Public art in pedestrian areas of NYC

I was fascinated to learn that the NYC Department of Transportation Art (“NYC DOT Art”) partners with community-based, nonprofit organizations and professional artists to present temporary public artwork on eligible NYC DOT infrastructure throughout the city. A multitude of locations across all five boroughs serve as canvases and foundations for temporary murals, projections, and sculptures. Having always been very curious about what is behind the city’s decision to feature these works, I wanted to explore this topic to uncover the nature of the art initiatives, which site types were most commonly used, the duration of these installations, and which types of project types were more commonly found within each borough.

The Dataset:

I pulled the dataset from Open Data NYC entitled “Temporary Art Data,” where NYC DOT Art “collaborates with community-based organizations to commission artists to design and install temporary art on NYC DOT property”. Running from 2008 through current month of May 2024, there are 484 records chronicling the following variables

Artwork Variables:

• Program/Initiative
• Title
• Artist Name(s)
• Year of Work
• Project Type
• Partner

Geographic Variables:

• Site Location
• Site Type
• Borough

Time Variables:

• Date of installation – month/day/year
• Date of removal of temporary art – month/day/year

What Types of Art Projects Are you More Likely to See?

Through the 7 years of documenting these DOT Temporary Art projects, there have been 483 projects displayed throughout pedestrian areas in the city of New York. Which types of projects were most popular? Looking at the top 10 project types, by far, sculptures dominated at a rate of 30%, but with murals not too far behind at 26%. Due to the temporary nature of these installations, it’s not surprising that sculptures, which are transportable, would be more prominent and allow for easier removals. But I was puzzled by the comparable percentage for murals, which hinted at pieces of a more indelible, not easily removable nature.

Types of Works by Boroughs

Seeing that the top 3 types of works featured were sculptures, murals, and asphalt murals, I wondered about the proportion of how these top artwork types were distributed throughout the boroughs. Were sculptures the clear frontrunner across every borough? What were some anomalies in work types that set a borough apart from the others?
Sculptured works took the prize in Manhattan, representing nearly half of all pieces in that borough. It was in Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx, however, that murals dominated, ranging from 31 to as much as 45%. What accounts for this difference between these four boroughs? I propose that in terms of open space and pedestrian area, Manhattan had much more plaza space, where boroughs like Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx took advantage of sites like bridges, fences, barriers, and asphalt. These sites were more accommodating to larger works like murals.
What really stuck out for me was the outlier that was “Projections” – what was it about Brooklyn that made it particularly welcoming to this otherwise uncommon (if not completely absent in 40% of the boroughs) medium? From what I know about Brooklyn, there are many open spaces, along with no less than three huge bridges that, as the data showed, were particularly inviting to these large temporary installations.

Duration of Artworks

As per the guidelines of the Temporary Art Program, what makes these works temporary is that are only permitted in fully pedestrianized spaces for up to 11 months. Which part of the city, then, got to benefit from longer average durations of these works? And which borough had the most turnaround, and therefore shorter average duration of the pieces?
Bronx had the honor of more long-term installations, with its 56 total works staying on display for an average of 300 days. Neighbors got to appreciate these pieces as they stayed for about 10 months in the borough’s streets, sidewalks & plazas. Manhattan, on the other hand, buzzing with excitement as always, had 204 works that had to compete for eyeballs, which necessitated much quicker removals and average lasting power of only 187 days.

When are these installations are happening through the year?

Another thing I learned from the DOT Temporary Art Program: not all types of art projects are good year-round. Depending upon the weather, you might see overall dips on which months were heaviest periods for installations and showings. June & October were notable peaks for all types of works, and unsurprisingly most action declined and practically halted in the colder Autumn and Winter months. Due to its popularity and high quantity in all boroughs (especially Manhattan) sculptures were the sole types of work that continued to be installed throughout the entire year.

I See Murals. Lots of Gorgeous Murals.

I live in Brooklyn, so naturally I’m curious about what it is about our borough that lends itself better to murals and projections. It turns out, there’s something about my home borough that has an edge, and it’s the amounts of bridge and wall space. Compared to Manhattan, the outer boroughs have much less tall buildings that dominate the sightline for pedestrians, with more space that’s more inviting to larger visual displays that beg for more of your sightline. Brooklyn’s waterfront area attracts many pedestrians all year round, but there’s one neighborhood in particular that really takes the cake…

Want to Really Soak It In?

Besides being a destination for millions of tourists every year who cross the Brooklyn Bridge by foot, the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO boasts a high concentration of artworks that’s supported by the most prominent partner, DUMBO BID. Because of its plentiful wall space that’s part of two bridges and a highway, there are murals and projections aplenty. With optimal walking space that’s uninhibited by cars, the neighborhood’s old-style authentic brick laid streets are welcoming to pedestrians who want space to view sculptures.

