Opinionated, passionate, considerate, thorough: Curbed, a publication dedicated to actual property, city life, structure and design, strove for many years to element how the literal streets and neighborhoods of our cities advanced and adjusted, for higher and worse.
Since December 2025, a good portion of the location’s nationwide protection and huge community of city-specific beats has been taken offline, the most recent in a string of digital publications, different weeklies, and native media websites that stay tough or unattainable to entry attributable to possession selections.
Vox Media, the proprietor of Curbed, allowed a big portion of the location’s archives to go darkish and at the moment has no plans to revive them. It cites a change in its content material administration system as the explanation for pulling the plug.
A Vox spokesperson informed AN: “Vox Media just lately accomplished a migration of lots of its web sites from its proprietary Refrain CMS, which had powered Curbed, to WordPress, and not helps Refrain. When Curbed was folded into New York Journal in 2020, it started publishing on New York’s Clay CMS. We remorse that we don’t have an answer for publicly sustaining the Curbed archive. Anybody on the lookout for clips ought to contact [email protected].”
Just like the cities it chronicles, Curbed modified and advanced over time. It arrived in 2004 in New York Metropolis and shortly set itself aside with a gossipy, obsessive, and observant tone and tackle city life and actual property. The New York Metropolis website would seed comparable websites in lots of main cities: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
In 2013, Vox Media bought Curbed. This merger included the launch of a nationwide website devoted to extra criticism, options, residence design, and nationwide protection. In 2020, Vox Media re-launched Curbed as part of New York Journal, which it had just lately acquired. It subsequently shut down the opposite metropolis websites however stored the archive of the location’s pre–New York Journal period on-line. Right now Curbed continues to publish New York–centered tales; its editor, Sukjong Hong, is a former managing editor of AN.
This newest change signifies that 1000’s of now-historic regional urbanism tales will not be readable, linkable, and searchable. Like one of many many growth dramas coated by the publication, pleas in assist of historic preservation and the general public good appear to have been ignored by company decisionmakers.
Curbed’s editors knew there was a lot worth–culturally, traditionally, and civically–in having native reporters and critics doggedly comply with the ins and outs of growth, structure, design, and tradition. The websites primarily created a free archive of early–Twentieth century municipal historical past.
Beneath, former staffers, together with contributors, critics, and commentators, replicate on the worth and affect of Curbed, and what the lack of its archive means for historical past, criticism, and the bigger dialog round cities.
What They’re Saying
Inga Saffron, author and critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, AN contributor
I beloved Curbed and was a trustworthy reader, however I can’t put my finger on any particular story that I cited in my work. Among the finest issues about Curbed is that it gave me a bigger context to know the issues I used to be writing about in Philadelphia: housing affordability, gentrification, quick informal structure, and so forth.
I’ve been pondering loads nowadays concerning the worth of archives, what will get preserved and what doesn’t. As a result of I’ve been engaged on a e-book concerning the historical past of American newspaper buildings, I’ve been spending my days studying Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century newspaper tales, which have been preserved by the Library of Congress Chronicling America and Newspapers.com. I’ve additionally been visiting in-person archives. Each time I sit down at one of many large wood tables in certainly one of these locations, I really feel so grateful that someone within the deep previous had the foresight to chop out a crumbly piece of newsprint, stick it in an envelope and file it alphabetically. Archivists are heroes.
Who’s doing that for our digital manufacturing? It’s not simply the historic content material of internet sites like Curbed that’s being misplaced to future generations. A number of years in the past, the Inquirer was pressured to overtake its manufacturing system. Within the course of, just about each story printed earlier than 2016 was taken off the online. Happily, you possibly can nonetheless learn the print model on Newspapers.com, however the print pictures are often tremendously inferior to the online model. These archives are our civilization’s collective reminiscence. To lose them at a time when AI and dangerous actors are doing such harm to the historic file is heartbreaking.
Kelsey Keith, MillerKnoll artistic director, Curbed editor-in-chief 2015–20, AN Inside contributor
When a enterprise entity acquires a media outfit, they bear a duty to the general public to abide by the ethics of journalism. Which embrace the preservation of 1’s personal historical past of reporting. Eradicating 15 years of reported historical past on American cities, housing, structure, development, and actual property growth is an act of erasure. It’s not solely damaging to our collective historical past, it’s self-destructive to the integrity of Vox Media.
