3 Documentaries Revealing the Hidden Systems of NYC
Field Notes from NYC Open Data Weeks first "Data Docs"
In a city with 8 million people and a mind-numbing number of overlapping systems, it is impossible to follow the threads of your own neighborhood, let alone take in the tapestry that is the city as a whole. Many threads are covered in articles, podcasts, news segments, or dusty reports. The lucky few are narrativized in well-written books that make their way into the civic consciousness. Most threads, however, live only in the memories of those involved in their creation.
Yesterday, March 22nd, I attended the first “Data Docs” series held as a part of NYC Open Data Week. After 7 hours of documentaries and Q&As, I walked away confident in the role that documentaries play in exploring the tapestry that is our city.
Of the three films I watched, each explored a different thread, and in doing so highlighted something about the city itself. They show the depth of human experience that lies beyond simple analytical policy discussions.
Changing Lanes
Dir. Ben Wolf, 2025, 75 min
This documentary followed the contentious story Mcguiness Boulevard street redesign, a community led movement to have a “road diet” on a notoriously dangerous road in Greenpoint. There was high quality footage from extremely heated community meetings that would surprise the unitiatiated with their intensity. This documentary was a love letter to and time capsule of 2020s NYC urbanism.
It tackled topics such as the physical environment, urbanism, biking, and theories of social change through the built environment. There were many times when things said by David Byrnes (who I was surprised to learn is such an avid urban biker), Janette Sadik-Khan and others could have been quoted directly from essays I am currently working on.
Synthesis: Infrastructure, because it is always embedded with values, reflects competing beliefs about what a city should be. This means ideologically charged political warfare can ensue over what might seem like a small physical object.
Through The Night
Dir. Loira Limbal, 2021, 76 mins
www.throughthenightdocumentary.com/
This documentary welcomed us into the world of home-based childcare provider Deloris “NuNu” Hogan and her business “Dee’s Tots Daycare” in New Rochelle. It heartwarmingly and heartbreakingly highlighted the hard, and often invisible, work and dedication that working mothers put into their communities, as well as the difficulty of working mothers to get by.
In the current New York discourse, this shows an extremely successful home-based child care business at a time when New York State has to figure out what Universal Child Care will look like. This beautiful documentary shows us the potential of home-based child care to create not just a community but a home for children while their parents work.
Synthesis: Essential social systems often rely on compassionate human labor that we overlook when we zoom out. Despite being deeply necessary and often socially valued, it is under-supported structurally.
Emergent City
Jay Arthur Sterrenberg, Kelly Anderson, 2024, 95 mins
For others passionate about NYC land use systems, this was a uniquely fleshed out look at the failed rezoning of Industry City in Sunset Park.
As someone who reads, goes to events, and listens to podcasts to understand the full sides of an issue, this documentary provided something I did not realize I could get: a multi-lens, multi-stakeholder inside look at the motivations, complications, and conflicts of a city rezoning. If anything, it could have been longer and encompassed more sides of the issue, implications, and situated itself in the larger context of NYC land use, however that is not to be expected from a 90 minute documentary.
Full of insider conversations I am surprised we have the chance to hear, this documentary remained mostly impartial and did not attempt to give a clean black and white answer. We are able to sympathize with all the stakeholders and dfiferent moments, and most importantly gain context and experience that we can bring to other conversations in the future. This documentary immortalized a specific attempted rezoning as a case study of how local politics works to be studied by future generations. It was also beautiful visually.
Synthesis: When engaging the diverse stakeholders involved in a single geographical place, understandable conflict ensues as structural, career, and ideological incentives are pitted against one another.
Conclusion
All three films show that the fabric that makes up our city is woven by human experience, despite being organized by overlapping institutions and structures. This human tapestry can be easy to miss if we don’t look closely. Documentaries offer a unique way to follow these threads more closely and flesh out a mental model of how they are stitched together.
I will definitely attend events like this in the future. Many thanks to those who hosted it as well as the documentarians.