Presenting the winner of our Common Shares writing competition: Frederica Hill sifts through what her neighbors discard to find her own place in the city.

Thomas Outerbridge explains the infrastructure of recycling in New York City, touching on how public awareness, household participation, and new recycling technologies can contribute to reducing waste.

Restoring paved-over waterways is rightly celebrated for its environmental benefits. Zach Youngerman explores the practice in terms of post-industrial urban revitalization strategies.

Biologist and plant scientist Paul Mankiewicz explains the Gaia Hypothesis, the inherent environmental productivity of organisms, and why the city's waste stream is our greatest untapped ecological and economic asset.

Tim Maly takes us on a tour of New York City's landscapes of dredge, and explores how the city's past, present and future are shaped by technologies and processes of what he calls "the greatest unrecognized landscape architecture project in the world."

Steve Duncan — historian, photographer and explorer — reflects on wastewater infrastructure, underground rivers, and the thrills and urban lessons he's discovered beneath the surface of cities.

In our final video on complex urban systems, writer Elizabeth Royte offers a snapshot of the past, present and future of what happens to New Yorkers' trash once it leaves the curb.

"The city can be likened to a living microbe."

Juliette Spertus discusses her exhibit - which combines infrastructure, New York history and alternative urban futures - about Roosevelt Island's trash collection system.