Last week, New York City Commissioners Amanda Burden, of the Department of City Planning (DCP), Adrian Benepe, of Parks and Recreation (DPR), and David Burney, of the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), convened at the Great Hall of The Cooper Union for the third in the Architectural League’s series…

A recap of the second of the League’s Conversations on New York, with Dan Doctoroff, former NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, and Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker.

Matthew Storrie recaps the first of the Architectural League’s “Conversations on New York” with Alexander Garvin. Check it out and then join the League THIS THURSDAY for a rare chance to hear Dan Doctoroff and Paul Goldberger discuss the past decade of development and the challenges facing the city looking forward from 2010.

Many urbanists have characterized the years leading up to the current financial crisis as a return of the big vision in urban planning and design: the metropolitan plans, the major rezonings, the megaprojects. For two of the most significant big visions for New York — the NYC2012 Olympic bid and the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan…

The term landscape might suggest images of shaded glens, rolling plains, sublime mountains, or manicured lawns. This descriptive vocabulary is primarily aesthetic or emotional. Yet the great surveyed grids of the West, the patterns of farming, transportation, housing, and industry indicate that the choices that underlie the form of the American landscape have a lot to do with function; the “American landscape” is a much…

Next week we will bring you a first hand look at the design of the library at P.S. 69 in the Bronx, one of over 50 public schools in the five boroughs that participated in the Robin Hood Library Initiative. Tonight, don’t miss a unique chance to hear from administrators, educators and architects. The Architectural…

Update: You can now view Archipelago, an original Urban Omnibus video production, exhibited in The City We Imagined / The City We Made, that explores a day in the life of five New York neighborhoods: Hunts Point, Jamaica, Mariner’s Harbor, Downtown Brooklyn, and Chelsea, here on Urban Omnibus…