Diana Budds, former senior design author at Curbed, AN contributor
Our cities, and the key developments that form them, happen over years and many years—far longer than the breakneck information cycle. Curbed doggedly coated this beat at a time when native information was hollowing out. Importantly, this was writing and modifying from individuals who knew their cities like nobody else. It was additionally enjoyable to learn. I’d like to share essays from authors like Roxanne Homosexual on tiny homes and the shrinking American dream of residence possession, Taffy Brodesser-Akner on the existentialism of selecting paint colours, and Pulitzer Prize–winner Alexandra Lange on the units of Succession, however the hyperlinks to them have disappeared. It’s a disgrace that turning off a content material administration system signifies that a historical past of thought associated to design, structure, and cities disappears.
Vanishing information is simply half of the issue. When reliable, simply searchable sources not exist, we’re left with opaque algorithms that combination content material from web sites that require a staggering quantity of discernment to parse—if readers even trouble to make that effort. This isn’t distinctive to Curbed, however the lack of its archive is an particularly seen symptom of broader adjustments to the media panorama. Reasonably priced housing, transportation justice, and points associated to public area have an effect on each single particular person and whereas the legacy of our present-day expertise extends additional than the lifespan of a digital platform, a lacking chunk disconnects us from our historical past. It’s disempowering. If we will’t form our future from an knowledgeable perspective, whose future will we ultimately reside in?
Kate Wagner, The Nation structure critic, creator of McMansion Hell, AN contributor
I wasn’t a staffer at Curbed, however I used to be on retainer from 2017 up by means of the pandemic. I wrote a column for the outdated Curbed concerning the intersection of structure and mainstream tradition, primarily by means of mass media tv reveals and emergent design tendencies. I suppose I’d describe it as being an architectural tradition critic. Curbed was the primary place I ever printed exterior of my very own blogs and web sites. It’s primarily what took me from being a humor blogger to being a severe voice in architectural media and was my first expertise working on this planet of journal publishing. My editor Sara Polsky was nice at her job and the primary one who ever took a purple pen to my work and who in the end made it higher, and the remainder of my work higher by exhibiting me what actual modifying may seem like. I can’t overstate how pivotal and important Curbed was to my formation as a author and thinker. I lower my enamel there, and my enamel are sharp now.
I’m devastated by the lack of data, experience and work on behalf of so many writers and thinkers, work that has been tossed within the web garbage can, by whom I have no idea. So a few years of wealthy documentation of adjustments in city life throughout every of the city sections, and, by extension an archive of growth all through the 2010s. I’m honored to have written for Curbed throughout that period. It’s laborious to think about a world with out it.
Alexandra Lange, Curbed structure critic 2015–20
I’m fighting this query as a result of I’m not able to put Curbed, and the free, simply accessible Curbed archives, prior to now tense. The wonderful thing about Curbed was the idea that editors like Kelsey Keith, Amy Plitt, Sara Polsky, and Asad Syrkett (to call those I labored with most regularly) had {that a} vast common viewers was taken with historical past and criticism and snark about design. I used to be the primary Curbed structure critic, a place that had traditionally solely been related to legacy media, and so they all helped me determine adapt the position for a digital platform, reworking the scope of the place from one centered on one metropolis to at least one centered on bigger forces of city change—which is the place the vast majority of structure criticism has traveled right now. It was by no means sufficient to say, “Little Island is a dumb thought,” however as an alternative that modern panorama design has grow to be more and more fussy, that the sort of parks billionaires need to put their names on aren’t doing the job of a public park, and that the town goes to finish up holding the (fancy little designer) bag.
I received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2025 for a collection I wrote for Bloomberg Citylab. A number of of these tales have been immediately preceded by work I did for Curbed that’s now offline, together with “No loitering, no skateboarding, no dishevelled pants” and “A journey to Isamu Noguchi’s final work.” You don’t get good at this job with out observe and editors who allow you to take dangers, and Curbed gave me each.
Lastly, I’m aggravated as a someday architectural historian that taking this archive offline goes to make that work tougher and doubtlessly obscure the rise of a number of feminine critics—me, but additionally Karrie Jacobs, Alissa Walker, Diana Budds, and extra.
