New York City
Things have changed in New York City since that million-person-growth projection
New York City's top demographer told Capital New York that New York City might not gain 1 million people by 2030, as originally expected. More
Outside New York, too, a historic spike in traffic deaths
It's not just New York: the nation's traffic fatality rate is way up, too. More
(2)New York City parents remain enthusiastic about 'Isabella' and 'Jayden'
Last year, parents gave birth to 600 Isabellas and more than 800 Jaydens in New York City, making those names, for the third year in a row, New York City's most popular baby names.
The runners-up: Sophia, Jacob, Olivia, Ethan, Emma, Daniel, Mia, Michael, Emily, Matthew, Madison, Justin, Leah, David, Chloe, Aiden, Sofia and Alexander. More
Nathan Larson's noir novels imagine a city and a memory in ruins
In the case of The Nervous System, that involves a corrupt conservative Senator, an unsolved murder hearkening back to the days of a more intact city, and a sinister group of paramilitary contractors led by a ex-cop named Nic Deluccia. Deluccia repeatedly implies a long history between himself and Decimal, and, over the course of the novel, offers an ominously plausible explanation for both Decimal’s current condition and for New York’s devastation. The married Senators at the center of the book allow Larson to riff on New York City machine politics, conservative homophobia, and the underside of populist politics—and it can’t be coincidence that one has the last name of Koch. More
San Francisco's secret to supreme park-friendliness: spending
San Francisco spends nearly twice as much as New York City does per resident on parks, and has much more park acreage per person, according to a study released this morning by the Trust for Public Land, a land conservation non-profit. More
Inside Walmart's slow, quiet campaign to crack New York City
A handsome out-of-work carpenter is the star of one advertisement Walmart has been distributing locally. In it, he hopes for the City Council to resist the urgings of "special interests" (revealed in another ad to be the grocery workers' union and city-based food retailers) because, as it reads, "I need a job;" the buildings workers unions have backed Walmart's expansion into New York City. More
Now that open data is law in New York, meet Carole Post, the enforcer
She points to a Department of Parks census of street tree demographics. Inside city government, she said, the reaction was, “Who cares?”
But Parks didn’t see any particular reason not to release it to the public. After all, they were using the data to do their work, and it was just sitting around on their computer systems. That information formed the basis of an app called Trees Near You, a mobile tool that allows urban dwellers to click on a nearby tree and pull up details on its kind and size, along with the Wikipedia entry on the particular type of tree.
“We were able, at no cost,” Post said, “to satisfy an unknown public need.” More
(1)In Tchaikovsky's bible, an archivist finds a door to New York's distant past
Francesconi went to Russia first in 1989 (and twice again in years following), when the government was falling apart, to try to find material he could borrow for the opening of the museum.
“It was a little tense,” he said, “You didn’t know who was in charge from one day to the next. And the museums were scared to death, and I was more scared than they were.”
There was one thing in particular Francesconi wanted to see.
“At one point , Francesconi said, “I said, ‘Do you have his Bible?’ And she said, ‘Bible?’ and I said, Yes, the one he took to Niagara Falls.” More
Maybe one day New York City will have a Fix Albany moment
One of the best things Andrew Cuomo had going for him when he ran for governor in 2010 was the complete implosion of Albany in the eyes of the public. Most of the statewide officials elected with him in 2006 had been caught in scandals and ejected, along with a string of legislators too. The plot was nice and simple: Cuomo, capable as ever but humbler and wiser than before, was going to bring integrity back to state government and get it working again. In other words, the crusading, straight-as-an-arrow attorney general was going to Fix Albany, which seemed broken almost beyond repair. More
