by Jenny Xie

Millions of Americans are out casting their votes today, in an Election Day routine that hasn’t changed for a long time. Unless you’re mailing in a ballot, you’d go to the neighborhood polling place and get on a line that you feel is simultaneously too long and not long enough. Can this status quo be improved? This was the challenge given to multidisciplinary teams of architects, geographers, urban consultants, and more last weekend as they competed in a one-day flash competition at the Van Alan Institute in New York City.