Welcome to City Monitor, the newest publication from New Statesman Media Group. We’re so glad you’re here.
City Monitor is dedicated to the future of the world’s cities. Our mission is to help our readers, many of whom are in local leadership positions around the globe, navigate how cities are changing and discover what’s next in the world of urban policy.
We aim to do that through original reporting, expert opinion and, most crucially, a data-driven approach that emphasises evidence and rigorous analysis. We want to arm local decision-makers and those they work in concert with – whether that’s elected officials, bureaucratic leaders, policy advocates, neighbourhood activists, academics and researchers, entrepreneurs or plain-old engaged citizens – with real insights and potential answers to tough problems. Subjects we cover include transport, infrastructure, housing, urban design, public safety, the environment, the economy and much more.
I’m Sommer Mathis, the editor-in-chief of City Monitor. My background includes having served as the founding editor of CityLab, editor-in-chief of Atlas Obscura and editor-in-chief of DCist, a local news publication in the District of Columbia. I’ve been reporting on and writing about cities in one way or another for the past 15 years. To me, there is no more important story in the world right now than how cities are changing and adapting to an increasingly challenging global landscape. At a time when national governments are mired in gridlock and culture wars, the list of urgent crises facing our planet – the climate emergency, rising inequality, the Covid-19 pandemic – is growing. We decided to launch City Monitor because we believe that if we’re ever going to be able to tackle these challenges, cities are going to have to lead the way.
The City Monitor team includes some of the most experienced urban policy journalists in the world. Our managing editor is Adam Sneed, also a CityLab alum as well as a former technology reporter at Politico. Allison Arieff is City Monitor’s senior editor. She was previously editorial director of the urban-planning and policy think tank SPUR as well as a contributing columnist for the New York Times. Staff writer Jake Blumgart most recently covered development, housing and politics for WHYY, a local public radio station in Philadelphia. And our data reporter is Alexandra Kanik, whose previous roles include data reporting for Louisville Public Media and PublicSource in Pittsburgh.
Our team will continue to grow in the coming weeks, and we’ll also be collaborating closely with our editorial colleagues at Energy Monitor, Investment Monitor, the forthcoming Bank Monitor plus more new publications that will launch in the coming months. Many of our sister sites will frequently overlap with our cities coverage, and a key part of our plan is make the most of the expertise that all of these newsrooms combined will bring to bear on our journalism.
City Monitor is still in beta, which means the version of this website you see today is very much a work in progress. If you spot a bug or have suggestions for improvements to the site, please contact us.
We’ll be launching an email newsletter in the coming weeks, and you can sign up for it via the footer on our homepage. You can also follow City Monitor on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and on Facebook. If you’re interested in learning more about the potential for a commercial partnership with City Monitor, please get in touch with our director of partnerships, Joe Maughan.
On behalf of the City Monitor team, I’m thrilled to welcome you to our community.
Sommer Mathis is editor-in-chief of City Monitor.
