Tag: GIS / Mapping

City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is a city-wide zoning text amendment that addresses New York City’s housing crisis by making it possible to build a little more housing in every neighborhood. It was adopted by the City Council in December 2024 and is already being put to use to create homes across all five boroughs.

How do legislative changes translate to data changes? How can new and old zoning tools be reflected in land use data? What do people need to know about the City’s tax lots to make informed decisions?

In this session, the Data Engineering team from the NYC Department of City Planning (DCP) will share how the agency added new fields to one of it’s most popular datasets: PLUTO. New fields about Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) and transit zones will soon be available in PLUTO to give data users a more complete picture of the City’s zoning and land use.

DCP subject matter experts in zoning, housing, and transportation worked with engineers to understand the relevant Zoning Resolution text, the intentions of City of Yes amendments, and the data necessary to relate them to every tax lot in the City. Attendees will learn about the processes, decisions, and surprises that have been a part of this journey through legislation, code, and open data.

A collaborative hackathon to build public mapping resources using NYC Open Data

How Maps Speak is a collaborative hackathon run by Parisa Setayesh and Shokran Rahiminezhad, two PhD candidates at the CUNY Graduate Center, focused on building a public teaching resource for mapping using NYC Open Data. Rather than centering on a single technical product, this hackathon brings together participants from diverse disciplines to co-create beginner-friendly mapping tutorials, examples, and workflows that show how maps are used to communicate with communities.

Participants will contribute and comment on short, structured materials, such as annotated mapping examples, tool-agnostic tutorials, and community-facing workflows, using NYC Open Data as a shared reference point. These contributions will form the foundation of Mapping Commons, an open, publicly accessible collection of mapping resources designed for non-experts.

The hackathon emphasizes collaboration, reflection, and public usefulness over competition or speed. No advanced technical or GIS experience is required. Learn more here and register below.

This hackathon is designed for an interdisciplinary audience, including:

  • Students and researchers
  • Urban planners, designers, and architects
  • Community organizers and advocates
  • Educators, librarians, and journalists
  • Data visualization practitioners
Open Data Week 2026 March 22-29, 2026 (and more!)

Did you know that NYC Emergency Management (NYCEM) uses data to analyze disasters and their impacts to communities across the five boroughs? This session explores how NYCEM’s recovery dashboard assesses disaster damage to identify recovery solutions and funding pathways in real time. The presentation also spotlights NYCEM’s Hazard History and Consequence Tool (HHC), a resource that gives City agencies and community partners access to historical data to better understand past hazard events to strengthen future resilience planning.

Baruch students are leading a data-driven walking tour of Gramercy Flatiron based on litter basket data from the NYC Department of Sanitation and monument and tree data from the NYC Parks Department.

Nothing to do with dumpster diving, but everything to do with leveraging unique data sets from NYC Open Data that are used to design a data-driven walk. The event will demonstrate how combining a myriad of datasets can drive new community gathering places and economic development.

Student docents from Baruch College and New York University will point out and discuss famous and unique places next to litter cans in the Gramercy Flatiron including famous statues and unique places in Madison Sq. Park, eateries on 5th Ave, the farmers market in Union Square and Broadway, notable homes of Dutch, English and Americans in Gramercy Park

Following a brief discussion about the architectural importance of the Courthouse, students will then lead us through Madison Square Park, pointing out important statues and plaques, notable sculpture then down Broadway through Flatiron towards Union Sq. Park. The walk will then head north through Gramercy Park ending at the Vertical Campus of Baruch College at 25th Street and Lexington Ave.

The walk begins at 12pm on the front steps of the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State adjacent to Madison Sq. Park. Bring questions, snacks, and curiosity. The walk will last about 90 minutes. If you want to learn more after the tour, stick around for a discussion about how it was designed – sign up here.

Baruch College and New York University students will present their results from mining the litter basket dataset available from NYC Open Data sources. Students will demonstrate how this data combination of other datasets to identify famous places, plaques, statues, trees and famous buildings in the Gramercy Flatiron neighborhoods.

These presentations will be based on data from the NYC Department of Sanitation, monuments and plaque datasets and tree census data from the NYC Parks Department. Students will discuss famous and unique places next to litter cans in the Gramercy Flatiron including famous statues and unique places in Madison Sq. Park, eateries on 5th Ave, the farmers market in Union Square and Broadway, notable homes of Dutch, English and Americans in Gramercy Park

Nothing to do with dumpster diving, but everything to do with leveraging unique data sets from NYC Open Data  the presentations will demonstrate how combining a myriad of datasets can drive new community gathering places and economic development.

Presentations begin at 1:30pm. Meet in front of the Baruch College Welcome Center at 137A East 25th Street. The building is located in a pedestrian plaza between 3rd Ave and Lexington Ave. Attendance is limited to 30 people. Please bring an ID card (like a driver’s license) that will allow you to get through security.

Before this discussion, join the related walking tour that starts at 12 p.m..

