About City Journal

City Journal is the nation’s premier voice of public policy, urban affairs, and civic life. Through its quarterly print magazine and daily digital coverage, City Journal offers incisive analysis, investigative reporting, and commentary. Since our first issue in 1990, we have covered New York extensively, and our work emphasizing proactive policing, public-order enforcement, economic freedom, welfare reform, educational choice, and sensible regulation proved integral to the city’s revival during the 1990s and 2000s.

Today, City Journal is a national, not just a local, force, with a nationwide readership and coverage that spans the country, examining policy, politics, and culture in cities, statehouses, and Washington alike. Our work has helped shape public debate on issues ranging from crime, homelessness, drug addiction, and education reform to immigration, free speech, gender ideology, and DEI. We have consistently defended the American ideal of a color-blind society against racialist ideologies and identity politics, arguing for equal treatment under the law rather than race-based preferences and discrimination.

Our writers have been at the forefront of many of the defining policy debates of recent years. We consistently warned that anti-policing campaigns would lead to rising public disorder and disproportionately harm the most vulnerable residents of American cities. We helped expose the ideological foundations of gender theory and pressed for an end to the medicalization of children. And from the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, we argued for a restrained public response, warning of the human and economic costs of prolonged lockdowns.

Because urban policy touches nearly every major domestic issue—and many of the defining questions of American culture and public life—City Journal has always viewed its mission broadly. Public officials across the country look to the magazine as a source of policy guidance. Our work is frequently adapted, excerpted, and debated by leading publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post to The Free Press and other major national outlets, extending the magazine’s reach to millions of readers. Throughout, City Journal has remained committed to the highest intellectual, journalistic, and literary standards, producing rigorous reporting and compelling writing for thoughtful readers.