TOPIC

Retail

New City Critics

Notes from the Industrial Zone

New York was founded on industry. As e-commerce rewrites the supply chain, how are we protecting the small businesses left behind?

New City Critics

The Plaza Paradox

In the shadow of the Flatiron, a writer spends an hour conducting her own public space audit.

New City Critics

Wonder is All Around Us

Ordering pad thai on an iPad in the muzak of a takeout food chain created in the pressure cooker of the post-pandemic economy.

New City Critics

The Hottest Club

A contemporary "bathhouse" draws on ancient traditions to heighten experience, but is untethered from the more convivial aspects of bathing culture.

New City Critics

The Shortest Ramp Is a Longer Road

A new Crown Heights bookshop is a cipher for conflicting feelings of ambivalence, betrayal, and belonging

Neither Here Nor There

Globally connected and stubbornly self-contained, Flushing, Queens, has never conformed to conventional planning wisdom. In the post-pandemic realm of digital dissociation and global isolation, is it more unmoored than ever?

New City Critics

No Mannequins

The new Telfar store is an event space. The event is we're alive and we did this shit.

New City Critics

The Real Counterfeit

A 15-story stack of Louis Vuitton branded suitcases claiming to be scaffolding landed on Fifth Avenue in November. But reading the structure through the lens of the building code raises questions about our grasp on reality and the rule of law.

Romantic Urbanism

A Moon for My Neighbors

In neighborhood life, as in the romantic comedy classic, Moonstruck, romance thrives within a loose network of daily tenderness.

Romantic Urbanism

My Favorite Mister (Fruit)

Comfort, consistency, and intimacy at the corner greengrocer