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.

“A rare civic writer who actually reads the room — and then redraws it.

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.

“The Weight of Pavement is the book that should have come out ten years ago, and the one we can finally use now.

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.