Are you a building manager who wants to retrofit your building with energy-efficient lighting? Or maybe you're a board trying to re-do your central air conditioning system, but you don’t know if you have it in your budget? Thankfully, there…
In January, a couple was caught in an apartment fire at the Strand Condominium on West 43rd Street in Manhattan. One person died, and the other suffered serious smoke inhalation. The tragic situation could have been even worse; other resid…
The drop in crime in New York in the last 40 years has been nothing short of miraculous. In the 1970s, the city’s obvious danger was notorious. Muggings were commonplace. Subway cars rolled along the tracks tagged in graffiti and ugly fluo…
Noise is a key quality-of-life problem for almost anyone living in a densely-packed urban environment. Many urban dwellers are immune to it as a result of having lived all their lives in the city—maybe you even grew up next to an elevat…
In terms of building security, boards today are in a tricky position. They are obliged to protect the residents, their property and offer the same quality of life just as they did prior to the great economic belly flop of the 21st Cent…
Jane Jacobs, the late, legendary urban planner whose grassroots activism prevented Robert Moses from turning Battery Park into a series of bridges, highways, and on-ramps, wrote at great length of the importance of well-used sidewalks …
Time was when New Yorkers rarely thought twice about disasters except when they watched movies such as “Airport,” “Earthquake,” “War of the Worlds” and “King Kong.” Then came 9/11, and people suddenly had to take the threat of …