On June 10th, 2026, IPK Fellow Joshua Jelly-Schapiro penned a guest essay for the New York Times titled “It’s Not U.S. 1994, but It’s Something.” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article. In 2026, the world doesn’t look like we hoped it might from the sunny vantage of the early 1990s, when…
Read MoreOn June 3rd, 2026, IPK’s Associate Director Michael Koncewicz penned a book review of Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground by Zayd Ayers Dohrn (W. W. Norton & Company, 2026) for Jacobin titled “A Child of the Weather Underground Looks Back.” Read the excerpt below, then click for the…
Read MoreOn April 28, 2026, New York University published an official press release announcing the Institute for Public Knowledge and Gehl Studio’s report Social Infrastructure is Essential Infrastructure: How Public Spaces Make the Affordable, Joyful City Possible. Public officials, health care companies, and academic researchers have warned that the United States is undergoing a crisis of…
Read MoreSocial Infrastructure is Essential Infrastructure: How Public Spaces Make the Affordable, Joyful City Possible. Social infrastructure—the physical places that shape our capacity to connect – is essential for the health and vitality of democratic societies. But in recent decades cities and communities across the United States have failed to build or maintain great gathering places…
Read MoreOn April 6th, 2026, Eric Klinenberg, Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge, penned a piece for The New Yorker titled “Can Sponge Cities Save Us from the Coming Floods?” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article. Since the nineties, New York City has experienced eight storms with hourly rainfalls above 1.75 inches,…
Read MoreOn January 15th, 2026, IPK Fellow Darshana Narayanan penned an essay for Pioneer Works titled “Baby-Making on Mars.” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article. Humanity has entered a new era of space exploration. This time, we don’t just want to visit, we want to stay. From Musk and Bezos to former…
Read MoreOn December 16th, 2025, IPK Fellow Caitlin Petre penned an opinion piece for The New York Times titled “The Starving Artist vs. A.I.: Guess Who Is Winning?” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article. It would be naïve to think creative workers are playing on anything resembling a level field here, given…
Read MoreOn October 16, 2025, IPK Fellow Maya Vinokour penned an opinion piece for The Nation titled “What Was the Cybertruck?” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article. The Cybertruck was not intended to be unwieldy and repellent, but had that greatness thrust upon it. A billionaire’s vanity project, it substitutes a projection…
Read MoreOn July 14th, 2025, IPK’s Director Eric Klinenberg was featured in a reflection of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave by CBS News. He discussed Chicago city leadership during the heat wave and its consequences. Read the piece here.
Read MoreOn April 19, 2025, IPK Fellow Maya Vinokour penned an opinion piece for The Boston Globe titled “The rise of RFK Jr. is a wake-up call for out-of-touch liberals.” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article. One standard liberal response to figures like Kennedy has been fact-checking. That tactic won’t change anyone’s mind….
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