Cityscape

Curbed
neighborhood news

Manhattan Rents Drop, Stray Pig Busts Into a Brooklyn Backyard, and Other News

 The important — and unimportant — things that happened around town this week. By Caroline Spivack and Valeria Ricciulli
  1. Stoop-to-Stoop: A Week of Curbside Finds From a Stooping Pro “I was looking for a cup of coffee, but instead stumbled upon this really nice desk.”
    By Caroline Spivack
  2. Trump Keeps Talking About ‘Tiny Windows,’ And No One Knows What He Means Make fenestration great again?
    By Alissa Walker
  3. Two New Office Buildings Open, When Nobody’s Going to the Office Millions of new square feet. Pretty good architecture. Is anyone going to rent it?
    By Justin Davidson
  4. Where Could the City Squeeze New Housing Into Soho? The exclusive neighborhood could see thousands of new apartments — some of them “affordable” — if the city gets its way.
    By Caroline Spivack
  5. It Came From New York Disco. The freak show. Neoconservatism. Q-tips. They all started in the world’s most creative, inventive city.
    By The Editors
  6. First Look: New York’s Digital Subway Map Comes Alive Today And, almost incidentally, it resolves a five-decade fight for graphics supremacy.
    By Christopher Bonanos
  7. Another Challenge to Evictions Pause Fails, Van Halen Avenue, and Other News Here’s what’s going on around town this week.
    By Caroline Spivack and Valeria Ricciulli
  8. This Spring, We All Drove Much Less. Yet Traffic Deaths Went Up. Why? The lure of the open street.
    By Alissa Walker
  9. The Look Book Goes to a Bed-Stuy Stoop Sale Organized by a fashion editor and a photographer, a sale where passersby picked up a snakeskin hat, white leather bell-bottoms, and a pink kimono.
    By Jane Starr Drinkard and Brock Colyar
  10. The Next Mayor’s Next City Bill de Blasio’s successor will get the chance to make New York life easier, nicer, and fairer — or just keep us going the way we were before.
    By Justin Davidson
  11. Theo Henderson Influences L.A. City Policy. For 7 Years, He’s Lived in the Park. His podcast, We the Unhoused, is made from wherever he can charge up his phone.
    By Alissa Walker
  12. How 50 New York Buildings Scored on Their Energy-Efficiency Report Cards And, yes, they will have to post them in their lobbies.
    By Caroline Spivack
  13. When NIMBY Met MAGA on the Upper West Side A group of liberal residents wanted to oust hundreds of homeless men from a local hotel. Then Tucker Carlson took up their cause.
    By Miriam Elder
  14. The Ooh-La-La Fake Feminism of That Big Naked Medusa Statue By the Courthouses It’ll certainly co-star in endless selfies.
    By Jerry Saltz
  15. The Panic Attack of New York’s Power Brokers The city’s “permanent government” has always built its way out of crisis. But what if it can’t?
    By Andrew Rice
  16. Heshy Tischler Wants to Be Borough Park’s Donald Trump Orthodox Brooklyn’s most visible agitator, shortly before his arrest this past weekend: “You just wait for round two.”
    By Shira Hanau
  17. Governor Cuomo’s ‘Moratorium’ on Evictions Won’t Really Stop Evictions It’s “still full of loopholes,” as one lawyer put it.
    By Caroline Spivack
  18. The Industry City Megadevelopment That Wasn’t, and How the Deal Fell Apart Developers pulled the plug on a major rezoning, and the implications could be felt across the city.
    By Caroline Spivack
  19. How Do We Create an RBG Memorial That Isn’t Terrible? As Governor Cuomo calls for a Ruth Bader Ginsburg statue in Brooklyn, we asked people with arts-commission experience where the pitfalls lie.
    By Diana Budds
  20. LACMA’s Past Is Demolished Without a Plan for Its Future The museum bulldozed its old campus without a clear plan for its replacement. Does it owe L.A. one?
    By Alissa Walker
  21. New Yorkers Step in to Keep City Parks From Turning Into ‘Junkyards’ The city is neglecting its parks in the pandemic, just when we need them most.
    By Caroline Spivack
  22. Wildfires on West Coast Have People Obsessing Over Air-Quality Apps “I just caught myself cheering at a 142 after a day of 160s.”
    By Alissa Walker
  23. What You Need to Know Now About the Upper West Side Homeless-Shelters Saga The latest: Residents of the Midtown Harmonia Hotel will not be transferred.
    By Valeria Ricciulli
  24. ‘We Bike Too’: A New NYC Club of Black and Brown Cyclists Takes the Streets The Good Company Bike Club rides for equity, inclusion, and change—but most of all, for fun
    By Diana Budds
  25. No, the Pandemic Is Not Emptying Out America’s Cities Despite what cable news is saying every day, a mass migration to the suburbs isn’t happening.
    By Jeff Andrews
  26. Scavengers Unearth Buried History — and Maybe Radiation — at Dead Horse Bay “It’s the closest you can come to time travel.”
    By Caroline Spivack
  27. New Yorkers Are Using a 1930s-Era Tactic to Stop Evictions Amid waning protections for renters and unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression, eviction defense is poised for a resurgence.
    By Caroline Spivack
  28. The Surprisingly Innovative Design of New York’s Streeteries Give people room to create, and things start to get interesting.
    By Diana Budds
  29. The Porch Puzzle On the front porch, the desire to be neighborly butts up against the desire to be left alone.
    By Melody Warnick
  30. How Coronavirus Is Impacting the Housing Market The economy is grinding to a halt. Will the housing market follow?
    By Jeff Andrews
  31. 10 NYC Tenants’ Rights Your Landlord Doesn’t Want You to Know These are some of the most crucial tenants’ rights every New York City renter should know.
    By Amy Plitt
  32. The Homeownership Obsession How buying homes became a part of the American dream — and also a nightmare.
    By Katy Kelleher
  33. What if You Could Walk to the Airport? There’s a difference between an airport terminal that radiates civic virtue and one that’s a true public space.
    By Karrie Jacobs
  34. Evictionland More and more Americans experience eviction, and gentrification is partly to blame.
    By Joseph Williams
  35. Mansplaining the City Why are men driving the conversation about the future of our neighborhoods?
    By Alissa Walker