Locations, Locations, Locations
Location scouts have shaped representations of New York for decades. Now, changes to the film industry and the built environment both threaten a carefully cultivated way of seeing.
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Tide and Current
Over more than 20 years, an artist ferrying passengers through New York’s waterways in small boats has shared a unique vantage on an always-changing island city.
The Null Hypothesis
It’s easy to be a visionary when the alternative is an ash heap. A casino megaproject promised for Queens reveals the persistent failures of imagination driving “development” and its discontents.
Infrastructure Enclaves
In a dense city, borders and barriers made of steel, concrete, and asphalt can create unexpected pockets of protection for habitat-starved plants and animals.
New City Critics 2025–26: City en Regalia
Join the New City Critics on June 17 for a publication launch and conversation.
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.