On the facades of old brick buildings in Red Hook, Brooklyn, there are cast-iron plates shaped like a star bolt — a six-pointed anchor that holds the wall to the structure behind it. They have been doing this for more than a century. They are not decorative. They are structural. They are the reason the building is still standing.

Red Hook is one of New York's most flood-prone neighborhoods. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy inundated it. In the years since, climate models have continued to show what the neighborhood's own residents already know: the water is coming back, and eventually it will not leave. The bricks are holding. The anchor plates are holding. The question is what they are holding for.

On Monday, May 18, 2026, IWBFD Storytelling Studios will hold its first public event in Red Hook as part of NYCxDESIGN 2026. The venue is Cafe Here — a restaurant and gathering space on the waterfront where, on a clear evening, the Statue of Liberty is visible across the harbor. The program is called Future New York Storytelling: No Stone Tombstone. It is also the launch of the paperback edition of Sim Eternal City: A Framework for Future City Storytelling by Paul Joseph J. Kang.

The framework Kang has spent twelve years building begins with a specific observation: by 2050, one in six people globally will be over 65. Sea levels are rising. And artificial general intelligence is arriving in the same decade. These three transitions — longevity, climate, and AI — are usually addressed as separate problems. Sim Eternal City argues they share a single design response: a floating city built from decommissioned cruise ships, co-inhabited by climate-displaced elders and humanoid robot co-citizens, organized around an 18-minute city model in which every essential service is within walking distance.

The star bolt found on Red Hook's brick buildings is the visual and conceptual anchor of the entire framework. Sim in East Asia means heart or mind. The star bolt — stella in motion — connects IWBFD Studios' identity, the phrase "New for the Olds," and the physical reality of a neighborhood holding itself together against a rising harbor.

The event on May 18 will announce Red Hook is the final location out of five candidate waterfront sites for New York's future city storyteling — including Red Hook Basin Outer Anchorage, visible from the venue's windows.

Four people will speak. Each of them approaches the question of what cities owe their people — particularly their elders, their memorials, and their builders — from a different angle.

The past is in the bricks. The future is in the water. The conversation between them starts in three days.

(Sources: IWBFD Studios / Sim Eternal City Press Release / NYCxDESIGN 2026 / simeternalcity.iwbfd.com)

Paul J. J. Kang — City Storyteller & Founder, IWBFD Storytelling Studios

Paul J. J. Kang is a city storyteller and author based in New York, with a practice that moves through cities around the world. He is the founder of IWBFD Storytelling Studios — named for the phrase I Was Born For Death — and his guiding philosophy, “New For The Olds, Life For Death,” reframes endings as thresholds for new beginnings. His path to this work spans 25 years and more than 100 cities. He has worked on UNEP, APEC, and IOC bid committee initiatives, advised the City of Seoul on global marketing, and created The Romantic Movement: Seoul, a film series that drew over 147 million views. His future-city storytelling framework Sim Eternal City imagines a floating coastal city where climate-displaced elders and humanoid robot co-citizens share daily life. Through bcdW, he publishes a daily newsletter that threads today’s cities into conversation with one another.

Daniel Adeyanju — TEDx Speaker, Founder of Christians Innovate

Daniel Adeyanju is a speaker, minister, and community builder working at the intersection of people, faith, tech, and the future of work. He is the founder of Christians Innovate, where he inspires Believers to launch redemptive enterprises for the next 5, 50, and 500 years. A TEDx speaker and John Maxwell Certified Coach, Daniel also co-founded Kura Labs and previously led partnerships at The Knowledge House, both technology workforce development organizations. He is co-founder of Kọ Café in Jersey City, an African-inspired coffee shop grounded in faith, community, and creative entrepreneurship. His work centers on what he calls the Wisdom Economy — the world that comes after the Knowledge Economy, in which communication, leadership, and innovation are the future-proof triad.

Vignan Ganji — Urban Planner, Chief of Staff at IWBFD Storytelling Studios

Vignan Ganji is an urban planner, researcher, and educator. He currently serves as Chief of Staff at IWBFD Storytelling Studios, where he applies his background in planning and civic communication to creative leadership. Before this, Vignan held dual roles at Rowan University teaching Cultural Geography and working as a Research Assistant at the Community Action for Resilience and Equity Lab, where his research focused on the equity and accessibility of EV charging infrastructure. He holds dual master’s degrees in urban and regional planning from Rowan University and the School of Planning & Architecture Vijayawada, and is a Certified Town Planner credentialed by the Institute of Town Planners India. He is also a volunteer contributor to bcdW Magazine’s Sim Eternal City project, exploring the future of floating cities.

Omer Yosef — Founder, Coherent Sense — Public Experience & Spatial Intelligence

Omer Yosef is the founder of Coherent Sense, a studio that treats experience as an architectural material. Trained in sculpture and new media at UCLA, he works across public art, architecture, and building intelligence. Recent work includes Strata, a 40-foot climate-responsive centerpiece at Mesa City Hall. An earlier commission — a temporary mausoleum he designed during COVID for a grieving family, which held photographs of the deceased and invited mourners to record their memories aloud — set the questions his practice still asks: how public space holds ritual and meaning, and how built form carries deep time. He is also Creative Director of Digital Ambiance.

Seoul 🇰🇷 — Paul Kang was born in Seoul. The city that made him and the city he is now making a framework for are connected by the same observation: aging is not a problem to be solved at the end of life. It is a design problem to be addressed at the beginning of a city’s planning. South Korea is aging faster than any OECD country. Its cities were not built for the person they are becoming. The Sim Eternal City framework, which begins in New York but is explicitly designed to reach many coastal cities, arrived at its foundational question in the tension between Seoul’s performance culture and the population it is systematically producing: millions of elderly people for whom the city has not yet made room. The event in Red Hook on May 18 is not only a New York story. It is the first chapter of a story that Seoul is waiting to read.

Tokyo 🇯🇵 — Japan has 30% of its population over 65. Tokyo has been living the Sim Eternal City question longer than any other major city: what does a super-aged, climate-exposed, AI-accelerating city do with its most experienced residents? Tokyo’s answer so far has been largely institutional — nursing homes, community care networks, convenience stores as informal care infrastructure. The Sim Eternal City framework offers something different: a spatial answer. Not a better care system, but a different city form. A floating city designed around the body’s changing needs, around the community structures that make meaning in old age, around the idea that elders are productive agents rather than care recipients. Tokyo’s planners should be at Cafe Here on Sunday.

Amsterdam 🇳🇱 — Amsterdam is already building floating homes. The Buiksloterham district’s floating residences are permanent, connected to city services, and fully integrated into the urban fabric. The AMS Institute — a collaboration between TU Delft, MIT, and Wageningen University — has published extensive research on floating urban infrastructure as climate adaptation. What the Sim Eternal City framework adds to Amsterdam’s prototype is purpose: not floating homes for young urban professionals, but floating cities for climate-displaced elders who have nowhere else to go. Amsterdam has the engineering. Red Hook on Sunday has the story. The two need to find each other.