David Alcorn

David Alcorn has spent a decade writing at the intersection of civic architecture and public infrastructure — how the shapes of our cities quietly decide what kinds of lives we get to live in them. His book *The Weight of Pavement* (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) won the J. Anthony Lukas Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Before the book, David spent twelve years as a transit planner for the City of Philadelphia, where he led the SEPTA station modernization program and developed the pedestrian-priority signal plan adopted across Center City. He now writes the weekly newsletter *Right of Way* and lectures on policy and design at Swarthmore, Penn, and on a short list of stages that will have him.

He lives in Mount Airy with his partner, a neurologist, and two loud children who are learning to read intersections before they can read words.