Urban Omnibus

The winter thaw always uncovers new or forgotten things, so this week we bring you a special post-thaw roundup featuring vacant lot and home sales in Newark and Long Island, the Department of Environmental Protection's battle with wet wipes, the future of open space in Williamsburg, and essays on black lives and architecture.

Laura Hansen explains how the Neighborhood Plaza Partnership supports the local non-profits that operate the city’s newest plazas and asks how much we should, and can, rely on private support for maintaining our public realm.

Singer-songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane describes the way architecture, literature, and historical research inform his compositions and why he's drawn to storytelling tied to place.

Damian Santucci, Director of Production and Operations for the Times Square Alliance, walks us through the groundwork behind the spectacle of the Square and the logistics of coordinating hundreds of events, film shoots, and public art installations in a public space that sees 350,000 visitors a day.

While we rarely see our water system at work — even its most visible manifestation, the Central Park reservoir, is no longer used to distribute our water supply — it remains the city’s most critical piece of civic infrastructure.

Archaeologist Alyssa Loorya takes on the supposed tension between preservation and development, shares the particularities of urban archaeology, and tells the fascinating stories of some of her favorite sites and finds.

Eric Rothstein lets us in on the particular challenges of restoration, mitigation, and water resources management in New York and offers a measured but optimistic assessment of the role of green infrastructure in fostering sustainable urban development.