Jane Jacobs, the late, legendary urban planner whose grassroots activism prevented Robert Moses from turning Battery Park into a series of bridges, highways, and on-ramps, wrote at great length of the importance of well-used sidewalks …
Inside most multi-unit residential buildings, there are many areas that should be strictly off-limits to everyone but trained building staff—and we’re not just talking about the manager’s inbox. Machine rooms, elevator shafts, compactor …
The deep freeze of winter will fall on New York from January through March, and though the city hasn't had the most severe winters in recent years, weather has a way of tricking us into complacency and hitting hard when we let our guards…
New York City is famous (perhaps infamous) for its residents' philosophy of minding their own business—dress as a giant chicken, sport a revolutionary haircut…nobody minds. This attitude is great if you're a young person expressing your …
When it comes to living in New York City, having a doorman in your condo or co-op is a luxury that almost everyone wishes they could have. A doorman has many functions, among them providing a sense of security and collecting packages for…
When it comes to the things that people value most, personal safety and security rank right at the top of the list. That's especially true in a day and age filled with ongoing anxiety over everything from identity theft to car jackings t…
In 2004, a NewsChannel 4 helicopter corkscrewed and slammed onto the roof of a Brooklyn apartment building, shattering into pieces. In July 2006, Dr. Nicholas Bartha blew up his Upper East Side townhouse that he was about to lose in a divor…
It's a nightmare scenario. From the 1970s-era disaster movie The Towering Infernoto the very real nightmare of 9/11, the idea of being trapped by a raging fire hundreds of feet in the air is nothing anybody wants to contemplate. High-r…
As we sit in our buildings all over the city, we'd like to think that we're protected from emergencies by our sprinkler systems, electronic alarm systems and staff. However much we don't want to think about it, an emergency situation can ha…
Everyone likes to think that they are safe all the time, but often people take for granted that everything in their condo or co-op is up to snuff and they forget about simple things like changing batteries in smoke detectors or securing …