Last year’s typologies
Prompt · User
do you have the list of typologies we used last year?
Answer · Codex
Yes—we have both lists from 2025.
The public-building typology document lists 15 typologies:
- Childrens Services Facility
- Library Facility
- City Agency Office
- Cultural Facility
- Senior Services Facility
- Homeless Services Facility
- Corrections Services Facility
- Health Services Facility
- Parks Facility Building
- DSNY Operations Building
- EDC-Managed Facility Building
- Fire/EMS Facility
- Healthcare Facility
- Public Housing Facility
- Public Safety Facility
The infrastructure typology document, dated November 7, 2025, lists 16 typologies:
- Parkland (Infra)
- Vehicular Bridges
- Non-Vehicular Bridges
- Road Work Projects
- Road Work Milling and Paving
- Plaza/Streetscape Projects
- Sidewalk Work
- ADA Pedestrian Work
- Upstate Water Supply Projects
- Downstate Wastewater Treatment Projects
- Sewer System Distribution Projects
- Water System Distribution Projects
- CSO Consent Decree Projects
- Resiliency Projects
- Step Streets
- Retaining Wall Projects
These are the documented classification lists; I haven’t yet checked whether the final workbooks used every label exactly as written.
Recommendations for this year
Prompt · User
based on those narrative fields of each project, what would you recommend a new list of typologies for this year? and why?
Answer · Codex
I recommend classifying projects by the asset or facility being changed, with separate tags for the work performed. That would make this year’s typologies more consistent and more useful for comparing budgets and schedules.
I checked the existing narrative evidence and the MCP’s May 2026 snapshot, covering 3,103 distinct schedule PIDs. The list below is a proposed scheme, not a completed reclassification.
Public-building typologies
| Recommended typology | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Government and public-service offices | Administrative offices, service counters, headquarters |
| Courts and judicial facilities | Courthouses, courtrooms, judicial support facilities |
| Police facilities | Precincts, police training and operational facilities |
| Fire and EMS facilities | Firehouses, EMS stations, associated training facilities |
| Detention and correctional facilities | Adult and juvenile detention facilities |
| Healthcare and public-health facilities | Hospitals, clinics, public-health laboratories |
| Animal-care facilities | Animal shelters, adoption centers, veterinary facilities |
| Libraries | Branch and central library buildings |
| Cultural and visitor facilities | Museums, theaters, performance venues, visitor buildings |
| Recreation, community and social-service centers | Recreation centers, community centers, senior and youth-service centers |
| Public-restroom and park-support buildings | Comfort stations, bathhouses, park service buildings |
| Shelters and temporary accommodation | Homeless shelters and temporary residential facilities |
| Municipal operations, maintenance and logistics buildings | Garages, repair shops, warehouses, depots |
| Markets and industrial/commercial buildings | Public markets, manufacturing and commercial facility buildings |
Keep hospital/clinic, senior/youth, and similar distinctions as subtypes. Add residential housing and education buildings if those uses are included in this year’s study population.
Infrastructure typologies
| Recommended typology | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Parks, playgrounds and outdoor recreation | Playgrounds, ballfields, courts, outdoor pools and general park reconstruction |
| Urban forestry, habitat and natural-area restoration | Tree planting, forest restoration, ecological restoration |
| Streets and roadways | Street reconstruction, roadway rehabilitation, resurfacing |
| Pedestrian, bicycle and public-realm networks | Sidewalks, plazas, streetscapes, bicycle paths, greenways, step streets |
| Bridges and transportation tunnels | Vehicular, pedestrian, bicycle and mixed-use structures |
| Retaining walls and slope stabilization | Retaining structures, rock-face and slope stabilization |
| Drinking-water supply, storage, treatment and transmission | Reservoirs, dams, aqueducts, water tunnels, treatment facilities |
| Drinking-water distribution | Trunk and local water mains |
| Sewers and storm drainage | Sanitary, storm and combined sewers; drainage and associated pumping |
| Wastewater treatment and resource recovery | Treatment plants, process systems, sludge and biosolids facilities |
| Combined sewer overflow—CSO—facilities | CSO storage tunnels, tanks, conveyance and treatment |
| Green stormwater systems and Bluebelts | Bioswales, rain gardens, infiltration systems, stormwater wetlands |
| Flood and shoreline protection | Floodwalls, floodgates, protective shoreline works |
| Marine, ferry and waterfront structures | Ferry landings, terminals, piers, docks, waterfront access structures |
| Solid-waste, recycling and composting infrastructure | Transfer facilities, recycling and composting sites |
Why I would change last year’s list
- Separate agency ownership from facility function. “EDC-Managed Facility” can describe very different buildings. Arthur Avenue Market’s narrative supports a market-building typology. Likewise, a maintenance shop should remain an operations building even when its plan category says “Child Welfare Facilities.”
- Divide the broad Parks categories. A recreation center, restroom building, playground and forest-restoration project have different physical scope. The narratives support those distinctions.
- Make geography a separate attribute. Replace “Upstate Water Supply” and “Downstate Wastewater Treatment” with functional labels. PID 4756 explicitly describes equipment replacement at upstate wastewater-treatment plants.
- Separate green stormwater from CSO facilities. Newtown Creek’s CSO storage tunnel and Flushing Creek’s Bluebelt wetland represent different assets and construction approaches. Record a consent-decree requirement separately when documented.
- Determine bridge use from the narrative. PID 2058 describes pedestrian bridges over Belt Parkway. Last year’s rule assigning DOT-sponsored bridges to “Vehicular Bridges” would mislabel that project.
- Merge overlapping health labels. “Health Services Facility” and “Healthcare Facility” become one family, with hospital, clinic and laboratory subtypes.
I would also record work-type tags: new construction/expansion, rehabilitation, resurfacing, roof/façade, building systems, accessibility, demolition, and site work. Use additional purpose tags for resilience, energy efficiency and environmental compliance. For example, library HVAC replacement becomes Libraries → building systems → energy efficiency, when the text supports each tag.
For coding, give explicit project scope the most weight, examine all linked FMS descriptions, and use plan categories as supporting evidence. Preserve secondary asset tags for combined projects and an unresolved status when the text cannot establish a primary typology. The City also provides an agency project description field, which I recommend adding to this year’s review because it can explain scope that short names omit. NYC source and field definitions
This structure would let the class compare both what kinds of assets are being improved and what kinds of work are driving cost or schedule differences.