The Payphone of the Future Is Calling

The May issue of The Atlantic highlights two finalists from a competition New York City held earlier this year to reinvent the payphone for an era when landlines (and quarters) now seem obsolete. The city's 15-year contract with its current payphone vendors expires next year. And in advance of that opportunity to re-create this classic urban infrastructure, New York has been inviting residents, designers and tinkerers to help dream up what the phone booth might become if it could be more than just a phone. What if it were also a Wi-Fi hotspot? A bike rack? An electric car charging station? An emergency alert system?