Diana Lind on Cities & Trust

Diana Lind is a writer, urban policy specialist, and founder of The New Urban Order newsletter. She is the author of Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing (2020) and has held leadership roles at Next City, the Penn Institute for Urban Research, the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania. A Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins’s SNF Agora Institute, Lind has written widely on housing, cities, and urban futures.

I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine. She helps people tell stories, tell their story. And so I borrowed this question from her because it's so big and beautiful. But because it's big and beautiful, I kind of over-explain it the way that I'm doing right now. And so I ask it. I want you to know that you're in total control, and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. It's the biggest lead-in ever. But the question is, where do you come from?

Oh. Well, I think of myself as coming from New York City. I feel like—growing up—I grew up in Manhattan in the 1980s, and I feel like—actually, I was just talking about this with my husband this past weekend—how your childhood just sticks with you for such a long period of time. It's so formative.

So I really think of myself as coming from that city very much, even though right now I'm joining you from Philadelphia.

What part of being a child in Manhattan in the '80s sticks with you? What were you talking about?

Oh, I mean, just so many different things. I feel like—I grew up on the Upper West and then Upper East Sides, kind of both times on the edges of Manhattan. So in a part of where—it was very dense but also not too chaotic.

And I think also, what's interesting to think about is that New York—even though people complain about how New York hasn't built housing and whatnot—so much of New York has gotten so much denser and more crowded since then, in the 1980s. I think about how it really just, for me, set the bar in terms of retail, restaurants, how people pick up ideas, what style looks like, what city life could possibly be like—all of that.

And then, just in terms of other aspects of childhood, I think just the way in which so many—so many of your memories of your family life, your relationship with your friends—all of that kind of stuff sticks with you. And actually, I have a parent who has dementia, and so a lot of his childhood memories are things that he still talks about.

And I think about how it's just like the innermost core of your brain. So that was a little bit about how we were thinking about childhood. And I'm joining you just after a really nice summer break in which I felt like our kids had a couple of peak childhood moments of just hanging out with friends and running around and all that kind of stuff.

And it felt really good to see them experiencing that, even in times that are very different from when I was a kid. But it did feel like it was still the same kind of good stuff that you might have had in the 1980s.

Do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Yeah. I mean, I think from a pretty early age—beyond the initial idea that I wanted to be an astronaut or something like that—from a pretty early age, I wanted to be a writer. I just loved magazine culture and just loved that sense of seeing the world through the perspective of a writer.

And even now, when I do bedtime with my kids and I read books to them, it just really brings me back to how much I get really immersed in these kinds of stories.

So I think from a pretty early age, I knew that I wanted to be a writer. Initially, I think I felt like I wanted to be writing fiction. And then really, it's sort of a strange turn of events. When I went to college, one of my closest friends was an urban planning major. He also grew up in New York—but he grew up in Brooklyn—and was just very set on that. And he was a little bit of an influence.

And then when I was in college, 9/11 happened. And aside from the profound sorrow and life-changing aspect of 9/11, the revitalization of downtown Manhattan was something that was really interesting to me. That was also a period of time when star architecture was also kind of at its peak. So things like the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Calatrava Milwaukee Museum, and these kinds of big buildings that were being leveraged as a way to revitalize cities. I just really fell in love with that.

And when I graduated college, I had an internship that turned into a full-time job with Architectural Record. And so it was just this perfect marriage of interests in a combination of architecture and urban revitalization. And I think I eventually leaned towards being more interested in urban policy issues than architecture. But I still think that architecture is one of the most interesting kinds of art forms because of the practical nature that you have to grapple with in it.

And yeah, I think if you'd asked me when I was 15—and I thought I was going to be the next Ernest Hemingway—that I would be writing about urban policy issues, I wouldn't have quite seen it that way. But I do feel like that kind of childhood in New York City prepped me well for the things that I ended up being really interested in and covering in my writing.

Yeah, you mentioned magazine culture. What were the magazines that were—what was—what magazines were you thinking about and spending time with to inspire you to kind of become a writer?

Oh, man. I mean, I just—I grew up in a household where my dad also—he really loved magazines and newspapers and stuff like that. So we just had everything around—everything from New York Magazine and The New Yorker to, they would let me subscribe to whatever. I think I loved things like Entertainment Weekly, and I subscribed to a lot of women's magazines like Vogue and Glamour and stuff like that, too.

