12 newyork| october12–25, 2020
Fr om the Editorswhen newyorkmagazinewasfoundedin1968,its
absolute focuswasNewYorkCity life:itspolitics,accents,
art, social dynamics,andbest lomein.In 2020,themagazinestill
has New York Cityat itscenter—butthepurviewhasexpandedto
the entire country, if nottheworld.NewYork’s onlinecoverageof
the specifics of city lifehas,inrecentyears,beendistributedacross
its websites; so has its writing on architecture, urbanism, real estate,
and design. Now, you’ll be reading a lot more of it on Curbed.
This week, the pioneering website Curbed is joining New York
as our home for coverage of cities and city life. We can’t imagine
a better fit. For almost 16 years, we at New York have watched as
Curbed documented, with wit and obsession and style, the chang-
ing shape of the physical city. Curbed began as a tiny blog, savoring
every delicious morsel of local development news and
gossip at a time when New York, like so many cities,
was being rapidly transformed. The site expanded
in its ambition—and its borders nationally. In 2013,
Curbed became a part of Vox Media, the company
that also owns New York. And for the past six months,
Curbed’s editors and writers have been working with
the New York editorial team—and in collaboration
with design, product, and technology—to build the
site’s next chapter as part of the larger magazine.
Like New York, Curbed will be based in New York
City and largely focused on the city’s architecture and
design, neighborhoods and characters, real estate
and policy, power brokers and rabble-rousers. But
Curbed will also continue to reach nationally, div-
ing into the lively, urgent conversation aboutwhat
cities can become in a time of rapid change. Ameri-
can cities are facing a combination of crises fromthe
fiscal to the existential; at the same time, theyarea stageonwhich
our political conflicts are being debated and opposingvisionsof the
future tested. Look to Curbed for reporting, criticism,analysis,and
provocation. And we hope it will be the sharpest eyesonthereal-
estate market as well as a place of playful but unerringgoodtaste.
The “Design Hunting” section of Curbedis thenewhomeof
New York’s design editor, Wendy Goodman.As shehasdonefor
decades in these pages (see p.62), she’ll be unearthingthemini-
malist, maximalist, and everything-in-betweenestapartments
and houses of the most interesting people imaginable.“Design
Hunting” willalsohighlight the ideas, people, and objects shaping
thedesignworld,ledbywriter Diana Budds.
And,ofcourse,we’ll show you where to live next—or just
wheretoimagineyoumight move. You’ll find this in “the Real
Estate,”whichwillbepopulated with practical listings, market
insight,andaneyetowardthe occasionally bananas, overseen by
Jenny Xie. We also intend to check in regularly on other urban
real-estate markets of interest to our readers, either to sniff out
a particularly good deal—or whenever writer Megan Barber
notices a Frank Lloyd Wright house for sale that might make
you consider moving to Wisconsin.
In the “Corner Shop” section, you’ll see a carefully chosen set
of home goods, created alongside editors of the Strategist.
“Cityscape” will contain news and analysis. New
York’s architecture critic, Justin Davidson (see p.50),
will join Curbed’s urbanism editor Alissa Walker,
data reporter Jeff Andrews, and staff writers Valeria
Ricciulli and Caroline Spivack as they set out to
explain the workings of cities, where people with
money and power (and those with not much money
and not much power) fight it out—and even, some-
times, work together.
It wouldn’t be a site about New York without a lot
of New Yorkers, and we’re excited to be moving New
York’s “Look Book” to Curbed to zero in on a specific
slice of the city’s population, whether it be postal
workers in Queens, first-year students at Juilliard,
or a stoop sale in Bed-Stuy (see p.59).
And, finally, Curbed will have a new design. Its
sophisticated and slightly mischievous layout is
meant to follow a grid but also echo elements of
the dynamic city experience. The new Curbed logo creates—as
our late co-founder Milton Glaser would say—a “small puzzle.”
The stacked letters suggest a building. Or is it a city seen from
above? Or maybe it’s a park, or a poster plastered onto a con-
struction site.
What else? We couldn’t begin to tell you. Cities are always
evolving, and Curbed will be too. It’ll live and breathe New York
during the city’s most critical time in decades. We’ll be chroni-
cling this extraordinary American story as it pulses through our
streets—and changes them. ■Welcoming Curbed