Untapped Cities

The observation that the colors were meant to be absorbed over time rather than explicitly set out reminds me of the old NYC Metro mosaics. https://www.untappedcities.com/secret-meaning-behind-colors-nyc-subway… While no one would ever navigate by learning what the mosaics mean, it's a fantastic setup for the expected audience of commuters. Give it a month and your brain would associate a given color with your stop coming up soon, and make navigation easier.

New Yorkers love putting things in pipes, don't they? Not content with putting normal things like water, sewage, and gas in pipes, they apparently put steam in pipes, on Roosevelt Island they put a mix of rubbish and vacuum in pipes [1], they used to put the post in pipes [2], apparently they pipe rats to people's houses or something, occasionally once of them puts gunpowder in a pipe [3], and they even put themselves in pipes [4]. It's all very Freudian, they should talk to their therapist about it. [1] https://www.untappedcities.com/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuristic-pne… [2] https://www.untappedcities.com/pneumatic-tube-mail-new-york-city/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Metesky [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway

For whatever it’s worth, anti mask movements were popular during the last global pandemic in 1918, so I don’t think it’s that people have changed. https://untappedcities.com/2020/07/15/the-anti-mask-league-of-1919-the…

NYC also had a pneumatic tube mail network: http://untappedcities.com/2013/03/15/nycs-pneumatic-tube-mail-network/ It ran until 1953. Paris also had one. It's a worthwhile read.

TBMs are designed at a specific diameter, for the kind of soil to bore through, wear down quickly, and aren’t easily moved. It often isn’t worth it to take apart a TBM and reconstruct it elsewhere, even if you could find a customer wanting a tunnel of the same width through similar soil. For long tunnels, it isn’t uncommon to have two TBMs that meet in the middle and are abandoned there (they bore a side tunnel long enough to contain the TBM, and the side tunnel is closed behind them) For example, see https://untappedcities.com/2017/02/09/the-200-ton-tunnel-boring-machin… ”Burial of such a large machine was unprecedented in New York City, but is common practice abroad, reported the New York Times in 2011. The Spanish contracting company working on the project deemed it would be more cost effective to leave Seli in place. It was estimated that removal would cost millions and cause delays in existing construction projects. Dr. Michael Horodniceanu, the president of MTA Capital Construction, estimated at the time it would cost $9 million to remove Seli, which had cost somewhere between $6 to $8 million new.”

To mention the Spanish and Italian way: there are public toilets, some on the street (not that many, mostly near playgrounds), most in public buildings, rail and bus stations and the like. They are always free to use. Condition can be from very good to very poor, depends on the area and who looks after the toilets, mostly. Aside from that, every place serving drinks or foods with the possibility to eat in the premises must have fully equipped toilets, and those are usually in good condition, so what most people do is walk into a bar or restaurant and use those. Some people just ask if it's OK to use the toilet, others will buy an espresso or bottle of water. Personally I ask and then pay for someone else's coffee or tip the barman, but I'm neither Spanish or Italian. Paid toilets are unknown there and would be seen with hostility. Toilets at shopping centres and motorway stops can always be used freely. Petrol stations and underground car parks also tend to have toilets that one can use, sometimes you have to ask for the key. In France, it is mostly the same except that bar/restaurant toilets tend to be, let us say, a character building experience and being a different culture, the "let me use the toilet and I'll buy a bottle of water from you" thing does not quite work (apart from the water being at least €2.-) There are, however, a lot more public toilets, often the self-cleaning type (the French are big on automation, due to their awkward labour laws), and best of all,…

The whole reason the medallion system was created was because prior to the medallions, taxis were a real risk to the general public. Nope, the reason it was created was because the taxi drivers where annoyed with the increase of competition during the Great Depression and started striking and destroying property until they got a monopoly over the business. From the nyc.gov site: Widespread poverty prompted many New Yorkers to opt for less-expensive forms of transportation, decreasing the demand for taxis. This put many companies out of business and caused many cabdrivers to lose their jobs. The situation was made worse by the tactics of “wildcat” (unlicensed) taxis who used what some considered to be “underhanded tactics,” such as drastically lowering fares, to get more business. The situation in the taxi industry was dire; frustrated cabdrivers turned their anger into violent protest and the demands for industry regulation increased. Another source: Striking taxi drivers was nothing new–the first strike took place in 1908, a year after the first taxi company was founded. But this strike had a hostile energy to it, as strikers went hunting for scabs to punish. As one driver put it, “the bastids that was scabbin’, we pulled the doors off their cabs.” Independent cab owners, who had nothing to gain by striking, had their windows smashed by blocks of ice and passengers thrown from their cabs. Police who tried restore order had their tires slashed and marbles thrown under…

Something like this? https://www.untappedcities.com/automats-cafeterias-nyc/

Those pink granite cubes make that H&H look like it's built in Minecraft. The same source has an article about the pink granite quarry involved in a lot of NYC buildings, https://www.untappedcities.com/stony-creek-quarry-and-the-granite-that… ("Stony Creek Quarry and the Granite that Built New York")

It's common to abandon mining equipment at the bottom of the mine, or have tunnel boring machines dig their own tomb. The machines are often custom made, and removal would cost more than their EOL value. https://www.untappedcities.com/the-200-ton-tunnel-boring-machine-burie…

