TOPIC
City Government
When Care Gets a Charter
Will a new Business Improvement District bring stability and support to East Harlem's placekeepers, or does it spell the end of community stewardship and power?
Cloudbusting
A decade after its original publication, a revised field guide to the urban internet offers a fresh perspective on the era of mass surveillance and AI blitzscaling.
Lessons from 2044
Urban infrastructures are transformed by crisis and ingenuity in three stories pulled from a newspaper of the future.
What Water Wants
The low-lying Jewel Streets neighborhood, once coastal marshlands now cut off from the waterfront, is prone to extreme flooding. What happens if planners and advocates learn to go with the flow?
Temu’s Last Mile
The river of packages running through the city inscribes a hidden geography of resource-intensive e-commerce.
Pothole Chic
Civic leaders have long expressed their allegiances and courted public trust through sartorial choices. Can the current mayor’s OSHA-compliant uniform inspire a new guard of civic engagement?
Locations, Locations, Locations
Location scouts have shaped representations of New York for decades. Now, changes to the film industry and the built environment both threaten a carefully cultivated way of seeing.
The Null Hypothesis
It’s easy to be a visionary when the alternative is an ash heap. A casino megaproject promised for Queens reveals the persistent failures of imagination driving “development” and its discontents.
Keep the Change
Landmarking has long been one of the few tools available to preserve a building. Can historic preservation adapt to protect affordability and utility alongside cornices and columns?
A Labor of Love
Up a marble staircase, in the attic of City Hall, a trio of civil servants steward an eclectic archive of city objects.