Different policy debates come into play throughout the game and the player is tasked with making choices that will affect the final rent – for instance build in high-cost neighborhoods, pay workers prevailing wages, expend public money to subsidize the building, or to give in and accept higher rents than desired. — chpcny.org

...The Collectivity Project is about more than just play. Eliasson conceived of the project as a way to bring people together and allow them to create a utopian society, if only in miniature form. The idea, which is up until September 30, is at home at the 10th Avenue and West 30th Street section of the High Line, where the sounds of construction buzz in the background. — Art Net

Legends, a company that manages skyboxes and stadiums and now runs the World Trade Center observation deck, has turned the view into a high-tech spectacular. Before you get a glimpse of an actual place, you follow a winding path through cheesy synthetic bedrock; ride an elevator where 500 years of an ever-changing New York unfold as if seen from a rising balloon [...]

A view gives the illusion of omniscience. — nymag.com

Nouvel’s aspirations for 53W53, scheduled for completion in fall 2018, sound almost modest: “It’s going to try to hold its place, [...]

It’s going to try to be good enough for New York … it’s going to try to make its own small contribution, and it’s done in a way that ensures this contribution is readable, understandable, and it’s maybe a bit more precious than others. And it’s a little linked to this notion – a fairly disputed notion these days – that architecture is still an art, sometimes.” — theguardian.com

Open data, and the interactive mapping and data visualization that can come of it, has become a de facto engagement and storytelling tool among contemporary journalists, social justice activists, and civic-minded technologists. But despite its allure, open data’s potential for fostering civic engagement and creating transparency and dialogue is plagued by issues of usability, access, and quality control. — urbanomnibus.net

The exhibition recalls an earlier era when architects there believed that social challenges should be tackled by design, that humane societies deserved beautiful new forms, and progressive development put faith in art, nature and the resilience of ordinary people. — Michael Kimmelman, New York Times

Norman Foster may lose out on yet another major project in Manhattan. The Journal writes that if News Corporation and 21st Century Fox decide to move into 2 World Trade Center, as previously reported, developer Larry Silverstein may drop Foster’s design in favor of a new one by none other than starchitect of the moment, Bjarke Ingels of BIG. — 6sqft.com

Sadik-Khan shared with the Seattle audience what she and NYC DOT accomplished from 2007 to 2013, how they overcame the stasis of nearly a century of car-centric planning, and how other cities could follow in New York’s footsteps. [...]

her insights into New York’s process for implementing change — namely designing bold projects and getting them installed fast — are valuable for other city DOTs hoping to mimic her success. [...]

“The new blueprint is … not anti-car. It’s pro choice.” — nextcity.org

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

Though New York can sometimes seem like a drab warren of chain-link fence and oily pavement, the city actually has an impressive number of trees. On the streets alone [...] there were 592,130 at last reckoning, a leafy explosion you can now peruse in this great visualization of tree species.

Jill Hubley, a Brooklyn web developer whose last project involved mapping local chemical spills, made the chlorophyllous cartography with data from the 2005-2006 Street Tree Census. — citylab.com

For fans of the park, the gift from the Diller-von Furstenberg foundation represented more than the revival of Pier 54. It was a statement that Hudson River Park deserved to be in the same league as the city’s other signature, showy spaces. — The New York Times

Though New York City is expected to surpass its 2020 population projections this year, rest assured that there’s plenty of space for all of these folks—and then some. An amusing and quite informative experiment conducted by Tim Urban takes a look at just how much space you would need to fit the world’s population comfortably—for the most part. The investigation, which puts 7.3 billion folks cozily shoulder to shoulder, hinges on the assumption that you can fit ten humans into a square meter. — 6sqft