You Can’t Beat DUMBO by Day

A current sampling (circa May 2025) of the active murals & sculptures that make DUMBO the ultimate neighborhood in NYC to take in some breathtaking street art:

I live in a very walkable city that has plenty of access to nearby public transportation. I am a cyclist who enjoys riding. I am also a car owner who takes advantage of my car to get from place to place. Analyzing the destinations, distances, and times of day when I’ve traveled over a 1-week period, which methods of travel do I tend to use most? And which factors guide my decisions when choosing?

My dataset

This exploration of the quantified self was an exercise in awareness and self-reflection. Creating the dataset to document my day-to-day travels required attention, memory, and focus. The notation of when I left my starting point, how far I traveled and for how long, and then when I arrived at my destination commanded as much accuracy as was possible in the moment, when this was an option. Depending upon my state of mind and circumstances (as well as ability to stay on task), there were many trips if not whole days where I resorted to recording the best estimates I could provide, many hours afterwards. I relied upon a system of unstructured data, for example, to safely and accurately track my car trips by using my phone to take snapshots of the odometer at times of departure and arrival, using subtraction in order to calculate duration and distance for that trip. After my walks, I referred to Google Maps to determine the distance between two points. Distances for subway rides proved the most elusive, since there was no resource that could help me calculate the actual distance of the unique path of these underground trains, which is not documented by something like Google. Therefore, I relied upon a 0.53 mile rule-of-thumb estimated average distance between NYC subway stations, and multiplied this by the number of stations in the entire trip. I defined the most useful variables that would help me determine the method and frequency of my travels, each a uniquely numbered “trip”. The start time noted my departure of a location, the end time the arrival; each side of the trip was given a location name. This allowed me to calculate the duration of the trip, as well as time of day. The most important variable, transportation method, would be the key to the key finding of this project: which was the most relied upon way of getting from place to place during this week?

How did I generally get around?

It was important to analyze the number of trips per day, as well as where I found myself going most. As a parent of two school-age children, a fair part of my day is dedicated to dropping off and pickup up at school. Other portions of the day are occupied by errands such as food shopping and appointments. Then there were leisure activities – going to restaurants, meeting friends. NYC is a huge city, and my home borough of Brooklyn the most populated. One of the strategies that New Yorkers take for granted is knowing the best, and most importantly, quickest way to get somewhere. Public transportation offers subway, bus, train, even boat. Depending upon the distance needed to travel, walking is always an option for those who are able. And the added privilege and luxury of car ownership adds yet further freedom. With all of these available to me, I took stock of how my week was broken down by methods of transportation. I was not surprised to learn very early on that walking was by far the most commonly used method.

Basic Trip Breakdown

For this project, I diligently tracked every single one of my travels for an entire 7-day survey period. Seeing as how I don’t have a subway station right outside my stoop, any occasion that warranted a train ride, this meant a minimum of two walks of 0.6 miles (there and back) was a guarantee for each day. (The same goes for reaching the destination by train. Most likely there was still an additional walking trip before getting to where I needed to go.) Depending upon where I needed to go, the bike, subway, or car was used more frequently. Day by day, I broke out how many of each method of transportation was chosen by # of trips.

Okay, how far was I going?

Walking is great, provided that a number of criteria made it a reasonable option. What was the weather like at the time? Was it light or dark out? Who was I travelling with? And most importantly, how far away was my destination? If I knew I had a destination that was 15 miles away, the likelihood of choosing to walk would decrease in proportion to the distance of the destination. On the other hand, living in Brooklyn, it’s practically out of the question to drive if your destination happens to be in the traffic-laden, toll-subject area of Manhattan. The chart below shows how my furthest trips favored the subway method whenever a range of 5-15 miles was called for. Automobile usage accounted for most trips between 1.4 and 3.9 miles. For the remainder, walking and cycling would come into play for distances of typically 1 mile or less.

What did my days look like?

It would be informative to count how many trips I was taking each day, what kind of trips, and how long these trips were taking. Broken down into days of the week, I could see my busiest days were at the end of the week, namely Thursday & Friday, where I not only took the most trips, but also took the longest lasting trips. (I was out and about quite a bit more.) The weekend days were quieter, with less trips, but also relatively less walking by comparison. Filtering out the transportation type below sheds light into which days I drove, walked, and cycled most. By isolating the day, the story unfolds for which transportation methods were least used, and for how long.

Where Was I Going?

All this running around – of what significance were these trips? To better judge my chosen transportation method, I looked at my day-by-day destinations, what I chose, and how many trips were made to these places.

