New York City

Dumpster diving takes on new meaning as a New York-based design firm reinvents vacant lots as mini-resorts by converting old trash bins into swimming pools.

July 22, 2009 - ABC News

Community activists in the South Bronx are working to "daylight" a long-buried stream and re-integrate some natural water treatment processes into the dense urban atmosphere.

July 21, 2009 - The New York Moon

Crime is down in big cities across America, leaving experts wondering why.

July 20, 2009 - The Washington Post

An American-born transit planner who help usher in congestion pricing and smart transit card technology in London has been nominated to chair New York's transit system.

July 16, 2009 - The New York Times

Sales in Brooklyn are down, and that's made a ghost town out of the recently booming but now busted Williamsburg neighborhood.

July 15, 2009 - New York Magazine

The City of New York has unveiled its Housing Asset Renewal Program, a plan to revive stalled projects as affordable housing.

July 14, 2009 - The Architect's Newspaper

Michael Jackson's life would have been incredibly different (read: more normal) and lasted longer if he lived in New York instead of L.A., argues Gigi Levangie Grazer. She says the isolating qualities of L.A. enabled the downfall of the King of Pop.

July 12, 2009 - The Huffington Post

The new public plazas in New York City have gained much popularity among locals -- and earned much money for the city. Officials have been renting out the spaces to advertisers, blurring the lines between public and private.

July 10, 2009 - The New York Times

While New York City is currently taking space away from automobiles and giving it to pedestrians and cyclists, the New York City of 100 years ago was doing exactly the opposite. And it was a popular idea.

June 30, 2009 - The New York Times

America's so-called “love affair” with the automobile, although cliché, provides a vivid description of how attached we really are to driving.  Public policy, and the historically overwhelming effect of auto industry lobbying, is only partly to blame for the endemic traffic jams and smog of the twentieth century.  Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant hired by New York City advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, recently demonstrated that urbanites with multiple transportation options still choose to commute by car for rational reasons of privacy, convenience, and speed.  A chart of his, shown below, demonstrates how perplexing this choice is.  Overcoming these reasons is a ser

June 29, 2009 - Ian Sacs

New York City's planning commission recently approved a plan to revitalize Coney Island.

June 20, 2009 - Crain's New York Business

A NY-based landscape architect, Thomas Balsley, FASLA, has created a new type of green roof using Austrian pines.

June 19, 2009 - THE DIRT

A segment of New York City's High Line elevated park is set to open this week. New York Magazine looks at the real estate and architecture booms that's accompanying it.

June 10, 2009 - New York

The growth in hybrid car sales is a welcome sign that a major change in the automobile industry is afoot.  The shift to transport infrastructure that is not based on the archaic complexity of an internal combustion engine, with its hundreds of moving parts and compressed fuel explosions, has been long put off by an automobile industry, happy with status quo, partnered with oil cartels with the power to price their product as if it were in endless supply.  But with smack-in-the-face-reality fuel prices last summer, the collapse of the so-called “Big Three” over the winter, and the simultaneous heralding assertion of alternative energy technologies (Daimler AG bought a 10% stake in Tesla Motors last month!), the fallout of western economic near-collapse has changed everything we’ve known to be sacrosanct; Leonard Lopate even waxed nostalgic about the “Death of the Car Song” yesterday on National Public Radio’s local station, WNYC.

June 9, 2009 - Ian Sacs

Collecting Census data can be a daunting task. But in some places, like New York City, just finding the people to survey can be most of the challenge.

June 5, 2009 - NPR

New York City had a 35 percent increase in commuter cycling last year. Much of the increase was attributed to New York City’s Department of Transportation's experimenting with innovative bicycle facilities based on European models.

June 2, 2009 - rabble.ca

A friend introduced me yesterday to rambunctious bicycling advocate Fred Oswald via a recent article out of Cleveland’s press. Much debate swirls around his not-so-uncommon opinions. Mr. Oswald’s argument can be boiled down to two points: supporting a critical need for much more bicycling education on sharing public roadways with other vehicles, and fighting an industry-borne fallacy that breaking up streets with allocated spaces, such as bike lanes, is good for the biking community. The former is, of course, not contestable. We all agree that safety and training are absolutely critical to developing a strong and healthy bicycling community.

May 27, 2009 - Ian Sacs

As New York City prepares to pedestrianize Times Square, New York Magazine profiles Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who they call "equal parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses."

May 22, 2009 - New York Magazine

Theme park experts suggest contracting a single operator to manage Coney Island, but there's some push back from city officials who fear a loss of diversity and character.

May 19, 2009 - Brooklyn Paper

Families who have income will now be charged a small rent to stay in public housing shelters in New York City, part of a 1997 state law that had up until now gone unenforced.

May 12, 2009 - The New York Times