New York City

Uber Can Actually Make It Easier For People To Ride Public Transit

Uber’s destruction of the taxi industry is obvious—and NYC cabs are finally fighting back. But how much of a threat is Uber to other modes of transportation? Earlier this week I worried that Uber’s plan to more easily scoop people off city streets might take ridership away from public transit. But a FiveThirtyEight investigation claims…

The NYC Taxi Industry Finally Has an App, Only Four Years Too Late

Uber-haters of New York, rejoice! The city’s yellow and green cabs finally got their shit together and launched an app that lets you hail and pay for taxi rides, just like Uber. Except there’s one big bonus: no surge pricing or harassment from a terrible CEO. The new app is called Arro, and it looks…

9 Awful Things That Should Be Removed From Times Square

Converting a busy street in Times Square into vibrant pedestrian plazas is one of the most celebrated ideas in New York City’s history—a bold urban move which has been mimicked around the world. Now New York’s mayor and police commissioner want to remove the plazas and restore Times Square back to its original car-congested glory.…

I Love These Nonsense Signs That Don’t Tell New Yorkers To Do Anything

In our quest to keep our cities neat and orderly, our streets have become cluttered with signage prohibiting everything. No Stopping. No Parking. No Loading. No Unloading. How refreshing, then, are these official city signs which don’t really tell residents to do anything at all? The signs are by artist Stephen Powers, who has painted…

Building a Park Above a Blazing Hot Pit Is As Complicated As It Sounds

It can get as hot as 150 degrees. There’s no arable soil to support life. And water? Water is complicated. This isn’t humanity’s quest to terraform an exoplanet. It’s New York’s plan to build a park above a train yard. Hudson Yards, a $20 billion development underway in Manhattan this year, is destined to become…

NYC Backs Down On Plans to Curb Uber’s Explosive Growth

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and Uber have cut a last minute deal that will prevent the “Uber Cap” legislation, which would have limited the number of cars the company could keep on the street, says the New York Times. According to the report: Under the agreement, according to three people familiar with…

This Mural Of The Original Ninja Turtles Is Just Perfect

This mural featuring renaissance Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello was spotted in Bushwick, Brooklyn recently, sporting some spiffy bandanas to match their Ninja Turtle counterparts. [Peter Knox]

New York City Is Very Pissed About Verizon’s Failed FiOS Rollout

If you live in New York City, you most likely don’t have access to Verizon’s very 21st-century fiber optic internet service, FiOS. And you should be because Verizon told the city in a contract that it would deliver fiber to every household by 2014. As of today 75-percent of New York City is still without…

Here’s What a Supertall New York Skyline Will Look Like In 2030

It has been a month of supertall news to top them all, with the World Trade Center’s record-breaking 1,776-foot height possibly getting scooped by a surprise spire in Midtown Manhattan. Now a new rendering from Visualhouse posted at New York Yimby gives an idea of how dramatically the New York City skyline will change just…

Here’s The View From The New Tallest Building In The Western Hemisphere

The observatory atop the 1,776-foot World Trade Center finally opens next week. But the view from the tallest building in the US (for now) is not the only stunning vista that will greet visitors. Although there are plenty of observatories in supertalls, 1 World Trade features some cool technological advances that help orient visitors once…

NYC Produces Twice As Much Garbage As Any Other City On Earth

New York City is great at a lot of things. Walking! Skyscrapers! Pizza! And according to a new study on the world’s megacities, NYC can add one more thing to its list of things it excels at: Trash! Over at Motherboard, Brian Merchant has declared New York the world’s most wasteful city. This is based…

NYC’s New Subway Stations Feature a Twist On Its Famous Typeface

Hip is seldom a word used to describe the look of the New York City subway. But new images of the graphic design that will grace some of the new Second Avenue subway stations look pretty damn cool—especially for Midtown. Nothing like a little play on Helvetica to catch a hipster’s attention. https://gizmodo.com/the-legendary-manual-that-dictates-every-detail-of-the-1572251522 We reached…

How NYT Magazine Made a 150-Foot Pedestrian for Its Walking Issue

It’s like Christmas morning for pedestrian advocates! This week’s New York Times Magazine is all about walking, from the very act of perambulation to all the ways that the city—any city really—is best appreciated on foot. And the cover is a street-scale work of art. This is not Photoshop! The art was shot practically, from…

Watch The History Of NYC Unfold From Inside The Freedom Tower’s Elevator

Starting next month, visitors to the new 1 World Trade Center will be treated to a fully immersive time-lapse of New York’s ever-changing cityscape, during their elevator trip to the 102nd floor – but you can get a sneak peek of the experience right here, right now. Click “play video” above, or click here for…

Stunning elevator ride up One World Trade Center shows 515 years of NYC

Beautiful. Breathtaking. Tragic. Saddening. Historic. The new One World Trade Center’s observatory has elevators that display a 515-year visual timeline of New York City’s skyline and it’s an incredible view. Like if you were in a glass elevator and watching history unfold right before your eyes. As the elevator climbs the 102 stories, you get…

Bald Eagles have returned to nest in New York City! NYC Audubon announced on Friday that the city’s first active Bald Eagle pair in 100 years has taken up residence on Staten Island, an encouraging sign for a species that was once nearly extinct. Fun fact: “Local birders have named the male Vito.”

This Baffling 1936 Murder Was Solved With A Hair And A Piece Of String

On April 10, 1936, the body of aspiring novelist Nancy Titterton was found raped and strangled to death (by her own pajamas) in the bathtub of the New York City apartment she shared with her husband, an executive at NBC. The only clues: a short length of cord and a single horsehair. Incredibly, however, these…

Does Preserving the Past Keep Cities From Moving Into the Future?

In the last 50 years, the preservationist movement has become powerful—maybe too powerful in a place like New York City, where a third of the buildings are now protected. But the buildings we think of today as landmarks inevitably replaced older structures, ones we tend to forget were demolished in the path towards progress. This…

Short film of NYC is so stunning that it looks like photos coming alive

This stunning short, Moments by Tim Sessler and Cameron Michael, is so beautifully shot in slow motion that the footage almost look more like still photographs with a few moving parts. Each scene is like a photo that lives on its own. It’s so much more stunning than a normal video that it can appear…

The Secret Lives of NYC Mega-Projects, Revealed By One Photographer 

The sprawling construction sites buried below NYC are carefully regulated places, inaccessible to the public. But one photographer has been exploring these caverns and tunnels for 15 years at the MTA’s request—and his work paints an amazing picture of life underground. His name is Patrick Cashin, and he was a Newsweek lab technician and photographer…