Conclusion

I’d like to think I live a life of relative calm and purpose. I also like to think that I have more free time than I really do. Reflecting on this data made me conscious of where I journey to most, and which ways I choose to get there. Initially, this project was intended to survey only the automobile trips I was taking, in the hopes of assessing whether or not I really needed to drive to the locations that were, truthfully, very geographically close to my home. One of the reasons I appreciate living in this busy crowded city is that it is very easy to get around without having to drive. Most of the trips I took could’ve been done by car, but I was pleased to affirm that my world, however small it may be, is highly walkable and therefore allows me to curb the carbon footprint as much as possible. (Except for when my kids don’t feel like walking to school, or it’s not an alternate side parking day, or when it’s raining, or I just don’t feel like it…)

A brief history of dog waste 311 complaints logged for Brooklyn

To pedestrians, the sidewalks of NYC have always been potential minefields of trash, debris, mystery puddles, and other unwanted unsightly obstacles that can be categorized as “Dirty Conditions”. Even the most vigilant pedestrian is subject to encountering perhaps the most menacing of these items: DOG WASTE. To help keep NYC community members more on their toes as they navigate their neighborhoods, public data is available to help identify the times of year when NYC’s most impacted borough, Brooklyn, suffered the most complaints. We can then track whether there was a pattern that could inform citizens of when Brooklynites are most often reporting this condition on their streets through the filing of complaints through the city’s NYC 311 portal.

What can we look at?

Using the 311 Service Requests from 2010 to Present dataset found at NYC Open Data, I was able to filter through almost 40 million records that dated back to 2010. I chose to focus on the Complaint Type “Dirty Conditions“, under which the Complaint Descriptor “dog waste” falls. Data for dog waste complaints dates only as far back mid-September of 2021. When querying the dataset for Dirty Conditions, I isolated the period that only included complete months, resulting in a window of October 2021 through the last current full month of February 2025. In order to compare the number of complaints specific to dog waste with other common descriptors, I included only those that were labeled in the data as specific issues. This meant excluding the much more generic and more popular “Trash” descriptor, for which there was a disproportionate amount of complaints, as these complaints didn’t productively contribute to the analysis of specific dirty conditions that were being submitted by the public.

What’s dirty in Brooklyn?

Of Brooklyn’s five comparable specific (i.e. not generically labeled “Trash”) 311 Dirty Conditions complaint descriptors, dog waste is the top complaint, beating out broken glass, dirt/gravel, syringes and car debris. Additionally, dog waste showed a much stronger upward trend, with numbers growing year over year much more sharply than the other types of specific complaints.

What’s Happening Across the Year?

We can see seasonality playing a part in the number of all combined Dirty Conditions 311 complaints, likely accounting for the fluctuation in the amount of time New Yorkers are spending outside and how that aligns with warmer, more pleasant weather. Below we see noticeable peaks of # of complaints filed, typically in the summer months of July through September year over year. While not necessarily a peak month during the year, February registers on the high end of the spectrum as far as # of complaints.

Dog Waste Complaints Follow A Unique Seasonality

The data from 2021-2025 shows a different story with regard to when dog waste complaints were most common, where year over year, the month of February is clearly the peak. In addition, this February peak is trending upward each year. This results in an average of about 94 complaints for each of the four Februarys that were recorded during this timespan.

Why February?

The observer can begin to speculate: What is it about the month of February that continuously accounted for such a significant portion of the dog waste complaints? Each year, complaints tapered from the summer peaks through the end of autumn, returning upward after December. With the exception of 2023, every February was accompanied by a steep peak, then immediate drop month over month. Was there a more widespread issue of uncleaned dog waste in Brooklyn’s streets in February? Or did the month of February simply attract more complaints from Brooklyn’s citizens? Let’s see if this is unique to the troubled borough of Brooklyn…

When combining the 311 complaints received city-wide, February continues to stand out as the main offending month. But this begs a deeper exploration into what it is about this particular month that serves as the peak of complaints…

A few possible explanations can be offered:
February is typically the coldest month of the year, resulting in less foot traffic than other months. However, dog owners still need to go out to walk their dogs. For those non-dog owners who are out on the streets, are they seeing an increase in uncleaned dog waste due to the crummy cold weather? It’s possible that dog-owners are in more of a rush to get back inside, and less effort is being paid to cleaning up after their dogs during this time.
Perhaps citizens who are outside in the month of February are particularly resentful of February’s cold conditions, and therefore more inclined to lodge a formal complaint with 311.
Another consideration is the nature of the violation: uncleaned dog waste is tied to personal accountability, and a dirty condition that can (or should) be controlled. This may have more to do with why New Yorkers lodge more of these 311 complaints than any of the other four descriptors. Does the foul weather temper impact their tolerability more so in February?
It’s important to consider the fact that, above all, these complaints are voluntary and the data around this issue is dependent upon, and reflective of the type of New Yorker who would formally lodge a complaint against uncleaned dog waste. It’s possible that this type of person is biased towards this violation, and even inclined to file repeated complaints over time. Apparently, they all come out in February…

Conclusion

The leaders at NYC’s 311 division can take these findings into consideration as they use this data in conjunction with additional stats when tracking the number of dog waste complaints (such as number of dog owners in specific neighborhoods) when comparing the volume of dog waste complaints over time. If dog owner accountability is part of the solution to manage such complaints, city law enforcement can heed these findings and target the specific month of February when looking for violators, and start issuing summonses if they want to make an impact on cleaning up the streets of Brooklyn and the rest of NYC.

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