I definitely then also was very interested in literary magazines—eventually things like n+1 that people might know about now. But I loved the tactile nature of it. There were also smaller ones, like Paper Magazine, that were more interesting in terms of their design and their aesthetics.

Eventually, the first thing I did when I was out of college—I was working for Architectural Record—I was also doing an MFA in creative writing, thinking I was still going to be a novelist or something. But I also launched my own magazine, which was called Work Magazine.

That was, in some ways, a culmination of just wanting to give something back or to share my perspective on things. It was a magazine about what people do for a living, and I wanted to look at that from the perspective of everything from being a rodeo champion to somebody working in a cubicle—and to look at it not just through stories, but art and photography and all that kind of stuff as well.

It was very short-lived—I think we did three issues—but it was super fun. I loved the collaborative nature of it, of working with other people who were freelancers and designers and stuff like that.

That was like 2004 and 2005.

It was a really fun time. You would still have launch parties, and I remember we had launch parties that brought out hundreds of people.

I remember being somewhat friendly with Shoshana Berger, who was the founder of Readymade Magazine, and being part of Independent Press Association events with people from B***h Magazine, and just these small little magazines. I loved that culture of independent entrepreneurs. It’s a really different world—things like magazine distribution, trying to get people to subscribe with postcards and all that kind of stuff.

But it was still not a crazy thing to do in 2004. It definitely would be now, but it was not that crazy then.

So catch us up. You say you're in Philadelphia. How did you come to be in Philadelphia? And how do you talk about what you do now? What's your work?

Sure. So I moved to Philly in 2008 to work for another small magazine. It was then known as The Next American City, and it was a print quarterly publication. Now it's known as Next City, and it's a daily website, a nonprofit media organization. So Next City had its offices here.

I moved here in 2008, and I was with the magazine—or the organization—for almost seven years.

Nowadays, I’m really splitting my time between being an independent writer—I run my own Substack called The New Urban Order, where I write about post-pandemic cities and how cities are changing at this particular time, when there’s been so much dramatic change in terms of how people experience cities and what they use them for—how they live in them and all that.

I also do consulting work, and most recently wrapped up a fellowship with Johns Hopkins, where I was looking at the politics of accessory dwelling units.

So I’m at this point in my life really just exploring being an independent writer and enjoying that after many years of working in full-time positions. It’s kind of a full-circle moment for me, because for about 10 years, I was in a variety of nonprofit roles that didn’t have a media focus—working for the University of Pennsylvania, working at the Chamber of Commerce—and all of those roles were really focused on policy issues and cities, but not in a media context.

Now I’m firmly back in the space of writing for a living and being a bigger part of media conversations.

Yeah. And that's where I found you—on the Substack. And everything that you've written has been really just amazing. I'm a total rookie, amateur. I’m a guy who had an urban planning awakening here in this tiny city of Hudson and have sort of become, I guess, interested in that same question. I love how you said it: the post-pandemic city.

And I'm wondering, how do you think about that question? Like, how do you start a conversation about the changes that have happened and how we live in cities, and what we ask of cities in 2025 that wasn't true in 2018 or even 2020?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's just still such an evolving story. And I think that's why I'm so interested in it.

I think certainly in 2020, there was this kind of big conversation, like, are cities dead? And in fact, just yesterday, I was on Bloomberg.com's website, where they had an op-ed by Alison Schrager about, like, is the age of the big city over, right? So maybe it’s not that all cities are dead, but big cities are officially, you know, dying—which I don’t believe at all. But it's still an ongoing conversation.

I think there are a number of different factors at play here. Certainly the issue of how cities have had to grapple with remote work—it's still a huge issue. The number of days worked remotely has pretty much held steady at something like 28% of workdays being done remotely, which is a huge jump from where it was before the pandemic, when it was in the single digits.

So that just has a huge impact on how people navigate cities. Do they take transit or not? And if you have a drop-off of a fifth or more of your transit users, what does that mean for the ability of transportation networks to survive? What does it mean for places that used to have lunch service? What does it mean for stores, etc.?

And then beyond the remote work aspect, I think over the past few years, there's been this transition to remote life writ large that definitely was accelerated by the pandemic but was maybe already starting to happen more than remote work was. People not going out to movies as much, streaming more things at home, ordering groceries from home, shopping online rather than in stores.

