All kinds of information about every neighborhood in the city is now just a click away at a new city website that lists everying from construction and traffic alerts to polling places, greenmarkets, and restaurant health grades.
From sidewalk and street construction to reports of potholes, leaking fire hydrants and rats, you no longer have to see the problems, or hear them, to know about them in your neighborhood.
Just go to a new website, neighborhoods.nyc. It's one-stop shopping for information about issues like traffic congestion, quality-of-life problems, unsanitary restaurants and MTA service changes in each of the city's more than 400 neighborhoods.
"Our goal here was really bring everything that was specific to neighborhoods, bring it into one place, make it easy to use," said Jeff Merritt, director of innovation with the city of New York.
The city spent $20,000 and partnered with the startup Vizalytics, which developed the site.
Some New Yorkers might have little use for the information, like reports of mice and graffiti sightings, but people with whom NY1 spoke to seem to like the new site.
"There's so many apps out there now. If one that's just kind of just for me and my neighborhood, it would be definitely useful," said one New Yorker.
"I think it's wonderful," said another. "However, I wish it had something positive to say as well. For example, also on this street corner, not shown there, is my church. Be nice if my church was listed there."
That's where neighborhood organizations come in. Nonprofits can apply to the city to take control of a particular neighborhood's .nyc to develop it as a way to showcase local businesses and become a forum for online engagement.
"You've got this platform of real-time data coming in that keeps the site up to date all the time, and then communities supplement that, adding additional information, really making it unique to their neighborhood," Merritt said.
This is the beta phase, which will last for three months and allow for community feedback and fine-tuning.
Even if no community groups step forward, the sites will continue to operate, with postings automatically generated from 311 calls and other city agencies.