In Staten Island, a transformed landscape poses a key question: Now that we know what animals need from urban spaces, can we give it to them on purpose?

New York City generates more than 2 million tons of construction and demolition debris every year. An age-old parable suggests that waste is in the eye of the beholder.

Bird watching at an unlikely urban oasis: the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant

Brooklyn-based studio Tri-Lox intervenes on the city’s waste stream, repurposing wood to furnish everything from Shake Shack interiors to Shakespeare in the Park.

A high-volume transfer station, a model municipal soil bank, and a cutting-edge soil washer: Three area sites illustrate the values, costs, and benefits that shape the flow of recycled soil in and around the city.

The city’s construction projects don’t just rise skyward. They dig downward, displacing massive amounts of material whose journey in and out of the city few ever see.

From Freshkills Park's photographer-in-residence, portraits of another world in formation

Grassroots groups have kept organic waste collection alive in neighborhoods across New York City during a most difficult year. For community composters, the stakes of an equitable waste system stretch far beyond the pile.

The largest controlled building demolition in history, currently underway in Midtown Manhattan, puts front and center the ethical and environmental consequences of architecture’s disposable values. Could today's detritus be the building blocks of the future?