December 15th, 2026
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Place Perspectives
151 Lafayette Street floor 5, New York, NY, USA
Dean Labowitz is a writer and urban planner in Brooklyn. They use writing to explain planning processes to other queer and trans people, with the hope that demystifying and recontextualizing the current political moment can expand the collective imagination of what’s possible. Labowitz has had (almost) every kind of job, but lately works as a policy advisor for the New York City Office of Technology and Innovation. They love kites, bulletin boards, and the beach.
Judy Park Lee is a civic designer, researcher, and writer living in Brooklyn. She co-designs public services with the communities they serve and the agencies that deliver them, improving the civic infrastructure that sustains a thriving city. Alongside this practice, she often looks to the fictional and fantastical — fables and fairy tales, imagined worlds and speculative artifacts — to enchant our view of urban life and point us toward more desirable futures. Her work includes the Cabinet of Bureaucratic Wonders, an archive of mundane yet wondrous bureaucratic objects exhibited in New York City and Brasília.
Zoe Voss Lee is a writer, researcher, and urbanist whose practice is rooted in a commitment to shifting the loci of power in city decision making closer to the ground. To her, New York City is a place of paradoxes, and she is drawn to writing about the interstices where political, technological, and economic realities collide with collective possibility. She loves to encounter the city on foot, and through her work as a founding principal of GROUND3D, a community urban practice dedicated to bottom-up planning across the five boroughs. Born and raised in Manhattan, she now calls Brooklyn home.
Jasmine Liu is a writer and editor from the Bay Area. Her work on literature, art, and film has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, Reverse Shot, and elsewhere. She looks forward to investigating New York City transit infrastructure and the politics shaping neighborhood-level projects over the course of the fellowship.
Tash Nikol is a writer, design researcher, and book artist from the American South and the founder of the independent publishing project Grace Issues. Their work engages archives, materiality, and the environment through craft and community, centering Black and Indigenous traditions of survival, earth-keeping, and ingenuity. In 2026, they received the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award from the School of Visual Arts for their inquiry into the lineage of ironwork in the Gulf South while in the Design Research and Writing Criticism MA program.
Thandi Nyambose is an urbanist and dancer grounded in a global study of cities. She is interested in everyday movement, and has built a career designing and implementing equitable electric mobility programs across New York (and beyond). Her writing has appeared in Urban Omnibus, and she holds a Master of Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She was born in Boston, and has lived in New York since 2014.
Join the Forum and The Architectural League for a celebratory launch of the first pieces by this year’s New City Critics.
In collaboration with Open House New York, and guided by workshop sessions with writers Alexandra Lange and Garnette Cadogan, this year’s fellows covered six places either in or ushering transition—from a new development sited at a former jail complex to a DSNY maintenance hub—all opened to the public during OHNY weekend.
Join us to launch the New City Critics’ first published pieces and gain further insights into their methods and processes from six critical perspectives.
The 2026–2027 New City Critics are Dean Labowitz, Judy Park Lee, Zoe Voss Lee, Jasmine Liu, Tash Nikol, and Thandi Nyambose.
Guest & Accessibility Policies
Urban Design Forum promotes conversations between invited civic leaders, designers, developers, and advocates. This event is open to the general public.
We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals to engage fully.
- This event will have microphones and speakers.
- If you’re not feeling well, please stay home. Face masks are encouraged, particularly if you have been recently exposed to colds, flus, or other illness.
- Please refrain from wearing strong fragrances to accommodate guests with allergies or environmental sensitivities.
- If you have additional needs, we will do our best to accommodate. Please contact rsvp@urbandesignforum.org.
About New City Critics
New City Critics is a fellowship program that empowers new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge the ways we understand, design, and develop our cities. The fellowship supports the development of six critics from underrepresented backgrounds through guest lectures and workshops, research guidance, mentorship opportunities, networking, and production of new critical projects in Urban Omnibus and other leading publications. Through public programs and other channels, the fellowship encourages a more expansive conversation on the future of cities.
Urban Design Forum connects and inspires New Yorkers to design, build and care for a better city. We are a member-powered organization of 1,000+ civic leaders committed to a more just future for our city. We believe the built environment — our neighborhoods, buildings, public spaces and infrastructure — shapes our city’s health, culture and economy. We bring together New Yorkers of diverse backgrounds and experiences to learn, debate, and design a vibrant city for all.
The Architectural League of New York supports critically transformative work in the allied fields that shape the built environment. As a vital, independent forum, the League stimulates thinking, debate, and action on today’s converging crises of racism, inequity, and climate change, in service of a more livable and just world. The League’s online publication, Urban Omnibus, is dedicated to observing, understanding, and shaping the city. Urban Omnibus raises new questions, illuminates diverse perspectives, and documents creative projects to advance the collective work of citymaking.
Support Our Work
New City Critics was launched through the founding support of Joan Copjec, in honor of Michael Sorkin. The fellowship is made possible through the lead support of the Mellon Foundation, with additional ongoing support from Critical Minded, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Paul Goldberger, Carol and Mark Willis, LEVENBETTS, Cathleen McGuigan and David Berridge, Nat Oppenheimer, Karen Stein, Calvin Tsao, and Siqi Zhu.
We are also grateful to the founding donors of the program: Stella Betts, Joan Copjec, Vincent Chang, Critical Minded, Rosalie Genevro, Mario Gooden, Paul Goldberger, Graham Foundation, Tami Hausman, Mary Margaret Jones, Astrid Lipka & Lyn Rice, Thom Mayne, Zach Mortice & Maria Speiser, Eric Owen Moss, Nat Oppenheimer, Charles H. Revson Foundation, Moshe Safdie, Karen Stein, Calvin Tsao, Mark Willis & Carol Willis, and Siqi Zhu.
Urban Design Forum programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
To learn more about supporting New City Critics, please contact Daniel McPhee at daniel@urbandesignforum.org or donate here.
Logo credit: Manuel Miranda; Image Credit: Zoe Voss Lee
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