Past Event: Magnetic City

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Justin Davidson sits down with fellow urbanist Michelle Young of Untapped Cities to explore New York City through the perspectives of the designers, visionaries, artists, and writers who have created and lived here. Davidson’s latest book, Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York (Penguin Random House, 2017) is a walking guide to the city that offers a historical, cultural, architectural, and personal approach to seven neighborhoods throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Davidson and Young will explore the complexities and surprises that can be found around almost any street corner - if only you know where to look.

Reception and book signing to follow.

About the Speakers 
Justin Davidson has been the classical music and architecture critic at New York magazine since 2007. Before that, he spent 12 years as classical music critic at Newsday, where he also wrote about architecture and was a regular commentator on cultural issues. 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. Hear an excerpt from Magnetic City read by Justin Davidson here.

Michelle Young is the founder of Untapped Cities and an adjunct professor of architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). 

Off the Page spotlights the best new books about the five boroughs. Each event features a brief reading and a conversation between the author and an expert commentator. Join us afterwards for a reception and meet and greet with the author.