The recent debate between Uber and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over whether the ride-for-hire company was exacerbating Manhattan congestion was fueled by incomplete, misleading data. There was no way of knowing exactly where Uber cars and taxis pick up passengers, and so the city agreed to a study of Uber’s effects last month as part of its detente with the company.

Now, thanks in part to a Freedom of Information Law request, we have data. A lot of data... — FiveThirtyEight

Manhattan’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the focal point of Rockefeller Center and home to the NBC television network, has changed its name to the Comcast Building.

Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal will illuminate a sign with the new name and NBC logo atop the 850-foot (259-meter) building [...].

Comcast Building is the third official name for the landmark property, completed in 1933. — bloomberg.com

Flying above New York City in a helicopter can be a beautiful thing, until you look down and see that someone has stolen and is living your dream life in a bucolic cabin on a rooftop in the West Village. Is there anything more enviable in the real estate racket of NYC than a house on a regular old apartment building's roof?

[...] the porch is basically a glorified bulkhead over a hole punched in the ceiling of the family’s loft to make way for a nautical stairway that rises to a landing [...]. — gothamist.com

Vornado's super luxury tower at 220 Central Park South isn't even out of the ground yet, but billionaire buyers seemingly can't wait to stash their stacks of cash in the 950-foot-tall tower. The Real Deal hears rumblings that a Qatari investor is eyeing a monstrous spread that would cost around $250 million, making it easily the most expensive home in New York City. It would completely obliterate the current record, the $100 million sale at One57. — ny.curbed.com

In the U.S., he isn’t getting asked to compete for new projects at all, he said, amid criticism of the rail project’s delays and costs. [...]

These overruns and years of delay have taken a toll on Mr. Calatrava’s reputation, with local press and some observers painting him as an architect prone to overruns—a point he believes is quite unfair.

“It has not been easy for me,” he said. After living in the city for 12 years and feeling pride in the city, “I have been treated like a dog.” — wsj.com

"There's actually such a lack of transparency that it is difficult to understand what developers and property owners are actually planning ... There's no mechanism for us or the city for us to understand ahead of time what's in the planning" [...]

The board ultimately wants Mayor Bill de Blasio to take steps to create more comprehensive zoning laws that would assess the impact of large towers on open space and mitigate any potential impacts, like shadows on Central Park. — wnyc.org

[...] shadows even turn light into another medium of inequality. Light becomes a resource that can be bought by the wealthy, eclipsed for the poor.

[...] multimillion-dollar apartments in the sky will darken parts of the park a mile away. Enjoyment of the park in the park – a notably free activity in a high-cost city – will be dimmed a little to give billionaires views of it from above. — theguardian.com

Renzo Piano's versatility continues to win the hearts of NYC developers, and it looks like the starchitect is finally getting his chance to flex his muscle in the residential realm. Piano—who just cut the ribbon to the new Whitney to rave reviews—has been chosen by Michael Shvo and Bizzi & Partners to design a brand new 290-foot tower at 100 Varick Street in up-and-coming Hudson Square bordering Soho. — 6sqft.com

It's been over 50 years, but for many, the destruction of Charles Follen McKim's original Pennsylvania Station still stings (hey, even Mad Men mourned its passing). But now, there is a hopeful (if improbable) plan from Richard W. Cameron—principal designer at Atelier & Co—to bring back the civic jewel of a long-gone New York.

According to Traditional Building's's Clem Labine, Cameron's plan has three main goals [...]." — ny.curbed.com

There's another project coming to Manhattan that's even thinner: 303–305 E. 44th Street, designed by Eran Chen of ODA Architecture.

At 47 feet wide, this one's the narrowest of the bunch. Developed by Triangle Assets, the tower will rise about 600 feet high, creating 115,000 square feet of residential space. [...]

The design for 305 E. 44th is predicated on a stack of volumes; nested between them are the project's signature amenities, private gardens. — citylab.com

Times Square has always been about reinvention — in order for the New York Times' headquarters to be built (and give the spot its name), the Pabst Brewing Company's Pabst Hotel had to be demolished. But in the late 1970s, after decades of grandeur followed by decades of decay, imagining the future of Times Square became a particularly pressing project. [...]

Here are some plans for the future of Times Square, some of which never caught on and some of which still have a chance. — nymag.com

One World Observatory today announced that its official public opening date will be Friday, May 29, 2015. [...]

Positioned on top of the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere – on levels 100, 101, and 102 of the One World Trade Center building – One World Observatory will provide guests with unique, panoramic views of New York City, its most iconic sites, and surrounding waters from above 1,250 feet. — One World Observatory