What’s More Exciting than Infrastructure? Why the Infrastructure Bill is an Even Bigger Deal than You May Think.
Nothing quite excites an office of planners and policy analysts like a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure. The passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is worth celebration, both from the folks in the business of building and from...
A SWOT in the dark: Why now is the time to assess your organizational health
The last two years have been trying, tumultuous, and hard to plan for. With so many uncertainties facing businesses and, especially, nonprofits on a near-daily basis, many leaders went into survival mode. Planning could come later. Well, now it’s later. And now is the...
The Thanksgiving Turkey Rush: Inside the Infrastructure that Makes the Holiday Possible
Everyone who celebrates has heard the origin of Thanksgiving: a celebration of plenty shared between colonists and the Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony. Despite the overwhelming national mythology around Thanksgiving, there are only two written accounts that depict the...
Bigger Budgets City-Wide Mean New Opportunities for Lasting Impact
Back in April, Public Works put together a run-down of the American Rescue Plan (ARP), identifying opportunities for nonprofits, civic organizations, and New York City communities stemming from the historic aid package. In May, the U.S. Department of the Treasury...
October 2021 Newsletter
Apprenticeships: Not Just for the Trades Anymore Exploring lessons learned from Hostos Community College’s Community Health Worker apprenticeship program Apprenticeships have historically been confined to the trades, providing on-the-job training opportunities and...
Why you should be paying attention to urban placemaking
What is Urban Placemaking? Urban Placemaking is not necessarily a new practice, but it is gaining prominence among planners throughout the United States. Contemporary placemaking emerged in the 1960s through the works of Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte, who based...
Twenty Years Later: Reflecting on how the response to 9/11 changed community engagement and planning in NYC
In the wake of 9/11 New Yorkers and community members across the region responded in droves, hoping to find some way to help and heal from the attack. This coming together helped to usher in a new standard for community engagement and planning in New York City, the...
We Have Options: Building Awareness Around NYC’s Mental Health Helpline, NYC Well
From the coverage of Simone Biles’ mental health struggles at the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympics, to concern about the devastating collective toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on all of us, there is a growing public focus on developing appropriate responses to mental health...
Composing a Rendering: 5 Tips from an Insider
Urban planners, landscape architects, architects, and designers of all kinds use renderings as a way to show clients conceptual ideas for a given space. This allows the audience to visualize a range of elements from aesthetics to function. While every firm and...
Why aren’t more NYC transit riders using OMNY?
In July, the MTA announced that one in six transit rides fares were paid using the OMNY system. OMNY (One Metro New York) is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) new contactless payment option, which is set to fully replace MetroCards in 2023. There are a...