I always appreciate when American parks include a nice water feature where turtles can swim around and enjoy the afternoon sun, like the aptly named Turtle Pond here in Central Park.

There are obvious reasons cities don't install moving walkways like the @rpa.org proposed for NYC in 1986, but I'm a little shocked nobody has given it a try. A perfect solution for people who don't really understand how cities work.

Genuinely thrilling to watch a new tower under construction reach tall enough to blend into the fog.

I didn't realize this sculpture is also intended as a bench, but I certainly appreciate the temporary public art they cycle through St. Nicholas Park. Honestly a higher hit rate than the public art in some of the more prominent parks not in Harlem... Unity Bridge, by Moses Ros

At the 2nd Ave Yard in Sunset Park on Friday. A retired R46 (I think) about to be car-floated to Jersey City and scrapped. Love that this is where the subway meets the national rail network. Jersey City built that skyline in this train's 50 years. Real beauties. Good for them.

In 1986 The Regional Plan Association proposed running the Second Avenue Subway to Staten Island via New Jersey. Fascinating to think about what Bayonne and Jersey City would look like today with several subway stops fully integrated into the MTA system.

Love the design of this digital screen with countdown clocks I saw yesterday at a bus stop in the Upper West Side, part of a @mta.info pilot. Having to track buses on your phone is kind of cumbersome, especially if you're wondering about vehicles on different overlapping routes

I was kind of surprised when I stepped off the Staten Island Railway at Tottenville how much it smells like a beach town. The tracks really dead-end at the water's edge. Are there other subway or heavy rail stations anywhere in the world that get this close to the shoreline?

I look at photos like this and think "Damn, this would be an iconic streetscape if it weren't for all the damn cars ruining everything". Cars. Ruin. Cities.

Gale Brewer's top priority: stopping an 86-story tower on W 66th from going too tall. She can't. 569 apartments (121 affordable) are coming half a block from the 1 train because of a 1993 zoning carve-out that outlasted the company it was written for. danieltrubman.substack.com/p/gale-brewe...

I love these signs with maps and background info on some of the local historic sights. Too bad this basic service is often only provided by a BID (in this case Columbus Amsterdam Business Improvement District) so less affluent neighborhoods with less robust commercial corridors in NYC go without.

Probably not a great policy outcome that there's only a single-story check cashing store on top of the Bay Ridge subway station. What's even worse is knowing there at least used to be a cool diner on the corner. 6901 4th Ave, Brooklyn ~1940 ➡️ 2026

Really seems like you can operate all sorts of small businesses out of vehicles in on-street parking lanes in NYC, like this barbershop I saw over the weekend.

Sitting is great, but tables are what let you stay. Somewhere to put a coffee, a sandwich, or even a discreetly wrapped beer, as we saw at the Flatiron Public Plaza on Sunday afternoon.

The new Sutton Tower was looking great from Roosevelt Island last weekend, framed by the cherry blossoms on the west esplanade. So why couldn't an 847-foot tower on a 6,025 sq ft lot get built there today? danieltrubman.substack.com/p/new-skyscr...

When even the MTA employee is playing a game on his phone loudly without headphones it really feels like we're never getting back to pre-COVID norms of decorum on our subways.

Some folks worried new construction along Fifth would obscure the Empire State Building. But don't worry, it's still there, and looking absolutely iconic as always this afternoon.

So many of the mosaic murals in the subway stations in NYC are just superb, like "Woodside Window" by Oscar Oiwa at the Northern Boulevard station here. But of course I'm partial to any art that celebrates a cool elevated train.

The ability to build AND KEEP OPEN public bathrooms in parks is such an underrated state capacity issue at the municipal level. One thing NYC seems to be better at than a lot of other American cities.

Every time I walk by Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights on the weekends it seems so lively. There must be quite a few of these short commercial blocks near subway stations in NYC which could be successfully pedestrianized.

Love to see a fire department suggest eliminating parking spaces to make a street safer for everyone, instead of trying to turn every urban street into a suburban arterial.

South down 2nd Avenue is a very cool urban canyon to check out right before you land in Manhattan from the Roosevelt Tramway, but the SIX lanes below is sort of absurd. Not really a pleasant street to walk along or cross once you're strolling around.

432 Park Avenue looked especially interesting through the street steam.

Sun Belt suburbanites can keep their detached McMansions. Attached rowhouses like these on Convent Ave in Hamilton Heights are just better looking.

