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Keep the Change
Landmarking has long been one of the few tools available to preserve a building. Can historic preservation adapt to protect affordability and utility alongside cornices and columns?
Waste Watering Holes
Bird watching at an unlikely urban oasis: the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant
The City in Our Hands
At the Black Zine Fair, now in its third year, the power of DIY publications as movement- and city-building technologies is on display.
Dancing About Architecture
How have dancers and their movements shaped the built environment of New York — and how has the city shaped them in return?
A Way Out of No Way
Contact with life’s sharper edges guides artist Guadalupe Maravilla’s quest to assist the most vulnerable New Yorkers.
Notes from the Industrial Zone
New York was founded on industry. As e-commerce rewrites the supply chain, how are we protecting the small businesses left behind?
A Labor of Love
Up a marble staircase, in the attic of City Hall, a trio of civil servants steward an eclectic archive of city objects.
Three Ways to Reclaim Wood
Brooklyn-based studio Tri-Lox intervenes on the city’s waste stream, repurposing wood to furnish everything from Shake Shack interiors to Shakespeare in the Park.
The Plaza Paradox
In the shadow of the Flatiron, a writer spends an hour conducting her own public space audit.
Power on Wheels
How a Pakistani Rastafarian DJ in Germany came to lead a 25,000-member-strong New York City taxi workers union
The Artist Is Present
What happens when artists embed within city government? For ten years, New York’s Public Artists in Residence have been building bridges and breaking down walls between the civic and the public.
Nooks and Crannies
Local birds evicted from their usual habitats find themselves nesting and hunting atop skyscrapers, power lines, and traffic lights.
Safer Spaces
With the new mayor promising to deliver “community safety,” one well-established city program charts a path through new public spaces and long-needed repairs at the city’s most under-resourced NYCHA developments.
New City Critics 2025-2026: Object Lessons with Anna Kodé and Oliver Wainwright
Join the New City Critics on March 4, 2026 for a conversation with Anna Kodé & Oliver Wainwright.
Designing Mamdani’s New York
At the start of a new mayoral administration promising an urban transformation, eight practitioners discuss architecture’s role in shaping the social democratic city.
Heat Islands
While hibernation and migration are the norm, some animals stay in the city for winter, seeking out opportunities in the heat we generate.
Where's My Package?
Amazon’s logistical network is as extensive as it is abstruse. To get a sense of its scale, we reconstruct the regional distribution system, one order at a time.
Wonder is All Around Us
Ordering pad thai on an iPad in the muzak of a takeout food chain created in the pressure cooker of the post-pandemic economy.
The Future, Encapsulated
With a fragment of the Tokyo Nakagin Capsule Tower preserved for posterity, a MoMA exhibition provides more than one perspective on planned obsolescence.
Signs of Change
Posting the experiences of shelter residents and staff in the public realm, artist Alex Strada creates a walking meditation on the right to housing.
The Hottest Club
A contemporary "bathhouse" draws on ancient traditions to heighten experience, but is untethered from the more convivial aspects of bathing culture.
Medieval Times
The MTA’s latest military-inspired tactics to curb fare evasion may be fighting the wrong enemy.
Good Food
At an experiment in collective dining, sitting between food justice and conspicuous consumption
What Goes Around
A high-volume transfer station, a model municipal soil bank, and a cutting-edge soil washer: Three area sites illustrate the values, costs, and benefits that shape the flow of recycled soil in and around the city.