New York City – a city portrait

[this piece is published on the Cities page of Topos Magazine – The International Review of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design]

“To many around the world, New York City is held as the archetypal metropolis of our modern era. Hustle and bustle, bright lights and late nights, and its reputation as a cultural mecca help it earn this unofficial standing...Part of this singular “imageability” stems from its spatial organization. Understandably, the famed New York City street grid is best known for measuring off the island of Manhattan into blocks that are wide when navigated east-west and narrow north-to-south. This rectilinear pattern enabled predictable and cost-effective development. While the grid is astronomically rigid in Manhattan, the same strategy of oblong blocks is also used to define large swaths of the city’s other four boroughs.”

Queens is the largest of New York City's five boroughs by area. Photo: Greg Keelen / unsplash [via topos]