AJ LaTrace, former Curbed Chicago editor
In the course of the growth increase that adopted the Nice Recession, Curbed’s metropolis websites grew to become major, real-time information of city change throughout the nation.
In Chicago, as dozens of recent resort high-rises, workplace buildings and residence towers reshaped the skyline—and as millennials flooded into the town and legacy firms returned downtown—Curbed tracked proposals, revisions, and development by means of detailed maps and ongoing protection, usually lengthy earlier than initiatives have been accomplished. Alongside busy corridors just like the West Loop and Milwaukee Avenue, the location documented growth and housing pipelines in a approach no different outlet persistently did. This wasn’t only a file of buildings, however of change because it occurred.
By way of early-access, magazine-quality photograph excursions, aspirational residence options, and explanatory reporting, Curbed gave readers firsthand perception into how areas have been designed, marketed, and lived in—whereas additionally serving as an on-ramp for rising voices in structure and design criticism. On the similar time, Curbed captured the social and political texture surrounding development: metropolis council conferences, neighborhood zoning fights, mega-developments, preservation battles, and civic rituals—together with Chicago’s notorious parking dibs.
With reporting learn with equal depth by critics, builders, and on a regular basis residents—and a remark part feared equally by aldermen and designers—Curbed functioned as a shared civic reference level. Dropping this archive dangers erasing a major supply file of how the town modified—and the way individuals understood that change in actual time.
Alissa Walker, Curbed urbanism editor and critic 2016–20, AN contributor
It’s notably puzzling as Curbed itself will not be useless, but all of the backlinks in its tales now are?
Christopher Hawthorne, senior critic on the Yale College of Structure and proprietor of the Punch Record e-newsletter and web site
Again within the day, after I was working on the Los Angeles Occasions as its structure critic, the native Curbed website wasn’t all the time factually dependable or particularly type to me personally. (IIRC after I was promoting my home in 2012 in Eagle Rock, an absurdly tiny hillside bungalow on two parcels I purchased in useless hopes of changing it with a four-unit undertaking, they ran an merchandise that included inside pictures with totally standard staged furnishings, within the “Stay Chuckle Love” vein, from an organization employed by our agent—however with out noting and even inquiring about that truth, leaving me to be completely flayed within the feedback for my design style.) However the website was nonetheless an indispensable useful resource not only for its full of life editorial voice however as a counterweight, ideologically and in any other case, to the slow-footed dominance of my employer, and the sometimes-retrograde politics of its flagship day by day, within the Southern California publishing panorama. I feel again on that iteration of Curbed as one of many final manifestations of a second when it nonetheless appeared attainable (slightly than terribly naïve) that the web could be a drive for diversification and democratization in media (slightly than their deeply miserable opposites). And in a bigger sense after all it’s a blow to collective reminiscence and native historical past when digital archives of this type—nonetheless a lot Hawthorne-chiding snark they include!—disappear from public view.
Samantha Weiss-Hills, former Curbed contributor, present Domino Journal managing editor
I wrote the Home Calls column at Curbed for almost two years; it was printed throughout the town websites since we featured areas all through the U.S., and generally overseas. Below such fantastic and astute editors as Kelsey Keith, Asad Syrkett, and Mercedes Kraus, I felt invested in all of the methods you hope as a freelancer—to be a extra observant author, search out extra unique tales, and be a greater editor myself. The position solidified that my favourite subject is the house and its inhabitants and allowed for a extra artistic method to the shape: to have a look at residence excursions like profiles as an alternative of simply describing structure and interiors.
Once I came upon that the archives had been taken offline, particularly with out clear communication to writers, editors, and varied contributors, it felt like a intestine punch. To lose years of labor straight away, particularly such private tales, underscores the precarity that journalists working within the digital area face right now.
Brock Keeling, former Curbed San Francisco editor
Past the insult of stripping bylines from writers navigating a collapsing job market, the erasure of Curbed archives is a blow to historic information. For the Bay Space and San Francisco, the area I known as my beat, important tales have merely vanished into the digital void.
