nyc.world is a pixel-art map of New York City where anyone can claim a piece of the five boroughs and leave their mark on it. Zoom into your block, your park, the corner where you had your first date — pick a spot and put something there: a message, an emoji, an image you upload, or pixel art you draw straight onto the roof of a building.
It works like r/place crossed with a city map: every claim is public, anyone can outbid you for a dollar more, and nothing is permanent. Part guestbook, part billboard, part turf war.
Neighborhood pride and inside jokes. A wedding date over the bar where two people met. Tiny startup logos on their block. r/place-style pixel murals across a rooftop. Borough beef. A pigeon on the Empire State Building. Or just "hello, new york" somewhere quiet in Queens.
Because everyone has a corner of it. Eight and a half million people, five boroughs, a couple hundred neighborhoods, and every one of them comes with an opinion. New York is the one city where "I was here" already means something — nyc.world just gives you a block to say it on, at a size where a single building is a canvas.
It's also the most detailed pixel city we know how to build: the map is rendered from NOAA shorelines and NYC Open Data — borough boundaries, neighborhood tabulation areas, parks, 1.08 million building footprints, roadbeds, sidewalks, park trails and street trees — rasterized live into chunky pixels. No Google Maps, no photo tiles, just the city redrawn a pixel at a time, getting sharper the closer you zoom.
Every view has a shareable URL, and every neighborhood, borough and major park has its own page with a pixel snapshot and what's claimed there — start at the neighborhood index, or jump straight in — the full list is on the sitemap:
A pixel-art map of New York City where anyone can claim a piece of the five boroughs and leave something on it — a message, an emoji, an uploaded image, or pixel art drawn right onto the map. Think r/place, but the canvas is a real, zoomable pixel NYC.
About $1 per block (8,192 tiles, roughly one Manhattan block) with a $5 minimum per claim. Bigger areas cost more; drawings only pay for the tiles you paint. Payment is by card through Stripe Checkout.
Yes. Anyone can take over a claim by paying its last price plus one dollar (or the base price for the area, whichever is higher). Nothing is permanent, and that's the point. Being outbid doesn't entitle you to a refund.
No. You pay through Stripe, and edit access to your claims is saved in your browser. Switched devices or cleared your browser? Use recover my claims on the map, enter the email you paid with, and we send a magic link that restores edit access to everything it owns.
Yes, and it's free. Change the text, image, colors or drawing, or remove the claim entirely, without paying again — as long as it keeps the same spot.
No and no. A claim is a license to display your content on our stylized map — not real estate, not a token, not an NFT. Fun, not finance.
No — all sales are final, including if you're outbid, change your mind, or have content removed for breaking the rules. See the terms.
Keep it legal and safe for a public, all-ages map: no hate, harassment, sexual or shock content, scams, malware, or anything that infringes someone's copyright or trademark. Violations are removed without refund. Full rules in the terms.
Real geographic data — NOAA shorelines and NYC Open Data boroughs, neighborhoods, parks, buildings, roads, sidewalks and trees — rasterized live into pixels. No Google Maps, just a hand-built pixel New York.
Report a claim: click any claim on the map and use the 🚩 report this content link under it, picking a reason (spam, offensive, copyright, other). Reports go straight to us.
Copyright / DMCA: email hello@mail.nyc.world with the details listed in section 8 of the terms.
Everything else: hello@mail.nyc.world. nyc.world is made in the USA by Digital Mundo LLC.