So then it just kind of starts to beg this question of: what's the point of these places anymore? And who wants to live in them—or who can live in them?

I think there's this larger tension. There's this idea that people don’t want to live in cities anymore, that they'd much rather live in suburbs or small towns or even smaller cities. And that may be true, but if it were really true, you'd start to see housing prices dramatically decline. And that also is really not happening. So there's still this hunger, but I think there's a different set of—there's a different kind of math that you have to run to figure out if the cost of living in a city is worth it.

Certainly, I’m very interested in the idea of how can you make cities—because I still, and this may be going back to that 1980s New York background—I still think cities are amazing places.

I was out of town for two weeks. I came back, and just by virtue of walking down the street, ran into five different people. I'm at a co-working space today and saw five other people that I haven’t seen. And it's just like—you don't get a chance to do that, I think, in a lot of other places where you just don’t have the density of people.

And I do believe that the density of interactions—for some people, it’s not for everyone—but for some people, it can be tremendously exciting.

So figuring out that kind of math for people is also really interesting. And how do you make it a place that is going to contribute to broader prosperity, so cities don’t end up becoming a place where only the wealthy can live and a servicing class also lives?

Yeah, I feel like I’m rambling now, but that’s kind of how I start. That’s the base level of how I think about the post-pandemic city, and then I draw from there a lot of different topics that I’m interested in.

Yeah. What do you love about the work? Like, where’s the joy in it for you? What do you really thrive on?

In the writing about this kind of stuff?

Yeah, I guess in the work you do—what’s your favorite part or where’s the joy in it?

Yeah. I mean, I feel like the favorite part for me is that I’m just constantly walking around. I’m like a walking op-ed generator, walking around constantly having an argument with an imaginary set of people. And the joy is actually putting it down and synthesizing: what am I trying to say here?

So, one really fun thing I’m working on right now is an op-ed I’m writing with somebody I met through one of my subscriber events. We didn’t know each other—met in San Francisco. And that was one of my most successful events, in the sense that I ended up then collaborating with some subscribers on a design competition, and we won an honorable mention.

Fantastic.

But anyways, we’re working on an op-ed right now. And I think what I really love about that is just being in conversation with people who are also thinking about these things. Because, you know, a lot of the writing I do is solo, and I enjoy that, but I also enjoy the collaborative process of writing with someone else. It kind of brings something out in the ideas that maybe wouldn’t come up if you were just in your own head about it.

And then I think I just love walking around cities and looking at how people are living and thinking about, you know, what kind of assumptions are being made about the ways that we’re supposed to live, and how are people actually living. Where are the tensions, where are the gaps? I think that’s really where I get a lot of joy and curiosity from.

And sometimes it’s a little thing, like seeing a sign on a store that reflects something that’s shifted in the culture, or seeing a place that used to be something and now it’s something else, and just thinking about why that happened and what that says.

And yeah, I think the joy is really being able to notice those things and then build something out of them. That’s what I love.

And it's just been really fun because we started out with this sort of idea, and I was like, I'm not sure this is really turning into something that is useful or interesting. And we just kept going back and forth. And now we’ve finally figured out: what are we actually trying to say here? I love that process of continual editing.

And in fact, I would say that a lot of people talk to think, but I really write to think. That’s how I’m able to think clearly about things—through that editing process and writing things down. Maybe I’ve trained my brain that way, but that’s how I make sense of the world.

So yeah, it’s like—I don’t want to call it therapy, because it’s not about getting over an issue—but it’s like that analysis and synthesis of ideas. It makes me feel like, okay, I understand the world now. I figured that little thing out that I was thinking about.

And that is—I think there’s some part of that that is joyful. And then there’s a lot of it that feels just sort of satisfying. And then there are also times when you put stuff out there and you’re like, cringe. Why did I write that? That happens too. But yeah.

Yeah, I’m curious. You said—and I feel like I’m identifying as well—that you're walking around engaged in some sort of argument with imaginary figures, or maybe they're just the projection of imaginary figures. Do you have any idea who you're arguing with? Do you have foils that you're in dialogue with in your head?

Yeah, I don't necessarily feel like there's particular people who I'm in dialogue with, but I often feel like I'm trying to respond to something that I’ve read or something someone has said to me.

