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.

Getting to the bottom of a mysterious streak of purple cropping up along Manhattan’s eastern edge.

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?

With simple phrases beamed in light, the Illuminator Collective appropriates buildings' exteriors to reveal the forces at work inside.

Residents recall a decade of upheaval in the East New York Oral History Project.

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.

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?

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.

In the middle of a paved Midtown park, tunnel air whirs through 46 huge fans.

28 maps track the networks of consultancy through which CompStat's architects spread the gospel — often for a tidy fee.

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 huge range of emergent technologies give police new ways to gather data and surveil. What's on the market?

For decades, city governments have pledged to clear neighborhood streets of crime and police abuse in the same stroke. But can community policing deliver on its promises?

Battles for inclusion and exclusion in the life of the city more often end in stand-offs than in skirmishes.

In the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, an architect and planner forges connections and fashions safety in fifteen neighborhoods.

For WXY and New York State Parks, designing comfort stations to accommodate more than 60 million annual visitors — representing many different genders, backgrounds, and accessibility needs — is no simple task.

Young residents of Brownsville, Brooklyn, look for safety amidst persistent poverty and crime, as well as community organizations determined to change the neighborhood's narrative.

For decades, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design has touted the efficacy of bollards, gates, and cameras in deterring violent acts — with scant evidence. At what cost do we build “defensible space”?

Where can teenagers hang out and be safe in public?

For the Circulation Desk, five books explore the stuff that binds us together in infrastructure networks public and private, old and new.