I am struggling to find a topic for my intro GIS final project, any ideas for a good topic involving New York City data?
Perhaps take a look through their open data site to see if anything interests you?
To answer your question, consider this - What are the requirements of the final project? Is it a cartography display of existing data? Analysis to derive new data? Both? Something else?
The New York City Planning Department has some interesting topics and GIS data. Check out:
Chris Donohue, GISP