Arrest sends New Yorkers down a complex path, away from their families, homes, and neighborhoods, oftentimes ending in jail. A drawing describes the spaces they encounter on the way.

Vincent Meyer Madaus and Sebastian Bernardy look at the semi-public space between the sidewalk and the front door — and how residents satisfy their needs and fancies when space is scarce.

In the first installment of Shelf Life, Janet Parks, curator of the Avery Drawings and Archives at Columbia University, takes us through its architectural underworld, uncovering the collection's treasures.

Three supers of three very different buildings get into the nitty gritty of their work, helping us understand what it might take to make the city's ambitious Zero Waste vision a reality.

Three graphic novels dramatize the forces that shape the city, recasting old stories of good versus evil onto high-rises and streetscapes.

Artist Julia Jacquette and writer James Trainor discuss Jacquette's graphic memoir, Playground of My Mind, digging into the sandbox of their memories and a critical chapter in the history of New York City's public spaces.

Allison Henry explores seven proposals for the future of the Gowanus Canal.

Presenting the second of two runners-up in our Common Shares writing competition: Yen Ha brings us the story of a pair of strangers navigating the extremes of the sharing economy.

Presenting one of two runners-up in our Common Shares writing competition: Keith Engel gives voice to a man who takes it upon himself to enforce the rules governing the gray area between personal and collective responsibility.

Presenting the winner of our Common Shares writing competition: Frederica Hill sifts through what her neighbors discard to find her own place in the city.

Center for Urban Pedagogy teaching artist Chat Travieso works with high school students in Bushwick to simplify and illustrate the complexities of micro-unit housing.

Announcing the winner of our Fuzzy Math writing competition: Steven Higashide imagines a near future in New York, in which a new City agency — the Department of Externalities — monitors and evaluates the social and environmental effects of everyday actions.

Theo Games Petrohilos shares a darkly comic vision of an imagined future where the sale of air rights for Manhattan properties develops into economic hysteria.

Landscape designer David Seiter champions the ecological and aesthetic benefits of informal plants - weeds - in urban space, and catalogues the uses and cultural significance of New York's native flora.

In the second of a series of interviews with visual artists, Emily Henretta discusses how the process of collage and the experience of cities inform each other.

In the first of a series of interviews with visual artists, Roberto Mollá discusses the influence of architecture and the urban environment on his work.

An illustrated slide show about tidal in-stream energy conversion and what New Yorkers need to know about its potential to redraw the map of power generation in the city.