TOPIC

Public Space

Beyond Diverse

A pedestrian plaza in Queens is widely celebrated for its worldliness. But beneath a colorful surface are more radical lessons in coexistence.

Market Share

Designed for other uses and users, Corona Plaza has become a critical infrastructure for streetside selling. In the face of economic and legal pressures, vendors are organizing themselves and the space to ensure both individual survival and collective prosperity.

Care, Where?

Public space may be essential to urban life, but its benefits are far from universally enjoyed. Could a municipal Department of Care bring context-sensitive design and services to every corner of the city?

When Government Came to Main Street

The Bronx County Building embodies the New Deal era's ideals of robust government presence in everyday life, for better and worse.

Swim Lessons

Pools are sites for recreation and fun. But as much as any public space in New York, they also carry the weight of the city's complex histories of race and place.

Dispatches

Poetry for the People, in Public Spaces

During a year of confinement and circumscription, the people behind Queensbound have been working to keep the borough connected through site-specific poetry.

Gimme Shelter

Photographs of Prospect Park’s unsanctioned constructions simultaneously suggest traces of past settlement and the start of a new civilization. Behind the scenes is a struggle for ecological succession among salamanders, kindergartners, and park management.

You’re Not Going to Tell Me When to Go Home

What happened on the ground during the summer protests in NYC? Participants describe a temporary landscape of kinship and resistance — and a template for another city.

Dispatches

The World Inverted

Kate Papacosma takes us on a tour through the expansive meadows and hidden precincts of Prospect Park, reflecting on its importance as a place of healing in a wounded city.

Where Are the Public Bathrooms in New York City?

With too few facilities, and many in urgent need of repair or renovation, New York has a big public bathroom problem. But the city's parks, plazas, POPS, and more hold clues to overhauling its network of relief.