Roosevelt Island

Roosevelt Island is a thin strip of land between Manhattan and Queens in the East River. The island is accessible only by one subway stop - or by a cable car that reaches it from the Upper East Side. It has effectively one street, lined by concrete highrises that would not feel out of place in the communist Eastern Bloc, and mental hospitals, leaving that one already creepy street to be filled mostly with mental patients out for a stroll. Incongruously, the island's other inhabitants are primarily UN diplomats.

During the 2011 Applied Sciences NYC competition, Roosevelt Island was offered up as prime land for a new applied sciences university campus. Both Cornell and Stanford proposed campuses for the site, but in the end, Cornell's proposal, in partnership with Israel's Technion, won, and Cornell will soon have a considerable physical plant there. Which is good, because - though Cornell's medical school is already in Manhattan, there's only room for one real Ivy League campus on our island.