It was an honor and a privilege to be featured in Madame Architect. Working in the urbanism world for 20+ years means I’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge that I don’t often get to share in such a personal way. Here’s is an excerpt:
What did you learn about yourself in studying journalism and urban planning? What a great combination.
I knew I was going to move to New York since the first time I visited when I was 18 years old. It took a little while to figure out how to make it happen, so doing the mid-career master’s program at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism was my entry point. The idea behind the program was for experienced journalists to develop a specialization, and I knew I wanted to report on cities from an urbanist perspective. So I took most of my classes at GSAPP.
One of the most important things I learned was how impactful journalism can be on a city’s physical planning and development. This is especially true of New York, which had a flourishing media environment in the city’s formative years. The realization of Central Park, for instance, could have gone in a very different direction were it not for how the media covered it.
After finishing the program, I cold-pitched the editor of The New York Times real estate section and ended up reporting on commercial real estate for the Times throughout the mid-aughts. It was a great time to fly around the country reporting on redevelopment projects. Every city had something ambitious and interesting happening. I also freelanced for Metropolis Magazine, New York Observer, Planning Magazine, and started a blog called Polis. It was a really fun time in my life.