Why subscribe to Streetbeat?
Hey! This is John Surico. I write, think and talk about cities. I’ve reporting on them as a journalist for publications like The New York Times, Bloomberg CityLab, The Guardian and plenty of others for the better half of the last decade. I teach budding journalists how to do the same at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. And I’ve studied them at The Bartlett School of Planning, at University College London. I also help to catalyze change in them through community organizing and engagement, namely as the chair of the 31st Ave Open Street, in Astoria, Queens. Outside of all of that, my life largely takes place in them.
If you float around the urbanism space enough, you’ll likely hear the United Nations statistic that two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities by mid-century. For the first time in human history, we are living in an urban dominant world, where at least half of the world’s population lives in or around cities. And the numbers keep growing and growing.
What that means exactly is where this newsletter gets its start. We have to ask ourselves: what do we want our cities to be? And that involves rethinking how we build them, how we get around them, how we live in them, and how we prepare them for an uncertain future. I started this monthly missive first as a space to present my writings and observations in a more cohesive, regular manner, but over time it’s turned into an ongoing conversation about the innovations and shifts happening all around us.
And that said, I hope you’ll join in on where that goes next.
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You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox. And if you’re looking for intense behind-the-scenes action of where all of those photos come from, follow me on Twitter (@JohnSurico) or Instagram (@jsurico).
Feedback welcome
This newsletter will get better because of you. So send me your thoughts! (And any beautiful public spaces you like.)
