Measuring the Ice Cream Truck pollution effect in NYC. A first piece of data using PM1 Next to exhaust: 15 20 ft away: 11 Inspired by @danieltrubman.bsky.social

Loading spinner design for your Manhattan-specific data needs

Sidewalk width, block by clock.

Park Slope sidewalk widths. 6th St facing south: 5ft 3rd St facing north: 17ft Which one is better for having kids play outside?

NYC, distance to subway Block by block.

If you have an apartment with poor air circulation and CO2 buildup, what's a way to increase inflow of fresh outside air? Especially for low-wind days? Extra challenge: Make it work with a high-rise buildings where windows only open at a few degrees.

Did the World Cup make NYC loud(er)? Yes! During and right after games: +20 calls/15 min Roughly +20% to 30% from baseline (Analysis results below)

NYC got noisy on the night of Saturday, June 13

I expect more noise complaints coming in today! Modal time: Similar as Thursday, around 11:20. Will investigate possible causes!

311 Noise complaints in NYC, Monday to Thursday of this week. Did anything unusual happen on June 10, around 11:21 pm?

Interested in Transit-Oriented Development in NYC? There's 405,000 lots within 0.5 miles of transit. If we increased Floor-Area-Ratio by 2.0 for these lots, this adds 3.7B sqft in zoning potential Aka: +3.7M potential units Live link for you to run the analysis: potential.nyc/results/tran...

Are the Knicks games loud? Monday, June 8: First home game for the Knicks in the finals, staring 8:30 pm. I don't see a spike after 8pm! But let me know if you do. Comparison day: Tuesday, June 9

Manhattan around Madison Square Garden Game day: June 8 (yesterday), 3:20PM to midnight. Red: Restricted area.

In housing, some arguments *feel* sensible but aren’t correct. Can you spot the problems: 1. NYC has 40% of zoned capacity unused => zoning not big constraint (ZNBC) 2. A city has many unused permits => ZNBC 3. High-rises cost most to build => Allowing high-rises increases rents.

I've started a new technical blog: Normal Forms. Aka: Turning everything into data. Coming up: - How to make LLMs talk to databases - Why everyone runs A/B tests poorly The first post tells you why I felt compelled to built my own web logging framework. normalforms.substack.com

One architect license. One borough: The Bronx. 57 new buildings filed since 2020, with a total of 5,700 units And that's all? No: Plenty of alterations and also new buildings in Brooklyn. Nikolai Katz

Any NYC upzoning you'd want to understand? Here's what you can already simulate: 1. Transit-oriented-development 2. IBX 3. Neighborhood (Example: Flatbush at +1 FAR) I've added a summary so you know the total impact of any change. potential.nyc

The missing middle in Downtown Brooklyn. Lot color based on Floor-Area-Ratio. There seems to be a correlation between the FAR and the density of housing. Someone should look into this!

The same view as that famous satellite shot over Brooklyn into Manhattan, but lots are colored by the Floor-Area-Ratio

You've heard of the Inter-Borough-Express (IBX) in NYC? And you're interested in transit-oriented development? You can now do that yourself! Change the Floor-Area-Ratio and see the zoning potential expand. Live, interactive, and free: potential.nyc/results/ibx

In NYC, the median number of floors, in all boroughs except Manhattan: 2 The median zoning Floor-Area-Ratio in the city: 1.0 But buildings close to transit can be tall, right? No! 452K lots out of 890K are within 0.5 miles of mass transit. Median FAR for these lots: 2.1

Do you want to have full control over your website logging? Find everything out there complicated? I've built something: Simple event logging, with integrated experimentation, optimized for MCP. The animation illustrates what I think will be possible soon. deebeelog.com

On the "is Queens part of Long Island" debate, there's historical precedent from the 1600s Yes: Queens, all of it Brooklyn, all of it All Lange Eylandt.

How do DOB Violations work in NYC? You might think that every month it's some wide range of causes? Not at all: It's all driven by specific regulations. When LL152 hits, you'll see 30,000 violations sent out in one month. And two months later, it's basically all boilers.