Also in New York's Roosevelt Island [1], pretty sure I've read about it here in the past. Edit: yeah, [2] for instance, from 2017 or something. [1]: https://www.untappedcities.com/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuristic-pne… [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14939745

In case this is hugged, this was a submission to the MTA's Open Data Challenge in November that won 'most creative storytelling'. > Subway Stories is a series of vignettes that analyze open data to understand how New Yorkers work, enjoy themselves, and stay connected. The interactive visualization allows users to explore how different groups in NYC travel and effectively uses a complex dataset to glean insight into how folks move about the city An article: https://www.untappedcities.com/new-map-of-one-billion-nyc-subway-rides…

"Untapped New York" featured an interesting article about the pneumatic tube mail system that was used in NYC: https://untappedcities.com/2023/10/17/pneumatic-tube-mail-new-york-cit… A lot of the material was also incorporated in their podcast about the same subject: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pneumatic-tube-mail-in-new-york-…

There was a Bell Lab in the now Westbeth artists housing, named for one of its corners, West and Bethune st, which opened in 1970 or so. https://untappedcities.com/2017/02/27/inside-westbeth-artists-housing-…

Roosevelt Island NY has a pneumatic trash system https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuris…

While mail tubes are cool, I still think that the pneumatic garbage system on Roosevelt Island is even cooler. https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuris…

Burying TBMs is not uncommon. The HS2 ones are being buried for an indefinite period due to UK government flipflopping. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/hs2-will-bury-two-tunnel-boring-m… There's one in New York. https://untappedcities.com/2017/02/09/the-200-ton-tunnel-boring-machin…

New York City had it, too: https://untappedcities.com/2017/10/03/an-illustrated-history-of-nycs-p… 27 miles of tubes.

Generally speaking the issue is scale. Oysters are also currently being restored in New York. They had largely disappeared and one of the reasons was over-consumption; at one point there were a billion oysters being harvested per year. The current goal is to just get back to one billion at all. https://untappedcities.com/2022/08/04/history-new-york-oysters/

This is more common than it might seem.[0][1][2][3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_relocation [1] https://tvpworld.com/41981555/lubomirski-palace-moved-to-new-location-… [2] https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/heaviest-buil… [3] https://untappedcities.com/2014/08/22/8-historic-buildings-that-have-b…

The Long Island Railroad (Metro NY commuter rail) used to operate a bar car on the rush hour trains, as did Metro North. Discontinued years ago. Sorry for the Pintrest link, couldn't find a better photo resource quickly. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/31032684922734675/ https://www.city-data.com/forum/long-island/885214-lirr-bar-car.html https://untappedcities.com/2020/02/06/when-metro-north-had-a-jungle-ti…

Roosevelt Island (which is a part of the Manhattan borough) actually has an underground, pneumatic trash collection system: https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuris… . I think it would be hard to retrofit such a thing onto the already-built-up parts of the city though.

Of course all cities should strive to be like Houston, a city surrounded and intersected by highways. The lower part of Manhattan would have had a highway through it but instead it'sa cultural epicenter (https://untappedcities.com/2013/09/11/nyc-that-never-was-robert-moses-…

Interestingly, some large buildings in NYC also use a "steam chiller" hooked into the city steam system to provide air conditioning: https://untappedcities.com/2021/07/09/new-york-city-steam-system/

they could do retrofit https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuris… will take probably 100 years or so

I'm not sure there's a significant difference between depths of most of the London and New York subway systems. Most of the London Underground is cut-and-cover tunnels sitting just below ground level (2-6m). The Thames Tunnel is 24m below ground level. The deepest station is Bull & Bush, Hampstead, at 57m (180ft) underground: https://londonist.com/2015/10/how-deep-does-london-go https://londonist.com/london/transport/how-deep-is-your-commute-these-… The NYC subway also uses extensive cut-and-cover routes, though deeper bores exist. The deepest station, at 191st St. (LRI) is 180 ft. (54m) below ground. About the same as the London Underground. https://untappedcities.com/2013/06/26/deepest-highest-subway-stations-… https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Chapter_14:_Engineering_Features_of_the…

The pressure in NYC's water tunnels brings the water up to about the 6th storey[1]. Beyond that additional pumps and tanks are needed, which is why NYC's skyline is covered in wooden water tanks (except for the newer buildings, which often have internal metal ones). [1]: https://untappedcities.com/2021/01/22/how-does-water-tower-work/

Similarly, NY’s MTA and their fake brownstone https://untappedcities.com/2013/04/05/fake-brownstone-brooklyn-secret-…

This is a good recent article that has much more history of oysters in NYC, the causes of their demise as well as recent restoration efforts(including the Billion Oyster Project.) https://untappedcities.com/2021/02/03/history-new-york-city-oysters/

This article seems like a political hitjob but, as the kind of nerd who actually thinks about street furniture, I was thinking it might be about one of those cool things where the small, visible interface leads to an underground vault: https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers Probably hard to retrofit in the middle of cities though. Or even pneumatic trash tubes, like in NY: https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuris… Which would seem more appropriate for HN discussion.