like if we prioritized love as a necessary ingredient of a full life with as much seriousness as other worthy goals like affordable housing, good jobs, and safe transportation? 

Call for Submissions

We are seeking essays, visual art, interviews, and design proposals that explore the notion of romantic urbanism: the features of urban spaces that can help foster love. The chosen submissions will be curated into a digital romantic urbanism collection. In addition to the digital collection, we are interested in proposals that can also be turned into placemaking activations and would work with you to secure a location and identify potential funding to implement the activation.

Here are some themes we’re particularly interested in:

• Queer love in public space

• Multigenerational love 

• Chosen family love

• Remedying loneliness through urban design

• Mutual aid + cities + love

• Third spaces for fostering love

• Being single in cities

• The role of transit and urban design in crossing paths and meet cutes

• Love for plants and animals

• Infrastructure investment and matainance as a love language