Flood-related 311 calls in NYC This Wednesday and Thursday.

I hope people were safe in this week's floods in NYC. 311 data for that flood hasn't fully materialized. The last major flood was on 10/30 2025. The animation illustrates how quickly these 311 calls appeared. Indicative of a system that can handle water ... until it can't.

empty.nyc The perfect complement to Potential.NYC @adrianparsons.com is the creator!

You have questions about NYC? Answers are coming soon!

NYC Streets, by type. Queens deserves to go first for this one.

In some NYC districts, if you want to build something new and are maxed out on building area, you can ... pay the city directly: In Hudson yards it’s $169.68 per square foot. Pays for infra improvement bond. www.nyc.gov/content/plan... I like those payment terms!

Is there anything about NYC housing you'd want to simulate, in 3D? - Neighborhood rezoning? - Switch out zoning districts? - Land value tax -- or maybe just a fairer property tax? - NYCHA rebuild? - Land expansion?

Upzone Park Slope, block by block.

Here's something unspeakable: A hard down-zoning of Midtown. 3D Map FAR = 5.0, the "style of Washington DC" Hard rezoning = Cut off buildings at bottom until they fit

Let's simulate transit-oriented upzoning for NYC Blue = Air Rights = How much buildings are allowed to grow 1. Pick your neighborhood: Jamaica 2. Select lots near transit 3. Upzone: Set Floor-Area-Ratio (FAR) +2.5 Just released this feature, link below.

I forgot to post the very best graph for estimating parking demand. „Small sample size“

The "science" behind parking requirements. This is statistical analysis: It's got predicted lines, R^2, and impact estimates. And it's also complete nonsense. (Examples from Shoup, The High Cost Of Free Parking — read this if you haven’t!)

How would it look if we upzoned the West Village? Now live: potential.nyc See the zoning potential (air rights) for every residential lot in NYC.

What’s historic? This feel like a new record: 25 years is enough! 2001

The Center Of New York: East and West. Two areas, two mid-points to connect. The estimated center is: Greenpoint 695 Humboldt St I encourage feedback on defining East New York. In a later post, I'll calculate the "historical center" which includes North (and possible even South) New York

Parking in a park. A privilege, with at best highly uncertain legal status, becomes basically permanent. Even if we think some privilege should exist, can we reject any alternative forever because it’s not deemed “adequate”? Image: Google Maps

Did you know about the storefront gate changes in NYC? By July 1, every storefront must have a gate with at least 70% visibility. Passed in 2009, and since 2026 is far in the future, everyone forgot about it. But … the future is now, and adoption is <20% in my estimate.

There exists West New York and East New York. There does not exist South New York. North New York seems to be mostly a historical name (see thread before you yell at me) Therefore, New York has a unique center: Greenpoint

Manhattan Overlaid on top of existing buildings: The maximum buildable area based on Floor-Area-Ratio (blue wireframes). Change the FAR and see how the buildable area changes. The city becomes blue with potential. Reposting for Attribution: MapLibre, Carto, OpenStreetMap

How do we know that we're zoning-constrained? Sales prices exceed construction costs. Chart: Townhouse in historic districts in Manhattan sell for >$1,800/sqft. What are the costs? I'll let experts give precise amounts, but it should be <$1,000/sqft.

The rise of the heat pump in NYC permits. 2021-2025.

25 years of new housing in NYC

If you live on a block your whole lifetime, how many rat sightings will you report? (Details below, using a small bit of approximation)

I want to analyze if the trash containerization in Harlem reduced rat sitings. My proposal: - Data: 311 calls for rodents. - Containerization started 2025 - Community board (CB) 9 Methodology: Diff-in-diff (time+CB) vs neighbor CB. Outcome: Cases per day (or similar) What do you think?

The Office-To-Residential pipeline in Manhattan, 2015-2026. Watch till the end: There's a lot of action in 2025! Attribution: OpenStreetMap Interactive link: citytracker.ai/results/publ...

You want to find out what's getting built in your NYC neighborhood? Let's look at Downtown Brooklyn since 2015. Live and free: citytracker.ai/results/publ... (Details below)