Norway-based architecture firm Snøhetta will move its New York City offices to the Rudin family’s 80 Pine Street in the Financial District, the landlord announced this morning.

The architecture company, whose first New York City project was the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavillion at the World Trade Center site, will relocate from 25 Broadway to a segment of the 10th floor of the 38-story structure in 2015 [...]. — commercialobserver.com

Josef Albers’s Manhattan, a mural that enlivened the lobby of New York’s Met Life (previously the Pan Am) Building from 1963 until its controversial removal in 2000, could make a triumphant return to the city. Possible sites include the World Trade Center Transit Hub, The Art Newspaper understands. Finding a suitable home for the work is not the only obstacle: the original mural is in a landfill site in Ohio. — theartnewspaper.com

Between 2008 and 2013, I photographed the branch libraries of New York City’s three public library systems: 212 branches in all[1], spread across the five boroughs. Through arrangements with each of the library systems, I worked mornings before the branches opened to the public. I traveled by subway and bus and made six to twelve pictures of each branch, interiors and exteriors, using a 4×5 inch view camera. My archive, to date, holds over 2,000 negatives. — urbanomnibus.net

"The pied-à-terre tax is seen by New York’s wealthiest 1 percent as a question of fairness" - James Parrott, the chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute — NYT

Developed with the help of a team of volunteer researchers, urban planners and designers, this new online tool allows anyone to view the staggering amount of publicly-owned lots that once had an urban renewal plan in the pipeline but were scrapped due to bureaucracy. By mapping out all of the vacant spaces across the city, 596 hopes that we as a community can take a top-down approach to turning these urban blights into public gardens, play lots, and spaces where people can “co-create.” — 6sqft

City Realty made the rendering above, which they say gives us an idea of what the city will look like in 2018 based on projections for buildings currently being planned or already in construction: "New York City skyline circa 2018 2,500 feet above Central Park. Image features upcoming supertall skyscrapers such as One Vanderbilt, 53W53, 432 Park Avenue, 225 West 57th, and 111 West 57th Street are completed." — gothamist.com

In 1910, Manhattan reached a peak population of 2.2 million, from which it has never since rebounded, even after modest growth in the past three decades. Angel’s research found that today, Manhattan’s population density is down a surprising 40% from 1910. — urbanomnibus.net

Perhaps no part of Manhattan has changed as dramatically since the 1980s as the Meatpacking District. Located on the Lower West Side, the district has gone from a blue-collar warehouse district with a seedy side into a hyper-luxurious, bustling neighborhood.

From the High Line to the expensive shops and restaurants along the old cobblestone streets, everything looks quite different from when Brian Rose first brought his camera to the Meatpacking District. — citylab.com

When Ground Zero was finally cleared after the fall of the twin towers, New Yorkers trusted that thoughtful, ambitious urban design could make the city whole again. Why have they been so badly let down? — theguardian.com

As New York City’s burgeoning tech economy continues to grow, startups face the same challenges for office space they would anywhere else—but have the added challenge of Manhattan-level price tags, vying for space with law firms, banks, and other well-financed tenants.

An absolute lack of space is not the issue, however. New York’s low 10 percent office vacancy rate may be second only to Washington, D.C.’s 9.6 percent, but an enormous amount of inventory is going up [...]. — urbanland.uli.org