Our Fair City: Building a More Equitable New York

The past eight months have provided astonishing lessons in urban transformation. We’ve come to appreciate how fragile even a great city is and how sturdy it can be. When the virus swept through, New Yorkers beat it back, turning one of the most dangerous spots in the nation into one of the safest—temporarily, at least. The combination of failure, epiphany, improvisation, and determination gives us a once-in-a-lifetime shot at molding the next phase of the city’s evolution. We are approaching a critical moment of possibility (indeed, necessity) for city officials, planners, developers, and community leaders to come together to respond to current conditions, but if New York simply returns to the city it was in 2019, with all its manic wealth and grinding inequities, it will have failed the future.  The post-Covid recovery, and the election of an almost completely new city government in November 2021, has the power to alter nearly all aspects of the city, including home, work, and everything “in between.”  

Join Justin Davidson of New York magazine and Curbed as he talks to some of the city’s most creative and engaged thought-leaders, experts, and practitioners about how the need for a fairer city can shape our built environment, from the skyline to the street.

Additional events to be announced, check back for updates! 

About the Moderator:
Justin Davidson has been the classical music and architecture critic at New York magazine since 2007. He is now the editor of Cityscape as a part of Curbed/New York magazine.  He won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2002 and an American Society of Newspaper Editors criticism (ASNE) award. He has contributed to The New Yorker, W., Travel and Leisure, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, and Salon, and has appeared on WNYC and NPR. He is the author of Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York (Penguin Random House, 2017). Read his recent article about the future of New York City here. 

Our Partners

Co-presented with Curbed. 

SESSION 1: HOME Wednesday, November 18, 7pm ET Platform: Zoom New York needs a new era of social housing that is sustainable, durable, and designed to be loved.  Justin Davidson talks to architect Victor Body-Lawson, real estate developer and author Jonathan Rose, and social housing advocate and expert Barika X. Williams about how to get it done. Donation suggested.  Register.

SESSION II: WORK Wednesday, December 9, 7pm ET Platform: Zoom How can a new generation of offices, factories, and urban farms transform the concept of a business district?  Justin Davidson invites David Ehrenberg, CEO and President of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, community leader Esmeralda Herrera(Communitas America), and architect Claire Weisz (WXY Architecture and Design) to discuss. Donation suggested.  Register.