TOPIC

Maintenance

People Movers

Unruly Passengers

The Riders Alliance floods the city’s subway stations and bus stops, organizing normally disengaged riders to fight for better public transit.

Blow-Up Bulwark

Climate change is real, and happening now — but exactly what that means for coastal cities is surprisingly uncertain. Engineers at Princeton’s Form Finding Lab choose flexibility over fortification to protect coastal cities from flooding.

Super Strategies

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.

Profiles in Public Service

Spanning Water, Rail, and Road: New York's Iconic and Inconspicuous Bridges

Transportation engineer Henry Perahia discusses his 15 years as the DOT Chief Bridge Officer and sheds light on what it takes to design, construct, and maintain 789 City-owned bridges.

Maintaining NYCHA: Debunking the Myth of Unmanageable High-Rise Public Housing

In an excerpt from the new book Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy, Nicholas Dagen Bloom challenges the assumption that high-rise public housing is fundamentally unmanageable by examining the history and vital importance of NYCHA’s dedicated maintenance staff.

Melding Public and Private: The Partnerships Behind Your Neighborhood Plaza

Laura Hansen explains how the Neighborhood Plaza Partnership supports the local non-profits that operate the city’s newest plazas and asks how much we should, and can, rely on private support for maintaining our public realm.

Typecast: Towers in the Park

Innovation and Neglect: Sea Rise and Sea Park East

In our final Typecast installment exploring towers-in-the-park, Maura Ewing chronicles the lives of two Coney Island housing developments and exposes the political context that undergirds their architectural innovation, construction shortcomings, and the deferred maintenance that threatens their viability as affordable housing assets.

Urban Omnibus Writing Competition: Common Shares

311 Complainer

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.

A Transit Agency for the Future

David Bragdon outlines his vision for a public transit agency that meets 21st century needs for flexible, multi-modal, and on-demand mobility.

Urban Omnibus Writing Competition: Common Shares

A Commons of Unwanted Things

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.