Browse
Second Chances
Recent books explore the potential in underused and overdetermined spaces, from mid-century American city centers and suburban shopping malls to the current glut of vacant retail storefronts and offices.
Getting to Zero
Banned from residences for more than half a century, lead paint still poisons thousands of children a year in New York City. Who is responsible for ensuring healthy homes for all?
Concentrated Cleanup
Since 2009, New York City has been incentivizing private cleanup of contaminated sites. Who benefits?
Staying the Distance
For members of New York City's Arab diasporas, protesting oppression back home can provide both solace in community and an unsettling reminder of displacement.
Clinical Trials
A bygone experiment in community-focused mental healthcare — rooted in Harlem and the life experiences of its Black population — still holds valuable lessons for making “the good life,” and good feelings, truly accessible to all.
Story of a Street
A 1.3-mile-long pedestrian promenade in Queens is a lodestar for planners, a lifeline for many residents, and an albatross to others.
Alternate Routes
A new guidebook locates residents’ struggles to make and remake New York City in the image of their own needs and desires.
Introducing the Inaugural Cohort of New City Critics
Meet the 2022 fellows in a program to empower new and diverse voices to challenge the ways we understand, design, and develop our cities.
Arch-Conservative
Vito Battista’s journey from public architecture to right-wing politics is an echo of New York’s own cyclical, reactionary tides — and a reminder of how closely the city's politics are tied to the fate of its urban fabric.
Traffic Patterns
In an unlikely design magazine, New Jersey’s thickly settled geography provides a guide to divining the metropolis of the future.
Tall Order
LinkNYC failed to deliver on its promise of “bridging the digital divide.” Now, the streetside Wi-Fi kiosks are about to be souped up and supersized as 5G-transmitting towers. But is there any guarantee that New York’s under-resourced populations won’t get left behind, again?
The Civic Canopy
New York City's street trees help cool pavement, filter air, buffer against storms, and improve moods. The arborists of NYC Parks are working to distribute those benefits as widely as possible.
Flows of Mutual Obligation
Through a new, interactive podcast, an artist surfaces the intimate stories and complex connections that bind New York City residents to the land and people who provide their water.
Beyond Diverse
A pedestrian plaza in Queens is widely celebrated for its worldliness. But beneath a colorful surface are more radical lessons in coexistence.
The Paradox at the Heart of the Fires
When it comes to providing safe and affordable housing, why does the public sector receive so little funding and so much scrutiny, while the private sector gets ample incentives with minimal accountability?
Local Frequencies
An audio archivist documents the evolution of pirate radio in Brooklyn and its place in the cultural landscapes of the borough's immigrant communities.
Call for Applications: New City Critics
A fellowship program to empower new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge the ways we understand, design, and develop our cities.
Across Currents
With a mandate to decarbonize the city’s building stock, how can New Yorkers reconcile a transition to so-called clean energy with the environmental and cultural impacts of extraction beyond the city’s borders?
Market Share
Designed for other uses and users, Corona Plaza has become a critical infrastructure for streetside selling. In the face of economic and legal pressures, vendors are organizing themselves and the space to ensure both individual survival and collective prosperity.