The Long Island Index recently announced the 23 finalists from its “Build a Better Burb” competition.  The competition challenged architects, urban designers, planners, students, visionaries and everyone else interested in shaping the future of Long Island to come up with bold ideas that would retrofit underutilized expanses of asphalt in Long Island downtowns into vibrant new uses.

All of the final 23 are innovative and range from creating an island-wide regional governance structure that would promote a carbon-neutral future to a more traditional, but still bold, redevelopment of downtown Riverhead.

The common trend running through the finalists is a desire to preserve open space and curb suburban sprawl by building up Long Island’s downtowns and expanding development near transit centers.

As in many design competitions, some of the finalists’ ideas are ambitious to the point of being pie-in-the-sky. But big problems demand ambitious solutions. If Long Island is to have a bright future in the 21st century, it may very well be on the basis of the ideas, big and small, presented here.

The polls are open through the end of August and you can vote for your favorite here. The LI Index is a project of the Rauch Foundation, a  supporter of TSTC’s work.