One of my pieces—probably one of my most popular pieces—was about sending your kid to an okay public school, and why that is potentially a good thing to do, or why you should try it. It was pretty much: just give it a chance, as opposed to the prevailing idea that you should move to the district with the best possible school for your kid.

And that was a direct instance where I was at a conference. Someone made a comment about living in a part of Philadelphia, the suburbs, where they have really good schools, and she moved there. And it was just sort of like, well, obviously, you move to wherever is the best school. And this was a counterpoint to that argument. That was an example where someone said something, and I just had my internal argument in my head and eventually wrote it out.

There are other times, like this op-ed I’m writing with a friend—it’s a response to the conversation about abundance and Zoram and Dani’s primary win. I feel like it’s in response to this big conversation people are having about the future of the Democratic Party. There’s not one particular person I’m trying to influence, but it’s more like, here are some ways we’re thinking about this and what it means.

Yeah. Where do you fall out on this? I’m curious to know where you are on this. I mean, of course, I’m going to look forward to reading it. What are your thoughts on the conversation about abundance and Dani? Abundance in particular—I’m curious about that.

Yeah, well, I’ll just speak for myself here and say that I think both the socialist idea and the idea of abundance are really compelling ideas and visions. But they seem to forget that most people have zero confidence in government. And in fact, go beyond feeling skeptical—they’re antagonistic toward government.

So the idea that—both of these are very much centered on how government is going to get us out of our current problems. Those are the visions. And I’m a believer in the capacity of government, but I also feel like people need to have more trust in government first. And actually more trust in their fellow man. People need to believe that our communities are governable, and that the mission of government is to use its scale for the public good and to provide public goods to all people.

You need to have more trust, faith, and interest in your fellow man in order to believe in that role for government. So I feel like there’s a lot of work that needs to be done before either of these two very bold visions for the Democratic Party could really succeed.

And maybe I’m wrong, and I don’t want to be cynical. Now I feel like I am—like I’m an older person who’s saying, no, you can’t do that or something.

But I think just being exposed to a very purple state like Pennsylvania—which feels very—the sort of message of both of those messages, I could see very much how it would not be appealing to your average person who is, again, pretty skeptical of government and has, I think, legitimate beef over, like, well, I don't understand how we're going to build high-speed rail when right now we can't get a budget agreement for SEPTA, which is our local transit agency, and they're cutting back transit lines.

How are we going to build a high-speed infrastructure beyond that? It just feels kind of fantastical. So I think for me, there's some first-level work that hasn't really been done, and that is a little bit more about what that might look like.

Yeah, I love it. Can you articulate—how do you describe abundance to people? I guess both of them. What’s your sort of shorthand for these two approaches? And I'm really excited by what you articulated. I feel like I connect—maybe that's why I've connected to a few of your pieces—about the trust, everything around the trust.

And living in a small town, I feel particularly maybe exposed to that. So I’m curious, how do you articulate—what’s the abundance promise and what’s the Mamdani promise as it relates to—because I really appreciate how you articulated that there’s sort of—I’m just going to try to restate what you said. Do you understand my question? Have you heard a question?

Yes. Well, first, just saying that I don't feel like I'm an expert on either socialism or abundance. The way that I would describe it is—abundance is this idea that we have been approaching so much of our built environment as a situation of scarcity, where we're fighting over what can or can't get built. And instead, we’re a country that has this opportunity to be building more for everyone that would bring us into the 21st century.

I see abundance as— a lot of the prescriptions are focused on trying to get rid of some of the barriers to building more, whether that’s housing, clean energy infrastructure, or other things. A recent example of an “abundance win,” if you will, is the rollback of CEQA in California, which was a piece of legislation that essentially enabled endless lawsuits that would prevent housing and other kinds of buildings from actually getting built. I think even Governor Newsom called out abundance in doing this.

That policy move—reducing barriers to building things and making housing and infrastructure more affordable and feasible—I think their vision is that this brings greater prosperity to all by making things less expensive.

The more socialist side of things, I see as using government to, in some ways, correct the market where the market has really failed to provide equity. So ideas like free buses, freezing rents, or government-run grocery stores—these are ideas that say the market has not been able to appropriately deal with inflation, public transportation, or housing, and we need to use government as a lever to make the city more equitable.

