TOPIC

Public Space

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?

An Urban System of Death

Density and displacement aren’t just problems for the living.

Bright Megaphone

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

Shelf Life

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.

The Location of Justice: Futures

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.