We’ve misplaced Chris Roberts’s exposé on the toxic-waste coverup in Hunters Level (San Francisco’s predominantly Black neighborhood), in addition to the late Alice Wong’s important reporting on how wildfires and insurance policies have an effect on disabled denizens. Sensible sources—guides on utilizing transit, biking, and making use of for reasonably priced housing—have disappeared, the latter proving as elusive because the housing itself. Adam Brinklow’s interviews with lawmakers of housing-starved Palo Alto have evaporated. Alexandra Lange’s important assessment of Apple’s UFO-shaped headquarters is gone; it needs to be required studying for tech and design college students. Misplaced, too, are the deep dives into SF’s design language, from residential structure to subway Brutalism to Flintstones-shaped mansions, together with insights from marquee figures like Kara Swisher and Marc Benioff.
This isn’t solely a lack of content material, however a breach of public belief. Each quotation to those deeply reported items is now a useless hyperlink, rendering months and years of analysis ineffective. This mass deletion creates a vacuum the place misinformation can flourish, permitting less-than-noble pursuits to step in and rewrite a area’s narrative within the absence of a factual file. It’s greater than a bummer for a handful of so-called coastal elites; it’s the intentional dismantling of native histories.
Jay Koziarz, Curbed Chicago 2016–20
My tenure at Curbed Chicago coincided with a development increase that peaked with 60 tower cranes dotting the skyline—a pointy distinction to right now with fewer than 10. On the time, Curbed’s city-based reporting allowed readers to trace how their constructed surroundings was evolving, with an method that was each incremental and extremely contextualized.
The work was grounded actually however infused with a wholesome dose of levity and occasional criticism, which stored readers engaged in a approach actual property enterprise trades or buttoned-up design journals by no means may. Town websites didn’t method the constructed surroundings as an summary idea or educational train however slightly wrote about what was actually occurring on the readers’ personal block.
The Curbed community of websites allowed native tales to be amplified by means of a wider nationwide lens, exploring points in design, growth and urbanism. What may a seemingly inconsequential authorized battle over a controversial stretch of protected bike lanes train readers exterior of that particular neighborhood? Rather a lot, truly, when coated and framed correctly.
With actual, flesh-and-blood reporters on the bottom in cities throughout the nation, Curbed leveraged its community to localize nationwide tendencies whereas concurrently elevating native tales to a nationwide stage. I felt a definite sense of accomplishment every time certainly one of my city-focused tales was picked up by the broader community—it affirmed what was occurring in my metropolis mattered not solely to individuals like me who lived and labored there, but additionally to the broader nationwide, and even world, dialog.
Asad Syrkett, Curbed deputy editor 2015–19
Many will (rightly) speak about Curbed and its day-one snark and humorousness. However let’s get some commotion for its selection: Below Kelsey Keith, a (excellent) actual property weblog additionally grew to become an formidable place for tales about city planning and growth, interiors and structure, quizzes (good day 2016 digital media) and criticism. In design media, it was one-of-a-kind. So grateful for the time I had there and the editors, writers, and reporters I bought to study from.
Michael Abrahamson, assistant structure professor, College of Utah
I’m at the moment working a seminar the place we’re specializing in the work of Alexandra Lange. A number of her work initially appeared in Curbed. I’ve a syllabus with explicit texts that I need my college students to learn, simply to get a way of the breadth of various tones and approaches that somebody who calls themself a critic would possibly take. You may learn it on the Web Archives, however the formatting is all tousled, the pictures generally received’t seem, and the hyperlinks are useless. It limits your understanding of what the context is and the way you need to situate this piece of writing.
Not simply Alexandra’s writing, however all writing there is a vital doc of a decade of vital writing on structure, which is in brief provide. I used to be pursuing a grasp’s diploma in criticism in 2009, 2010, and that was the second when individuals have been nervous about the way forward for structure criticism. This was a time when blogs have been alive and effectively however no one was getting paid. I really feel like Curbed was one of many locations the place individuals began to get some revenue for doing this work. From a historian’s perspective, if individuals begin writing a historical past of the 2010s with out entry to all that writing, I don’t know what we’re going to put in writing about.
Lockhart Steele, Curbed cofounder
It’s simply one other reminder of the fleeting nature of life, and the web. Ashes to ashes, bits to mud.
Patrick Sisson is a Los Angeles–based mostly author and reporter centered on the tendencies, tech, and design behind cities right now. He’s a former contributor to Curbed.
