Spherical Harmonics

A city street as a clay model printed in newspaper halftone dots, rebuilt from left to right: in grey, four lanes of stalled traffic and parked cars, thinning toward the middle; then crews, cones and a green bike lane being laid; then, in colour, a protected bike lane with cyclists, street trees, bike racks, café tables on a widened sidewalk, a raised crosswalk, and a bus at its shelter in a red bus lane. The same street at night, printed in light halftone dots on dark paper: on the grey left, white-lit windows and the white head and tail lights of stalled traffic, thinning toward the middle; on the coloured right, warm-lit windows and cafés, street trees, a protected bike lane, and a lit bus at its shelter in a red bus lane.

Funders & affiliations

Contents
§1

Mission Streets, redesigned by the people who use them

Communities know their streets need change but have no way to independently create the technical maps that city planners need to move projects forward.

We're developing a free and open-source platform where community members can propose and vote on bike lane, sidewalk, roadway, parking, and greenway improvements following NYC Street Design Manual guidelines.

Each proposal generates downloadable design drawings and maps from community-driven input that anyone can submit to DOT, share with community boards, or use for local organizing.

§2

Demo City Edit: local knowledge, drawn to scale

City Edit is our interactive demo for community-driven street redesign. It lets users draw proposed infrastructure changes directly onto a map, placing bike lanes, sidewalks, greenways, and other streetscape elements on real city streets. Community members can sketch out the changes they want to see in their neighborhoods, vote on proposals from others, and generate shareable design maps that follow established urban planning guidelines. The tool turns local knowledge about where people actually walk, bike, and need safer infrastructure into the kind of technical visual proposals that city agencies can act on.

Open City Edit
§3

Newsletter Dispatches from the street

We write about what we're building, what we're learning from neighbors, and what happens when you hand people the tools to redraw their own block. Read it on Substack.

Latest post · October 13, 2026

An Abandoned Highway Off-ramp in New York?

What Should Exit 12N Become?

All posts · Subscribe

§4

People Who we are

Eric Bolton

Software Engineering

Software engineer specializing in data visualization, collaborative platforms, and community consensus tools.

Brook Constantz

Urban Ecology

Urban ecologist with a background in forest restoration, geographic information systems, and green infrastructure.

Contact us: brook@sphericalharmonics.org · eric@sphericalharmonics.org

§5

Acknowledgements Funding and affiliations

This project is funded by a Magic Grant from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, a joint initiative of Stanford Engineering and Columbia Journalism School.

  • Funded byBrown Institute for Media Innovation — Magic Grant, for the Desire Path Mapper.
  • Coalition memberForest for All NYC — the coalition working to protect and grow New York City’s urban forest.
  • Session selectedCityCamp NYC 2026, Hunter College — our session was voted for by attendees and selected for the unconference.