Urbanists Just Cleaned Up in MacArthur 'Genius Grants'

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation just announced its 2017 class of MacArthur Fellows—popularly (though unofficially) known as “genius grants.” (The MacArthur Foundation pointedly avoids the g-word.) Work in any field except elected office is eligible. Writers, mathematicians, voting rights activists, poets, archaeologists, healthcare administrators, geophysicists, human rights attorneys, astronomers—that’s just a narrow slice of the wide variety of careers that have produced geniuses since 1981.

But there’s a theme running through this year’s class, each of whom receives a no-strings-attached purse of $625,000. It’s full of people working in fields directly or closely related to urbanism. In fact, they cleaned up: By our count, more than one-third of the genius grantees received honors for work that affects the changing shape of cities today. It’s a sign that the issues deemed worthy of genius-level attention, from climate change to human rights, are increasingly urban ones. (A city-fied MacArthur focus isn’t exactly a new thing, as seen by the dominance of New York on these two cool interactive maps showing where grantees were born and where they lived when the award was given. Keep trying, Wyoming!)