(Photos by Steijn Leijzer, Nathan Dumlao, Nitish Meena and Colin Lloyd)
As 2025 unfolds, Next City will hold tight to its values — justice, honesty, openness, humanity and connection — and stay committed to supporting the work of our audience and their work.
This next year brings a new federal administration to the White House, continued war and genocide across the globe, and more people experiencing digital fatigue. That last one is important for urban planners to note. “This trend suggests a greater need to balance digital public engagement with face-to-face interactions, fostering meaningful communication and empathy within communities,” writes Jon DePaolis for the American Planning Association.
We can also anticipate cities and states stepping up in various ways for their residents and people and organizations implementing solutions to issues in their local communities. There are also a bunch of other predictions and forecasts about what else is expected this year. We can’t know for sure what the future holds and cover it all, but we plan to cover a lot. Here’s where our focus will be throughout 2025.
We’re going to deepen our coverage of transportation and mobility. From the expansion, capping and removal of highways to experimentation with mobility wallets and pedestrian safety, we’re interested in how municipalities and transit agencies are making transportation and mobility better and more accessible for people across communities.
We’ll also deepen our coverage of urban health. In 2024, we published stories about Black birth workers in Richmond, Virginia and access to reproductive care in Newark, New Jersey. As attacks on access to reproductive health continue, we’ll continue to follow these storylines and explore others related to mental, maternal and reproductive health and the social determinants of health.
How we’ll approach economic development. Oscar Perry Abello, Next City’s senior economic justice correspondent, points to seven coverage areas he’ll be paying attention to with a new federal administration coming into office. The first is mass deportations and the major negative consequences they might have for U.S. cities, “such as slower population growth and losing key segments of the workforce in crucial urban sectors like construction, hospitality and personal services.”
Big bank CEOs are excited about the next administration because they anticipate a friendlier environment. Abello will be keeping an eye on how regulations on them change and how a more favorable environment for big banks could impact small businesses, commercial real estate and the work of community banks. Also, will the second Trump administration prioritize updating CRA rules? Read about several other areas Abello plans to cover in 2025 (and beyond), such as Opportunity Zones, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund’s uncertain future and community development funding.
How we’ll approach housing and homelessness. In another one of our major beats, Roshan Abraham, Next City’s housing correspondent, outlined the issues he’s watching this year. This year, “state and local governments that have run against the limits of rezoning will have to look for ways to fund new housing, absent any meaningful federal funding,” Abraham notes. He’ll be paying attention to how they do that. Additionally, he’ll cover how tenant unions are fighting for repairs in federally regulated housing, the Department of Justice’s continued response to rental price-fixing, and if the Fed will raise interest rates and how that will impact housing construction and mortgages.
And with last year’s Supreme Court decision in Johnson vs. Grants Pass, which allows cities to ban encampments, we expect to publish more about organizing against the criminalization of homelessness and displacement.
We’ve hired an Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow who will cover solutions to displacement in cities across the United States. Communities across the United States increasingly feel the potential for displacement as the rapidly rising cost of housing dislocates people. But displacement can also be economic, cultural, social and political. It has its roots in a broad range of problems — climate change, the housing affordability crises, cycles of disinvestment followed by rapid investment. These drivers create environments where marginalized communities are particularly vulnerable, deepening pervasive health and racial inequities. This reporter will take an expansive approach to this beat, covering the solutions cities and urban changemakers are developing to combat displacement and foster inclusive growth.
We’re also launching The Ethical Urbanist, a reported advice column to answer your tough questions. It will explore the complex moral challenges that come up when working to make cities more liberated places. With rigorously researched insights and interviews with industry experts, The Ethical Urbanist examines not only the social, economic, and environmental pressures shaping urban life but also the moral dilemmas that urban practitioners face. If you have a question you want us to answer, complete this short survey to share with us.