City floats Coney Island ferry service

Ahoy, Coney Island! The city is looking at three sites around the neighborhood that could one day become a new commuter ferry’s port o’ call.

Biologists fight erosion in Jamaica Bay

The whipping winds of Jamaica Bay sway the chest-high grasses of Elder’s Point East, a salt marsh island full of marine life.

Castle Garden: The Forgotten Gateway

Pre-dating the immigrant landing station of Ellis Island by nearly forty years is the almost-forgotten Castle Garden of the “Old Immigration.”

Powerful Ideas: River Turbines Could Electrify New York City

Floating docks could provide clean energy and new space for parks, researchers now propose.

Uncovering a Small Town (and Some Tall Tales)

Touring an archaeological dig site, you generally expect a glimpse of antiquities a little more antediluvian than a television antenna, a seven-inch single, a tailfin and a rotary-dial telephone. But an odd excavation site that recently opened to the public on Governors Island purports to offer just that: artifacts not of the Mesoamerican but of the midcentury variety, about 1954.

Don’t Bet Against New York

The financial collapse of 2008 and the Great Recession have had, not surprisingly, a major adverse impact on the economy of the country’s financial center, New York City. T

Cricket Expeditions Crawling All Over New York City Saturday Night

At the crack of dusk in New York City Saturday night, expeditioneers will set off  on foot, bikes, and in boats to aurally search for crickets. They will be armed with cell phones, high-speed internet connections for blogging, art supplies, and compasses.

Rising Sea Levels Putting New York City at Risk

When major ice sheets thaw, they release enough fresh water to disrupt ocean currents world-wide and make the planet wobble with the uneven weight of so much meltwater on the move. Studying these effects more closely, scientists are discovering local variations in rising sea levels — and some signs pointing to higher seas around metropolitan New York.

New York City Girds Itself for Heat and Rising Seas

By the end of the century, New York’s climate could resemble that of present-day Raleigh, North Carolina and its harbor could easily rise by two feet or more. Faced with this prospect, the city is among the first urban centers to begin changing the way it builds its infrastructure — and the way it thinks about its future.

Party down Dutch-style during this weeklong celebration of NYC’s forebears

As that “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” song goes, “New York was once New Amsterdam”; now, the Netherlands and New York honor that connection

A Wooded Prairie Springs From a Site Once Piled High With Garbage

 South of the Belt Parkway near Exit 15 in Brooklyn, approaching Kennedy International Airport, an unassuming hill slopes upward, dotted with small, scraggly trees and bushes.

New York City’s Waterfront in Photographs on View at Museum of the City of New York

The dramatic transformation of the New York City waterfront from a hub of industry and commerce to a vestigial space reclaimed for recreation and public use will be documented in historic photographs by Berenice Abbott, Andreas Feininger, and David Robbins,

First Annual New York Harbor Festival of Lights

Holiday Boat Parade
a project of the Working Harbor Committee

Pollution Is Closing More Nearby Beaches, Report Finds

The number of New York and New Jersey beaches that were either closed, or the subject of warnings, because of water pollution has been surging, according to annual beach water quality report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

New Reminders on the Hazards of Locally Caught Fish

Where did the missing fish warning signs go?

City owns up to Coney Island project potentially requiring eminent domain

The city’s Coney Island plan suffered a major setback Wednesday as officials admitted they had not ruled out the use of eminent domain to acquire land for the project.

Pro Beach Volleyball in Coney Island

Life in New York City usually doesn’t call to mind a day at the beach. Yet, Manhattan is an island bordered by rivers with easy passageways to the Atlantic Ocean. Queens is an extension of the beaches of Long Island. And for four consecutive summers the AVP Crocs Tour has come to Coney Island for professional volleyball on Brooklyn’s most celebrated beach.

New Report Outlines Dire Climate Change Projections for NYC

the White House released a new climate-change report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program. In short, the study found that the nation’s average annual temperature has risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years, and is expected to keep rising.

Ferry between Sag Harbor and NYC

James Barker snuck into the Sag Harbor Village Harbor Committee meeting 15 minutes late on Monday afternoon, having underestimated the amount of traffic he would battle driving from Manhattan to the East End.

Sun kinda wonderful for parks, shores

Bikinis are coming out of the closet and beachfront businesses are gearing up for the unofficial start of the summer.