TOPIC

Maintenance

New City Critics

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?

New City Critics

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.

City Habitats

Nooks and Crannies

Local birds evicted from their usual habitats find themselves nesting and hunting atop skyscrapers, power lines, and traffic lights.

Safer Spaces

With the new mayor promising to deliver “community safety,” one well-established city program charts a path through new public spaces and long-needed repairs at the city’s most under-resourced NYCHA developments.

New City Critics

The Future, Encapsulated

With a fragment of the Tokyo Nakagin Capsule Tower preserved for posterity, a MoMA exhibition provides more than one perspective on planned obsolescence.

New City Critics

Medieval Times

The MTA’s latest military-inspired tactics to curb fare evasion may be fighting the wrong enemy.

The Future of Infrastructure and Place

What is the path forward to contend with historic and contemporary harms of urban highways across the country, and to honor the needs and desires of contemporary residents? Insights from a conversation on the Cross Bronx, the BQE, and the road to more just transportation infrastructures.

New City Critics

The Midnight Shift

A small task force listens in on an obscure city soundtrack to maintain a century-old water system.

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.

More Than Skin Deep

Renovated facades provide a window into existential questions for the future of New York City’s public housing.