The Midnight Shift
A small task force listens in on an obscure city soundtrack to maintain a century-old water system.
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From Creek to Fountain
Polluted and repressed, the buried streams of Flushing Creek will once again see the light of day.
No Rest for the Whimsy
Multiple spins on an elaborate underwater-themed carousel reveal the importance of wonder in the public realm.
Can’t We Have Both?
A very short story debates two long-term visions for vital infrastructure in Queens.
Funeral for Fish
At one of the country’s largest food distribution hubs, a logistical choreography keeps our fish fresh.
A Resurrection
Behind the scenes of a DIY stalwart’s rebuild as it returns after ten years to a changed LES, and world.
Life Beyond Line Items
To get the city we deserve, New Yorkers must be active participants in its governance. What spaces and methods can help us build democratic muscle and demand moral budgets?
Unsettled Ground
The city’s construction projects don’t just rise skyward. They dig downward, displacing massive amounts of material whose journey in and out of the city few ever see.
A Question About Tomorrow
As goes Ravenswood, so goes New York’s energy future. So what will it take to bring a just transition to the city’s largest power plant?
The Tempest
As midsummer nights get hotter and wetter, outdoor performance venues and workers are adapting.
A Century of Cross Bronx Developments
Who built the Cross Bronx? In the history of an ambivalent icon, the answer is as complicated as the highway interchanges.
A Closer Look: Across the Bronx
“The Cross Bronx is the catalyst for the Bronx history that drives my work as a documentarian of community. It’s this dichotomy of, ‘I wish this was never here,’ and ‘I would miss it if it went away.’”
Meet the 2025-2026 New City Critics Fellows
New City Critics fellows will turn their critical gaze over the city.
Exhibition: Cross Bronx / Living Legend
Reconsidering one of New York City’s most contested infrastructures through new photography and oral histories that focus on the experiences of the people and places touched by it, our exhibition is on view at the Bronx River Art Center from September 26 through November 9.
Chisholm Town
A larger than life figure is honored across a growing landscape of commemorative parks, buildings, and place names.
The Sport That Asks Nothing of Us
In Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, the cricket pitch is a commonwealth.
Queer Comfort
Plants in a Staten Island garden — and the communities that sustain them — bloom in genders beyond binaries.
The Invisible Arch
Public art proposals are a highly contested terrain. But the processes for the commissions themselves escape scrutiny.
The Shortest Ramp Is a Longer Road
A new Crown Heights bookshop is a cipher for conflicting feelings of ambivalence, betrayal, and belonging
Permanent Resident
The new Queens headquarters of Make the Road New York is designed as a beacon for its working-class, immigrant community. The story of the building closely tracks larger struggles to make a stable, secure home in the city.
The World is About to Turn
In the weekly Jericho Walk, New Sanctuary Coalition and allies confront a site of darkness and fear for many immigrants, and make sure that friends are not alone in their journey.
Seneca Village, Envisioned
No visual records remained after a thriving, majority Black village was cleared to make way for Central Park. A multidisciplinary team is using historical research, digital modeling, and informed speculation to return the community to our collective imagination.
Networked Nursery
Preserving and propagating the city's autochthonous flora, Staten Island's Greenbelt Native Plant Center is at the center of an unseen infrastructure of ecological restoration and climate adaptation.