The one-story McDonald's at 480 3rd Avenue in Kips Bay is zoned for 10 FAR, is only two blocks from the 6 train, and sits across the avenue from a 33-story tower. So why is it so short? danieltrubman.substack.com/p/the-mcdona...

Everyone fear-mongering about dumpsters coming to their neighborhood in NYC because they assume they'll be a nuisance knows you can just come to visit Central Harlem and see they're just always fine, right?

Impressive how fast Long Island built one of the best waterfront skylines in the country.

I love historic markers, so this sign with some background on the Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Historic District (with map on the back) is great. But I REALLY don't understand the choice to go with all caps so far up high? You'll get a headache just trying to skim it!

Collegiate Gothic really deserves more respect as one of the greatest styles of American architecture. Modernist academic buildings can be cool too, but there's no reason why new buildings on university campuses can't look like CUNY's Shepard Hall either.

The Staten Island Railway takes too long to get all the way down to Tottenville, but the beaches are definitely worth checking out.

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is definitely one of our most beautiful pieces of sprawl infrastructure.

The more I walk around NYC the more I think the absence of anti-Israel stickers is a reliable sign a working class neighborhood hasn't started gentrifying yet.

Ten-year-old me who used to collect sea glass down the Jersey Shore would've LOVED how many cool pieces you can find in a few minutes on Staten Island.

People will tell you New York City is "built out." This Bay Ridge block of semi-detached houses with driveways and rear parking has a subway station at the end of it that gets you to the Financial District in 30 minutes.

I hate how in order to visit one of NYC's great waterfront parks you almost inevitably have to deal with crossing a highway, like the Belt Parkway here in Brooklyn. And the tranquility of the views are definitely undermined by the constant roar of the cars!

Just walked by an Outback Steakhouse with a big surface parking lot out front in Brooklyn. Easy to forget how much of NYC is pretty suburban when you live in Manhattan.

I know they would never get rid of the on-street parking here (even if there's a subway station literally on the corner...) but this block of Bay Ridge would go from charming to absolutely spectacular if all the cars weren't creating so much visual clutter.

Were there always this many apparently homeless men smoking and drinking on subway platforms on rainy days in NYC, or has it just been more tolerated post-COVID?

Someone tried to hit their vape on the subway car and it didn't work. Thank God for small miracles 🙌

Parking protected bike lanes seem so vastly superior to the alternative (a strip of paint between parked cars and moving traffic) that I struggle to understand why they haven't been implemented wherever possible. Doesn't seem to reduce the number of available parking spots, so is it just inertia?

Cool to see dense housing, the subway, and a nice playground all next to each other here in Woodside. Unfortunately the air kind of stinks from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) across the street 🫢

I fully support this entrepreneur using this parking space in Jackson Heights to sell boots. If the government is going to give away this land right next to the subway station for cheap why shouldn't someone use it for a small business??

American city parks are seriously under commercialized: It shouldn't be so rare to see a vendor selling ice cream in the park on a beautiful spring Saturday.

Sure, NYC is expensive in some ways, but since moving here I've found no shortage of cheap, tasty treats like this $2 concha in Corona, Queens. Smaller cities like Philadelphia just don't have anywhere near the number of transit-accessible immigrant neighborhoods.

Took an express bus from 125th Street in Harlem to LaGuardia Airport this morning. Only $3 for the 30 minute trip. Northern Manhattan is so underrated.

Definitely a chicken or the egg problem, but you can sort of understand why delivery drivers and others don't really respect the bus lane here on 125th Street in Harlem when there's routinely a 35 minute gap in service like I saw this afternoon.

West 132nd Street Garden is supposed to be open on Friday afternoons, but unfortunately it's still locked. Being accessible to the public for 20 hours a week during the open season really doesn't seem like much of a burden, but many @greenthumbnyc.bsky.social routinely ignore the rules.

Such a bummer knowing left wing transit advocacy groups are going to spend the next few decades campaigning against autonomously driven buses (which could drastically increase service hours) because they prioritize the demands of transit unions, not the riding public.

Zoning was sold to Americans as protection against the factory moving in next door. But far too often it's actually used to restrict communal prayer. www.jta.org/2026/04/15/u...

All the public bathrooms in parks around NYC make it so much easier to be out and about for a few hours. And coming from Philadelphia I'm always amazed by what good condition they're in, like this one in Central Park off 5th Ave.