When Superstorm Sandy slammed into the East Coast at the end of October, hurling a record breaking 13 plus-foot water surge at New York City, knocking out power to millions of residents and devastating parts of Queens and Staten Island,…
As we city dwellers go about our busy lives, we often forget about the plain facts of life here on this spinning globe: gravity creates an unceasing tension in the materials we assemble into buildings and other structures. Whether or n…
Most people don’t think much about their garbage after they toss it down the chute or into a container for pickup, but the fact is, removing a multifamily community's trash and recyclables can be a big job, especially in a private devel…
Blizzards. Ice Storms. Hurricanes. Floods. New Yorkers are used to being buffeted by Mother Nature. But increasingly, it seems, the impact of such storms has lingered long after the weather front blows through, with hundreds or thousan…
New York City is known for having some of the very best urban opportunities in the world—among the best colleges and schools, museums and libraries, as well as some of the finest parks, the most interesting architecture, the most intrig…
In a city as crowded and fast-paced as New York, parking is a big deal—it’s hard to find it when you need it, and when you do find it, it’s usually very expensive. Since parking spaces in the city are such a hot commodity, it’s not surpr…
Concrete is the most prevalent building material in existence today, though most people probably don’t notice how widely used the material is until it begins to break up in front of their homes, or falls off of their buildings, roads an…
In an urban environment, people can feel isolated, though they live close to each other. While high-rise residential buildings put families near one another, living close doesn’t turn a group of neighbors into a community and that’s und…
The days when an apartment building's 'security system' consisted of a tricky front door lock and the landlord's ill-tempered dog are long past. Today, security measures range from old-style deadbolts to high-tech biometric screening e…
In many ways, a building’s boiler is like the heart is to the body: it provides heat and circulation; it works unseen; and if properly maintained, it will function well for decades without a problem. Maintaining the heat source of the c…