In both of these cases, I almost feel like—I feel like, good luck. I wish you well. These are great ideas if they could happen. Sure. But I often see how stuff doesn’t happen.

As a first step, it would be awesome if we could instead show how—let’s just say—the government could provide adequate bus shelters for people who are waiting for the bus, rather than free buses. Or public bathrooms. Or properly maintain parks and public spaces. Any of these kinds of things that feel like they're sort of the Maslow's lowest level of survival for cities.

And to do them in a way in which people feel less like they need to retreat into their own personal spaces, but that actually, because of government, they’re more engaged in their community. And it's not just the private sector that is always responsible for getting people out of their houses and into community, but instead it’s actually the government that is helping to support that.

I think that would go a long way to proving to people like, yes, we can do this, and then we could take on some more of these challenges. And I actually think there's a lot that can be done relatively quickly. I think Americans are—perhaps rightfully so—pretty impatient when there are big ideas about how you're going to build new infrastructure and it doesn't happen for 20 years or something like that.

That's just too long a wait time. So I think also one of the key factors here is: what's going to show that government is effective faster? I think that’s a critical question that needs to be contemplated for Democrats. Because, yeah, we've got midterms next year.

And this seems pretty universal. I mean, I'm, of course, always going to reference my own experience here in Hudson, which is a small town that really has pretty much every big city problem in a very strange way. And it seems like you say that these cities fail to deliver basic city services at a pretty fundamental level.

And I think it's this kind of—and again, I'm going to expose my lack of expertise here—but like, Strong Towns, this movement. I feel like there's a big conversation about how the country has changed and the economy has changed, and why our infrastructure is so neglected in a way.

And it's certainly the social infrastructure. I think there are a couple of things bouncing around in my mind. One is—I think the piece that you wrote that I responded to most was the idea of claiming this term “pro-social,” which is an experience that I also had. In my efforts in Hudson, it was always to try to bring—help us have a conversation with ourselves, really thinking about community engagement and civic engagement and how that happens, and how counterproductive that is often around regulations like SEQR and stuff like that.

And discovering that there are models for pro-social behavior, but also diagnosing how our anti-social digital lives are the fundamental problem—the obstacle to really getting anything done.

Because we talked about—we shared Josh McManus as a colleague—and talking to him, he's very explicit about his work with cities. That the biggest change—and this is what I loved about Abundance, I haven’t read the book, but just the idea of it—is ambitious enough to raise our eyesight a little bit, to think that we could do something.

And I heard an interview with Ezra Klein done by Marginal Revolution—I’m not going to remember the guy’s name—he asked a wonderful question. He said, what’s the critique of your book you feel most vulnerable to? And Ezra Klein’s answer was “voice.” And he just said, we don’t know how to engage each other around the possibility of abundance, which I think is also sort of particularly universal in a way.

So maybe—I don’t know what I might’ve just said that sparked something for you—but what I heard you talking about is proving the efficacy of government by building public social infrastructure, just to restore trust before maybe some of these more ambitious ideas about what’s possible.

Yes. So that is actually—that’s the thesis of the op-ed, right? And I hope my colleague Amy Cohen is not upset, depending on how fast we turn that around and this comes out. But yeah, that’s basically it.

It's like, we need to build pro-social spaces so that people can reconnect with each other. And pro-social means that—in some ways—it’s the opposite of anti-social, right? But it's also kind of about: how do we actually get people to connect with one another and encourage positive behavior?

So many of the things that we build in cities are, in some ways, almost intended just to prevent bad behavior. A lot of benches in a park will be built to discourage a homeless person from sleeping on it. But what are we actually doing to encourage positive behavior there?

I think the idea that many people are lamenting—people’s social isolation, particularly children spending all their time on their phones—but we’ve given people zero excuse or reason to spend time out in their communities with one another. And we’ve certainly not built those spaces either.

So why should we be surprised that people have no concept of reality?

Coming from the space of media for so long—I worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer for one year—and there was, obviously there and in many other media organizations, a big conversation about media literacy. And no one is in local news, and people aren’t getting local news and don’t know what’s actually going on.

I think that’s completely true. But also, a big part of the reason why people don’t actually know what’s going on is because they’re at home. They’re not actually out in spaces. They don’t see what is happening in their city in the ways they used to in the past.

