About This Tool

Washington Street Advocacy Group

WSAG is a civic transparency initiative focused on making the NYC Public Design Commission's review process accessible, searchable, and accountable. We believe the public has a right to easily understand what's being built in their neighborhoods and how design review decisions are made.

What Is the Public Design Commission?

The NYC Public Design Commission (PDC) reviews permanent works of architecture, landscape architecture, and art proposed on city-owned property. This includes parks, libraries, schools, firehouses, streetscapes, and public art. Projects go through up to three review stages:

1. Conceptual — early design direction and massing
2. Preliminary — refined design with materials and details
3. Final — construction-ready design for approval

The Commission meets monthly (usually on a Monday) and publishes agendas approximately one week before each meeting.

How This Tracker Works

This tool automatically collects data from multiple public sources:

• NYC Open Data APIs — Monthly Design Review and Annual Report datasets via Socrata
• PDC Website — Agenda PDFs, scraped and parsed for item-level detail
• YouTube — Meeting recordings from the NYC Design Commission channel, with auto-generated transcripts
• Announcements — News from the PDC website, matched to project records

Data is synchronized weekly and cross-referenced to build a complete picture of each project's journey through the review pipeline.

Data Accuracy

While we strive for accuracy, this is an automated tool that parses public data. Discrepancies between data sources are expected and documented. For official information, always refer to the PDC website.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or suggestions? Reach us at info@washingtonstreet.group.