Transit lines are life blood

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Transit Lines are Life Blood
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Albany

Arts
Original plans four arts institution to occupy the world trade center site. Now only one remains -- and it faces an uncertain future.

Civil Rights
Mayor Michael Bloomberg's effort to ignore the results of two referenda on term limits and run again raises a number of civil rights issues, but advocacy groups remain divided on the controversy.

Community Development
A Harlem activist group seeks to use the mayor's sustainability plan to improve health and the environment in northern Manhattan

Crime
A new administration in Washington could mean new top federal prosecutors in New York City.

Demographics
With fewer and fewer rent regulated apartments in the city, this year's state election could stop the erosion of rent stabilization in New York City?

Economy
Things look grim now -- and will probably get worse -- but the city still faces a fairly bright future, if government makes the right decisions.

Education
Another term for Mayor Bloomberg would let him run city schools for four more years-- if the legislature extends mayoral control. Look for a tough fight with warring statistics, rival reports and lots of spin.

Environment
A recent speech by President-elect Obama heralded a major shift in efforts to combat global warming. Rich Kassel looks at some specifics and what they mean for New York.

Finance
Balancing the city's budget promises to get far more difficult in the next couple of years. As New York's fiscal condition worsens, what approach will the mayor take?

Health
With most Americans worried about health insurance, McCain and Obama suggest very different cures. What would the plans mean for New Yorkers?

Housing
Housing is so expensive in New York partly because it costs so much to build here. Rosemary Scanlon and Hope Cohen suggest what state and local government can do about it.

Immigrants
Workers in service industries and construction stand to face tough times as the economy spirals down.

Land Use
Barack Obama has an urban policy that extends beyond cities to entire metropolitan regions, while his opponent, John McCain, has largely ignored the issue.

Law
Can New York City teachers wear their McCain or Obama buttons in the classroom? The judge's ruling was the latest in a string of decisions involving political speech in schools.

Parks
A new proposal for the Upper West Side calls for more greenery, bike friendly streets, places to sit and slower traffic. But will residents agree to give up their parking spaces?

Searchlight

For David De Porte, the Department for the Aging's intergenerational program doesn't just provide him with companionship. It gives him a set of eyes.

De Porte, a blind lifelong resident of the West Village, meets with teenage volunteers who help him shop for groceries, fill out paperwork and check prescriptions at the drug store.

Social Services
The administration has a new way of calculating who is poor in New York. What effect will that have on the millions of New Yorkers struggling to make ends meet?

Tech
As Verizon moves in to the New York cable television market, Time Warner and Cablevision battle to preserve their turf. What does it mean for customers?

Transportation
In the first of our series on key urban issues in this year's election campaign, Graham T. Beck looks at what an Obama or a McCain administration might do to fix the nation's ailing highways and over-crowded buses and trains.

Special 9/11 Topic Pages:

9/11/01-/02: Our topic page columnists analyze a year of changes in New York City, in everything from arts to civil rights to technology to the environment.

Arts
Martha Hostetter explains how the arts institutions suffered economically, even while artists helped build community.

Civil Rights
Andy Humm assesses the state of civil liberties since 9/11. Also: the 12 vacant seats on the human rights commission; the new local law about same-sex marriages.

Crime/Justice
Julia Vitullo-Martin attempts to answer the question: Are New Yorkers right to feel as safe in the city as anywhere else in the country?

Demographics
Andrew Beveridge looks at the numbers to present a portrait of those who died at 10048, the zip code that was the World Trade Centerƒs alone.

Environment
Eric Goldstein looks at "the World Trade Center cough" and the other environmental health impacts of the World Trade Center attacks.

Finance
Glenn Pasanen explains what he sees as two major results of 9/11: compounding the "long-ignored structural budget deficit," and exposing the "insider decision-making" in the budget process. It is a process, he says, that has resulted in a reduction of funding for education at a time when education is supposed to be a priority.

Health
Maia Szalavitz reports on how New Yorkers have been coping in the year since 9/11, and offers tips from mental health counselors on how to handle the anniversary.

Housing
Some rents are lower, Rebecca Webber points out, but otherwise the story of housing in the past year is one of more homelessness, fewer vacancies, canceled plans for affordable housing, and unknown consequences in the future.

Immigrants
A special section on the anniversary of Sept 11, which affected immigrants in special ways.

Land Use
Laura Wolf-Powers details the land use rebuilding issues that New Yorkers should be watching to figure out where we are going to go from here -- the swap, the lease, the governor, the Olympics, etc.

Parks
"This September 11, people will again find their way to the parks," as they did a year ago, Anne Schwartz says. But if the parks are more important than ever to New Yorkers, one result of 9/11 is a further reduction in their funding.

Social Services
In the year since the terrorist attack, 70 percent of Americans are said to have offered some kind of aid -- and that includes donations of more than $2.2 billion so far. But, as Linda Ostreicher relates, this outpouring of charity is now accompanied by sharp disagreements over what to do with it, stirring up almost as much passion as the disaster itself.

Tech
Laura Forlano reveals the many important lessons that the rebuilding and recovery effort has taught us about the functioning of technological systems during times of crisis.

Voting
Most people have probably forgotten that September 11, 2001, started out as a day when New York City held primary elections. This year's primary election is not just a calendar year away from the attacks, but it comes at the end of a year when the political fortunes of many candidates have been deeply affected by the implications of the tragedy. The attacks were the background of political life in New York starting with last year's mayoral race and continuing through this year's race for governor.

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