Getting around

A Ward opens on its neighborhood. You can leave it there and watch, or start exploring.

The Almanac, Bulletin and Society Pages are different ways into what’s happening around you. You can also go straight through the neighborhood itself: buildings are clickable, and moving the map takes you from the opening view into a map you can explore.

You don’t need an account or a handle to do any of it.

The opening view

Every Ward has a landmark of its own at the center of its opening view. The camera moves around it while the neighborhood keeps time around you. Buildings remain clickable while the camera is moving.

Drag the neighborhood to take control of the view. That brings you into Browse, where the Ward behaves more like a map.

Browse

Drag to move around, and scroll or pinch to get closer. Click a building to open its Place Card.

Double-click a street to go there at street level.

Street level

At street level, you can look around from where you landed. Choose another point on the map to move somewhere else.

Walking from place to place at street level is not available yet.

The Almanac

The Almanac keeps time with the neighborhood. It shows the time in 12 or 24 hours, temperature in Fahrenheit or Celsius, the phase of the moon, today’s sunrise and sunset, where today falls in the year, and how long the day is.

Its clock also controls the Ward. Move through seven stops—dawn, sunrise, noon, golden hour, sunset, dusk and night—and the neighborhood changes with it. Light moves, the sky changes, and the weather updates for the hour you choose.

Return the clock to now and the Ward returns to the present.

The Almanac is flippable, and there is more on the back. The weather and the day’s clock on the front, the sun, the moon and where you are in the year on the back.

The sky

The sun, moon and stars are in their real positions for the hour. Move the clock in the Almanac and the whole neighborhood moves with it.

At street level, look up. The constellations are drawn in overhead in gold, the way they are on the ceiling at Grand Central, and each star carries its own real color.

Bulletin

Bulletin is where the neighborhood talks. Announcements, questions, things for sale, requests and other posts live here.

Anyone can read along. Townies can post and reply, and can also rate and review places throughout the Ward.

Society Pages

Society Pages is the Ward’s directory of places. Browse by kind or search for somewhere by name; choosing a place takes you there on the map and opens its Place Card.

You can get to the same information directly from the neighborhood. Click a building and its card opens.

Place Cards

Every building has a Place Card, whether anyone looks after it in the Ward or not. A card begins with what is known about the place itself; claimed places can add the things that change—hours, photos, menus, events, announcements and other information.

The Ticker

The Ticker is Society Pages happening live. What a Place is serving, what is on there tonight, what its Guardian has just put up — running across the neighborhood so you come upon it without going to look.

Everything in the Ticker belongs to a Place. Choose one and that Place’s card opens.

Neon

Open businesses light up on the map, with different colors for different kinds of places. At a glance, you can see what’s open and what kind of place it is.

Neon follows each place’s posted hours.

Putting the panel away

Tap the small rule above the panel to collapse it to the bar and give the neighborhood more room. Tap it again to bring the panel back.

The search drawer works the same way.