Open Data Week 2026 March 22-29, 2026 (and more!)

Do you look up as you walk through our city, curious about the trees? Join this interactive session exploring the NYC Tree Map, a free online tool developed by NYC Parks. We’ll hear from the deputy director of Digital Media at NYC Parks, Tom Hughes, about how the NYC Tree Map was designed and developed. You’ll then have time to use desktop computers to explore the NYC Tree Map and become familiar with navigating its features. We’ll conclude by hearing from members of the Jackson Heights Beautification Group Tree LC Team about how they utilize this tool to organize and record their tree stewardship efforts.

This event will be held at the St. John’s Recreation Center (1251 Prospect Place) in Brooklyn. Register here.

Open Data Week 2026 March 22-29, 2026 (and more!)

We’ve all seen construction sites and scaffolding appear in our neighborhood, tried to peek through the cracks and wondered: what are they building over there? This presentation will showcase how publicly available NYC Department of Buildings data can be brought together and deployed to give New Yorkers and industry pros alike a birds eye view on what’s rising up in their communities, all at once and at a glance!

Join Bonnie Stefanick, New Yorker and citizen data scientist, through a high level overview of how the things that get built show up in permitting data using live demonstrations of data sets that capture the permitting process and a daily view of projects happening in NYC neighborhoods, while giving a peek under the hood at the data in action from how it is pulled from the open data APIs and brought to life in tools.

As part of NYC Open Data Week 2026, the CUNY Public Interest Technology (PIT) Lab will host a week-long Open Data Takeover of the NYC PIT Pop-Up at the Oculus / World Trade Center. The activation advances Open Data Week’s goals of accessibility, civic learning, and practical use of open data by bringing open data projects into a highly visible, public-facing space. Attendees can drop in at any time during the hours below for a demonstration of the tool and to speak with the presenter. Most of the demos will also be streamed live from the Pop-Up on its Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/cunypitlab). Inside the Oculus, the Pop-Up is located on the Main Floor C2, in the South Concourse, at Shop #53 (next to M.A.C. Cosmetics). View the full PIT Lab schedule. No RSVP needed, just stop by!

[2pm-6pm]
Sneha Srivastava – What’s Lost in the Waters? Dive into NYC’s Flood Vulnerability Index
The goal of this project is to visualize the variables included in New York City’s Flood Vulnerability Index dataset. The key visualization is a three-dimensional interactive model, mapping the Flood Susceptibility to Harm and Recovery Index against the median household income of each census tract within the city, in addition to maps of future flooding scenarios. As such, the project tackles issues of environmental justice and sustainability, while addressing the policy implications of climate resilience in different neighborhoods.

The Cloud is a Place in Brooklyn
In this speculative design workshop, we ask: What if our data infrastructure lived in our neighborhood parks, schools, or community gardens? What if a data center didn’t just store files, but also used its excess heat to warm a public pool in the winter? What if your neighborhood’s digital history was stored in a “Community Memory Bank” that you helped manage? What if data infrastructure was owned by communities and served community needs?

Apurva Jhamb – Brooklyn Through Data Design : Mapping Place, Power, and Urban Systems
Centered on Brooklyn, the event will showcase a series of data-driven maps and visual narratives created using NYC Open Data datasets related to housing, land use, landmarks, environmental conditions, and neighborhood change. The session will demonstrate how public data when paired with thoughtful design can move beyond technical analysis to become an accessible storytelling tool for communities, planners, designers, and civic technologists.

Open Data Week 2026 March 22-29, 2026 (and more!)

A workshop that uses NYC Open Data to map green space access gaps, not just where parks exist, but who can actually reach them. We’ll identify transit barriers, unsafe pedestrian routes, and vacant lots with conversion potential, then equip participants with concrete tools to turn that analysis into community advocacy.

The core question isn’t whether parks are near enough, it’s whether people can access them. A park two miles away with no bus route might as well not exist for the people who need it most. Participants will learn to map those gaps and identify actionable solutions: Which bus route needs extending? Which vacant lot could become a neighborhood green space? Which crosswalk is missing? This workshop is about democratizing spatial analysis so that communities, not just planners, have the data to advocate for themselves.

By the end, participants will have learned what it takes to create a working map of access gaps in a neighborhood of their choosing, a set of targeted recommendations, and guidance on how to present that data to the decision-makers who can act on it.

This event will be held at the Little Red School House, 272 Avenue of the Americas.

Join artist Astrid Malter at BRIC for an introductory embroidery workshop and create your own meaningful map using NYC’s Open Data. In the first half of this workshop, Astrid will give a presentation on her methods and the data behind her hand-stitched map of Brooklyn that compares the location of MTA bus stop shelters to the Heat Vulnerability Index. The second half of the workshop will give participants time to learn basic embroidery techniques and explore making art with a public dataset of their choosing.

This event is open to beginners and all embroidery materials will be provided. If possible, participants should bring a phone, tablet, or computer to access public datasets.