TOPIC
City Government
The Midnight Shift
A small task force listens in on an obscure city soundtrack to maintain a century-old water system.
Can’t We Have Both?
A very short story debates two long-term visions for vital infrastructure in Queens.
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?
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.
The Invisible Arch
Public art proposals are a highly contested terrain. But the processes for the commissions themselves escape scrutiny.
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.
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.
Sign Off
Blank billboards speak to power struggles, policy gaps, and shifting priorities for New York City’s public realm.
This Is a Rehearsal
With democratic institutions and processes at a nadir, a playwright considers the public meeting's mise-en-scene. How might artists help perform power when we are out of practice?
Try a Little Tenderness
A speculative municipal bureaucracy offers infrastructure for emotional support.