TOPIC
Public Space
Public Risks on Private Shores
Along New York City’s waterfront, development has spurred the creation of new public spaces regulated down to the level of tree plantings and bicycle parking. Why aren’t resilience measures mandated in a similar way?
Accessibility, Augmented
From video-enabled visual interpretation to 3D audio effects, smartphone wayfinding apps have a lot to offer Blind users. But these new features are no substitute for public infrastructure — digital or otherwise — that accounts for nonvisual navigation of the built environment.
Stalking the Smart City
An artist and an artificial intelligence, trained on the data of 1,000 anonymous New Yorkers, follow a path forged by no one in particular.
Signs of the Times
From small and ubiquitous markers to massive bespoke steel numerals, this longstanding Greenpoint signage company helps New Yorkers navigate the city.
For a Level Field
For an equal shot at competitive sports in New York City public high schools, students and teachers fight to untangle the knot of race and space.
We The News
As local newspapers dwindle, an artist revives New York’s classic newsstand to collect and circulate more diverse stories about immigration.
The Truth About Trees
An artist and a historian talk trees: What they mean, and what it takes to get city-dwellers to see them clearly.
Offsetted: After Green Infrastructure
What’s lost when the value of city trees is reduced to the “environmental services” they provide?
Radicals and Real Estate
This is what democracy looks like: not only public squares, but office buildings. In the Lower East Side, the Peace Pentagon was the source point for four decades of resistance.
Lavender Lane
Getting to the bottom of a mysterious streak of purple cropping up along Manhattan’s eastern edge.
The New Public Water
Drinking water is all around us, but just out of reach. Can simple tweaks to the city’s emergency infrastructure radically expand access to this precious resource?
Bright Megaphone
With simple phrases beamed in light, the Illuminator Collective appropriates buildings' exteriors to reveal the forces at work inside.
Do You Remember How It Was?
Residents recall a decade of upheaval in the East New York Oral History Project.
Beyond Resilience
Nearly six years after Sandy flooded basements and uprooted trees, Red Hook Houses is still in recovery. But designers from KPF and OLIN see a future brighter than survival, when infrastructure combines with art and the landscape rises above the waterline.
Reentry: Start Here
People returning to city life after time in prison will soon be able to find help at some branch libraries. How can designers help librarians create life-saving connections?
Growing in the Gaps
In post-bankruptcy Detroit, planner Maurice Cox and his interdisciplinary team are making vacancy an asset, revitalizing through preservation, and listening to residents who know the city the best.
Underexposed | 12
In the middle of a paved Midtown park, tunnel air whirs through 46 huge fans.
The CompStat Evangelist Consultant World Tour
28 maps track the networks of consultancy through which CompStat's architects spread the gospel — often for a tidy fee.
Muted Monumentality
A new Monument to Gay and Transgender People merges strength and fragility, as well as communion and isolation, by the banks of the Hudson River.
A Non-Exhaustive Taxonomy of Tools of Data-Driven Policing
A huge range of emergent technologies give police new ways to gather data and surveil. What's on the market?