Justin Davidson

Justin Davidson is the author of Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York, which paints a portrait of the city through its architecture, history, literature, art, music, and urbanism. He has been the architecture and classical music critic at New York magazine since 2007, writing about a broad range of urban, civic, and design issues. Before that, he spent twelve years as classical music critic at Newsday, where he also wrote about architecture and other cultural issues, ranging from gun ownership to television. He won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2002.

A native of Rome, Davidson graduated from Harvard and later earned a doctoral degree in music composition at Columbia. His TED Talk has been viewed more than 1.5 million times. He has appeared frequently on WNYC and NPR and written for many publications, including The New Yorker, Smithsonian, New York Times Book Review, Slate, Los Angeles Times, Departures, Condé Nast Traveler, W, Pursuits, and Travel and Leisure. Davidson has taught at Columbia University, the School of Visual Arts, and the Goldring Arts Journalism Program of Syracuse University.