Manhattan

This animation from The New York Times examines the history of Midtown Manhattan -- from pristine island environment to bustling metropolis.

Planning students from New York-area universities are being integrated into the city's community boards through an innovative new fellowship program.

A review of GREEN METROPOLIS: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability by David Owen, expanding on his groundbreaking essay in the New Yorker in 2004 on why New York is the greenest city around.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced an idea to speed up buses in Manhattan by eliminating crosstown bus fares.

The Mannahatta Project is a project of the Wildlife Conservation Society. The website aims to visualize the island of Mannahatta in 1609, before European settlers began developing it.

The Manhattan Airport Foundation is lobbying to turn Central Park (yes, that Central Park) into an airport. The web is a twitter, and the MAF's elaborate designs are very funny. Aren't they? They're not really serious?

On Thursday, the Department of Buildings of New York City took off a billboard which has blanketed the lower floors of the 19th-century Cushman Building, 174 Broadway, at Maiden Lane for several years.

The Sundance Channel has produced a series of short films profiling the landscape architects, officials, activists, writers, and Ethan Hawke and Kevin Bacon about how the High Line park came to be.

New York City has released a new manual for street designs, representing over two years of work from the Department of Transportation.

The long-delayed and troubled design for Manhattan's Ground Zero site has undergone some improvements and been revealed in a new model. But as New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Oroussoff notes, the design is still lacking.

Though typically a strong and steady market, falling condo sales indicate that the housing slump has moved into Manhattan.

Another victim of the economic downturn is historic preservation. In New York, a number of churches slated for preservation can't find the funds to keep the bulldozers away.

The Center for an Urban Future found that ridership in the greater Manhattan area has been up significantly since 1998. But these routes are precisely the ones targeted for service cuts due to decreased revenue.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced plans to close off parts of Broadway in Manhattan to car traffic. The city will experiment with the closing as early as May, creating a large pedestrian zone near Times Square.

Maybe they're not in Manhattan, but Queens and Brooklyn are still home to much of New York's diverse middle class. And although facing some economic stress, they're not likely to go anywhere soon, according to Joel Kotkin.

A nonprofit organization is promoting the idea of closing Manhattan's 42nd St. to traffic and putting in a 2.5 mile street level light rail line.

Rats choose Manhattan because if its logical street grid, according to new research by a team of zoologists and geographers at Tel Aviv University, who are using rats to test wayfinding in cities.

Interactive maps of Manhattan from 1865 and 2008 are overlayed in this piece from The New York Moon that discusses the history of the island's waterways.