So I think being able to build these kinds of spaces is a great way to restore trust in each other, and also restore trust in government—and saying that government can build and maintain this stuff, and can also find a way to reap the dividend of it. Because I think a lot of people are completely aware that it’s great if you have government that’s going to spend money on various social goods, but if they can’t figure out how to maintain it and pay for it long term, that’s going to be a problem for the city as well.

To your point about not having a voice for these kinds of questions, or figuring out how to talk across these very polarized times—I think that, for me, is really my main concern with ideas like abundance, and some of the ideas that are in the Socialist Party or part of the Democratic Party.

I think, how do you find a way to talk about these kinds of issues that will affect someone who doesn’t think about this stuff all the time? Who’s not a policy wonk? Who’s just trying to live their life and feels frustrated by government?

I mean, the majority of Americans—even if they didn’t like Elon Musk or how Doge was actually executed—the majority of Americans do feel like government is inefficient and did think that Doge was a good idea.

So how do you flip someone’s mind on that kind of perspective?

I think people need to be doing a bit more listening, because I don’t know that some of these concepts are really resonating with people who are— I think about just average Philadelphians who would never previously think of themselves as Republicans, but haven’t been able to find a message that feels like it’s actually resonating with them.

Yes. You mentioned listening. And another one of your pieces—I feel like I align completely on so much of what you're observing—the idea that no one really knows what’s going on.

And that’s definitely my experience in Hudson. There’s so much that’s happening, and nobody has any time to pay attention. And then even if they try to pay attention, it’s sort of incomprehensible and antiquated.

What inspired me, in terms of my involvement in Hudson, was around Citizens Assembly. It’s something I discovered because Bard College is nearby. And it felt like this really powerful way to bring people into the process and invest them in decision-making in an amazing way.

I remember someone I met there talking about how radically our technology has changed, how radically our media has changed—and how our government institutions, even—especially—at the local level, have fundamentally not changed. The structures of the meetings, the formats of the meetings, the spaces that we come together in to create... I love how you talk to this shared reality. The spaces we have to create a shared understanding are really challenged. Do you have that experience also, or am I—

Definitely. Yeah. I mean, I just think that the idea of these upstart groups that are at least trying to change who shows up at these kinds of meetings and how they're digested and shared with the community—that, to me, is really important work. In Philadelphia, there's something called the Fifth Square, which is an urbanist group focused on transportation and housing and other kinds of related issues here. They organize people to speak at city council hearings, and they also report out what has been discussed and passed and things like that.

Should we require government to be innovating in and of itself? I'm not so sure. But I do think that is a place for nonprofits or concerned citizens to step up and think about how to better communicate what's actually going on in their town.

I think the issue of people not really knowing what's going on—I'm also trying to figure out how to write about the police takeover in Washington, D.C., and I feel like that's a really good example of the problem when people don’t really know what’s going on. Like, is there really a crime problem in D.C., or is there not a crime problem in D.C.? Is this excessive? Is this not? What information should we be relying on? How is the government sharing its voice about what is going on, what they want to see happen?

All of that feels like it’s coming to a head in D.C. It feels very confusing. And I, as an outsider, am trying to get a sense of what's going on. I’ve texted with and talked to a few people I know who live there—they also seem kind of confused as well.

I don’t know what more to say about it, but it doesn’t bode well when a possible scenario is an armed takeover of your city because you’re disagreeing about whether there’s a crime problem or not. I don’t know. It strikes me as potentially pretty bad.

I’m trying to figure out my particular angle on it and learn a little more about what’s going on there. But there are consequences to not having a shared reality and to having a government that’s not particularly good at explaining what it’s doing or how it’s doing it.

Yeah.

This has occurred to me recently, because I think about this quite a lot. And I’ve spent enough time playing around with AI and the implications of AI for creative storytelling and all that stuff to realize just how under threat the shared reality is—and the ways that we create a shared understanding. It becomes—tell me what you think about this—but it becomes a media problem in which face-to-face is the media that we need.

And in that way, it becomes almost exclusively a local opportunity or responsibility, right? Because every other media is vulnerable in a way. Is that an extreme interpretation?

I do. I mean, it’s definitely something I’ve thought about, which is that we are actually approaching this age where you have to see it with your own eyes to believe whatever it might end up being.

