Culture
These Designers Want To Put Rikers Island on the Map
The guerrilla #SeeRikers campaign aims to correct a New York subway map oversight—and highlight the corrections crisis.
Rikers Island looms large in New York’s imagination. It is home to a notorious complex of prisons, one whose excesses are still being discovered by the media and the courts. Many would like to see the Rikers Island closed forever, or barring that, to at least change the name to something that does not honor a slaveowner.
One group of designers has a different goal for Rikers Island—one that is within reach and, in fact, already at hand. Their problem: On one of the most prominent maps of New York City, Rikers Island isn't labeled. The island's name doesn't show up on Metropolitan Transportation Authority maps that appear inside New York subway trains. Their solution: Label it. On every map.