Writing the City

Writing the City envisions New York City through written reflection and opinion.

This Land is Our Land

Consider some simple math about people and land. If all of Earth’s six billion people were to live at the density we do here in the five boroughs of New York City, all of humanity would occupy less than one half of one percent of the earth’s land mass. Only…

Floyd Bennett Field: Recreation in the Wasteland

FASLANYC visits Floyd Bennett Field and finds an example of park use that references the site’s unique history and demonstrates the changing nature of recreation.

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Spill, Baby, Spill

As oil spills into the Gulf, blood spills in the streets of Greece, and cash spills from terrorist wallets into the hands of willing airline agents, one wonders who can clean up this mess. We tell our children to clean up after themselves, but can we? Disciplining a child is a perilous affair, but in the end self-discipline is the challenge. Self-discipline requires introspection, but how much of it can we muster in a world careening towards 9 billion people?

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To LEED is Human; to Lead, Divine

Vishaan Chakrabarti takes Jaime Lerner’s transformation of Curitiba as a powerful call to action for designers to initiate change in architectural, ecological, political and urban terms.

Empowering the City:
London / New York

Gerald Frug contrasts the structures and powers of city government in London and New York in order to ask a crucial urban question: what are our cities empowered to do?

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Double Down on Density

Vishaan Chakrabarti responds to President Obama’s State of the Union Address and considers how heightened investment in the Infrastructure of Tomorrow could be our silver bullet.

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The Public Works

Nancy Levinson reviews some provocative positions on infrastructure and challenges designers to recast the relationship between individual initiative and political community.

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Being Dense about Denmark

Vishaan Chakrabarti imagines a city-focused national strategy to make our country healthy, prosperous and green, in response to the 2009 Copenhagen climate change talks.

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A Country of Cities

Coldplay may be wrong – just because we’re losing may in fact mean that we’re lost. We are at a crossroads as a nation, and currently, despite all the hope generated by President Obama, we’re not yet on the right path. At the Federal level, one has to wonder if there is an Asphalt Lobby, because if there is, they must be partying like it’s…

My Living Room

Writer and designer James Reeves reflects on his outdoor living room in New York from his newly adopted home of Helsinki.

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