Yeah. I hope we kind of don’t get there. I do think that one of the other flip sides is that media is so distributed at this point that the key is recognizing there are many different voices and perspectives on a particular thing, and ensuring that there’s not just one—that you're not only relying on a few sources to understand what is actually going on.

But I do think that face-to-face—I think also, even more so—in fact, people... I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is also a writer and maybe had never actually, because of the pandemic, might not have actually met her agent in person.

Maybe they had met once before, but she was just saying they’d had conversations going back and forth on the phone and email for years, and just recently met up for lunch—either for the first time ever or the first time in many years. And it was just—what a difference it makes to actually meet someone in person.

I think people are increasingly realizing that. Maybe for your immediate social circle, who you see frequently in person all the time, you don’t necessarily feel it. But for so many other types of connections and people, actually being in person is dramatic.

It seems like it should be completely the same as a Zoom call or whatever, but it’s actually really quite different. You get so much more information almost immediately when you’re with a person—about their essence as a human.

I think that’s sort of the same thing about—whether it’s experiencing a... I think another good example of this is when the National Guard was called into L.A.—not for the wildfires, but for protesting ICE—and the sort of cherry-picked moments of chaos that were being shown on the news versus a lot of other people showing calm neighborhoods and no real reason for there to be a National Guard presence.

I think this is going to be an ongoing issue—what are we actually seeing, and can you rely on these dueling viewpoints that are being shown to you on a camera? And also, just people recognizing that in-person experiences not only have a truth to them but also a value that virtual ones simply can’t replicate.

So we’re near the end of our time, and I guess I would be remiss—I wanted to end maybe on a forward-looking note. Your Substack, The New Urban Order—when you look ahead and think about cities, what are you most excited about? Are there models out there that inspire you or make you feel positively about the direction we’re going in, in trying to address the way that we live now?

Yeah, I do feel like I'm fairly optimistic about American cities, in fact. I think one of the reasons I went to San Francisco at the beginning of the year is that I felt like the city was really primed for a turnaround. It had sort of reached its bottom and is going to come back.

So I’m very interested to see different cities that are charging ahead—whether it’s a San Francisco or Detroit. I feel, in Philadelphia, in fact, we’ve been so undervalued for so long, and I think there are a lot of other undervalued cities in the country that are having a moment to shine.

What do you mean by undervalued? What does it mean—undervalued?

Just like, you know, both literally undervalued in terms of—our housing is incredibly cheap here, right? And I don't think that it’s been as desirable as a lot of other cities. Like, I don’t even know—like Jacksonville or something like that. Why is Philadelphia cheap compared to Jacksonville? I don’t know.

I just think it has so many incredible assets here and such a good quality of life that people haven’t quite recognized yet. And I think that is starting to shift.

I think also, just in terms of—I’ve lived here now for 17 years—and just seeing how there is, I think, a pretty healthy scene of creative destruction and renewal that continues in the city. Like, we recently had a small arts college go bankrupt very quickly and publicly. And then a number of the buildings were sold off and are being repurposed—one into both housing and maker space for artists. And it's just interesting to see how that kind of happens in the city. And it's happening in this one example.

But I am excited for a number of different cities that are in this upward trajectory of interesting new development. I think I’m also optimistic about cities really rethinking their streetscapes and getting way smarter.

I mean, just the past year, in terms of new legislation around housing and making housing easier to build, is all very exciting. And so all of that, I think, really just kind of bodes well for more livable cities.

And yet, at the same time, I’m also very concerned about things like the destruction of public transportation, the loss of federal and state funding for everything from food banks and research to housing and everything else. I feel like the fallout from that is going to be really difficult to watch.

So I’m also really keen to follow—where are the smart ideas for ensuring that we come out of this still with places that are working for everyone, and not just for the people who are tax advantaged in the big, beautiful building, and so on?

So yeah, it’s a combination of feeling both like there are many cities around the country that are witnessing population growth, interesting developments, new clusters of jobs and innovation, and interesting cultural institutions—all that kind of stuff. And then also just feeling very concerned about the infrastructural level of support for people and places, just throughout the country.

Beautiful. I want to thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. And I really appreciate you accepting my invitation to begin with. And then, yeah—just thank you so much.

Oh, totally. I really appreciate the chance to have a chat with you and get to know you and your corner of Hudson a little bit better. And I hope we do get a chance to meet up in person.

Yes, definitely.

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