Diana Lind is a Philadelphia-based writer, urban policy specialist, and author whose work explores how cities are changing—and how we might rethink the places, policies, and assumptions that shape urban life.
She is the founder and author of The New Urban Order, an independent Substack publication examining housing, transportation, public space, culture, technology, and the future of cities. Her writing moves between policy, emerging ideas, and everyday urban experience, often challenging conventional wisdom about what makes cities successful.
Lind previously served as editor-in-chief and executive director of Next City, helping build the publication into an influential platform for urban innovation and ideas. She has also held leadership roles at the Penn Institute for Urban Research and the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia.
Her 2020 book, Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing, challenges the dominance of the single-family home as the American ideal, exploring alternative ways of living, from multigenerational households and co-living to smaller homes and intentional communities.
Through The New Urban Order, Lind has also cultivated a community of readers, practitioners, and thinkers who are actively shaping cities. The publication extends beyond commentary into events, conversations, and opportunities for people working across the urban field to connect.
What makes her work particularly interesting is its breadth. Housing policy might lead to questions about loneliness, retail to public life, or transportation to the experience of belonging. The city isn't a collection of separate problems to solve, but an interconnected place where decisions about how we live shape nearly everything else.
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