People

There are few places in Amer­ica where you can you lose your­self in a shaded for­est, take a twenty-minute break to enjoy empanadas at a Mex­i­can bodega, and then return to the wilder­ness to fin­ish your hike. That's what we did with ecol­o­gist Mariellé Anzelone...

"...Our cities all over the country--from Detroit to New Orleans--present the best opportunity for lowering our carbon footprint..."

"Design allows for the different learning styles to be celebrated and exercised...we see our students keep coming back to learn and they get engaged more and more."

"I really have this fantasy, this image, that a community could develop that begins to picture New York in a bigger way."

"The public won’t ever tell you, 'this is how you change our mind.'"

"For every student who comes to P-TECH, they’re going to be a great leader in the city, in another ten years–and we’re so proud of them. But it’s also about the whole economic development of New York City... "

"And so, in essence, this is a CO2 pump: it takes CO2 from the air and pumps it and delivers it into this stream. This will work over and over for years and years."

"All of our projects start by asking a question about how the city works..."

"When should you go bird watching? Now."

"If we want society to change, we should look at ourselves, and learn from whatever is already working."

"There is no filtration on New York City water."

"More trees, more plants, more – OK, in my big picture thing – I would love to see more raptors in the city."

"The first thing you can do is take a look around. What does the block where you live look like? What does the block where you work look like?"

"New York is livable–it is more than livable, it’s wonderful -- because of density. And not just the density of people, but I think the density of opportunity."

"I would like within the next ten years for the whole surface of the city to be totally porous... "

"In fact, what we need to be talking about isn’t with nature or without nature, but between nature."

I’m not a big person for revolution. I believe in change happening at a pace that allows it to meaningful. So much that I’ve seen going on in the city in the past couple years has seemed to be going in the right direction.

It’s the most exciting city in the world to work in. I could walk down the street, bump into somebody; you begin to talk to each other and before you know it, we are starting a business. It’s just people you meet casually.

"Plus Pool is a floating pool in the river for everyone. The most important aspect of the design is that it filters river water through the pool’s walls."

Let’s deal with the sci­ence. And there are uncer­tain­ties there too, we can talk about those. But gases don’t care whether you are a Repub­li­can or a Demo­c­rat, left wing or right wing, libertarian or conservative.

"All the way from Greenpoint to Bayridge there were, for a hundred years, only four places where a private citizen could get to the water."

"What I tell them is that in New York, the landscape is the people."

"Listening and understanding the other side are the first steps to a truly meaningful exchange..." -- Ji Lee

During the making of this photo essay, someone told us that "the people make the city." City Atlas plans to include ongoing interviews in all five boroughs--to find out what people think about the future of New York and their role in it.

A short film con­tain­ing ideas and thoughts of New York­ers pass­ing through Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal, by Car­o­line Kim