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Alex Marshall

Alex Marshall

Columnist

A journalist and consultant, Alex Marshall is the author of The Surprising Design of Market Economies; Beneath the Metropolis: The Secret Lives of Cities; and How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken. He writes a regular urban affairs/infrastructure column for Governing and has contributed to Bloomberg Voice, Metropolis, The New York Times, Architecture, The Boston Globe, The New York Daily News, The Washington Post and many other publications.

Marshall has taught about infrastructure at the New Jersey School of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. From 2002 to 2018 Marshall was a Senior Fellow at the Regional Plan Association in New York City. In 1999-2000, he was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He has consulted with Arup, Sidewalk Labs and other organizations. He holds a master's degree from Columbia University’s journalism school and a bachelor's in Political Economy and Spanish from Carnegie Mellon University. A native of Norfolk, Va., he was a staff writer and columnist for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk from 1989 to 1999.

He can be reached at amcities@gmail.com or on Twitter at @Amcities.

We have a loose consensus in America on factors that drive costs and time up and quality down. What we don't have is consensus on how to get those factors under control.
Could the pandemic help end or mute the modern era of cities? Probably not, but it's likely that we will see some permanent changes, both predictable and unexpected.
Duluth, Minn., has very little, and its mayor would like to see more minorities among its residents. But the city's strong homegrown civic culture seems to be serving it well.
Booming e-commerce is congesting streets.
How can you build a great place? Expand the number of people who own it.
We often use it in ways not intended. Most of the time, that’s a good thing.
It’s often used to describe how people live in urban spaces. But it shouldn't be.
Paper maps help us know a place better.
Music, film and visual arts are improving the travelling experience.
It’s not necessarily about traveling far and fast.