What if cities were designed not just for innovation and growth, but for ongoing care and repair? My thesis explores repair as a political and ecological practice rooted in care, maintenance, and collective responsibility. Working in New York City, I examined how repair work, especially in marginalized neighborhoods, is often carried out informally, invisibly, and without recognition. These grassroots efforts fill the gaps left by failing public infrastructure, yet are rarely acknowledged as vital contributions to urban resilience. Through this lens, repair becomes both a response to systemic abandonment and an act of civic agency.

This project draws on the work of scholars like Shannon Mattern and Stephen Graham, who understand maintenance as central to how cities function. I build on these ideas by proposing a triad of repair, maintenance, and critical care as key frameworks for just and sustainable urban futures. This included the creation of three participatory tools: a crowdsourced digital repair map, a community repair guidebook, and a facilitation guide for organizing repair workshops. These are meant to support residents in documenting needs, imagining repair infrastructures, and reclaiming ownership of their environments.

Ultimately, this work positions repair as an essential urban practice and a way of rethinking how we live together in cities. It calls for design to center care and for infrastructure to reflect justice.