Maps

WasteNotNYC invites visitors to rethink the full journey of their daily waste — from what’s on their plate to what ends up in the city’s bins. Participants select from a menu of items and are prompted to guess how much can be composted, recycled, or sent to landfill. The system then reveals the correct answers, compares their guesses to others, and projects the environmental impact if those materials were properly sorted over a year. The display then zooms out to a citywide map, visualizing how neighborhoods differ in waste diversion and access to composting, recycling, and reuse programs. Blending playful quizzes, personalized feedback, and civic data storytelling, WasteNotNYC turns the invisible infrastructure of waste management into a shared civic experience. It encourages visitors to see waste not as an endpoint, but as a system of resources, choices, and collective responsibility. ...

This app explores where American flags tend to be displayed in New York City using street-level imagery and object detection models to locate flags across the five boroughs. Flag display is not evenly distributed across the city, but instead reflects broader social, economic, and political patterns. Flags may be more common in neighborhoods with higher rates of homeownership, specific racial or ethnic compositions, or strong partisan affiliations. They may also cluster around public institutions or civic spaces. This analysis provides a window into how symbols of national identity, such as the American flag are woven into the urban fabric of New York City, and how their display might reflect deeper narratives about belonging, pride, and politics. ...