A few weeks ago I was tidying my bookshelf and came across Michael Sorkin’s book All Over the Map, which I had forgotten I had (actually I may have borrowed it from a colleague – I promise to bring it back when the office reopens!). The book is a collection of his writings and in particular his columns for the Architectural Record magazine. Many of the pieces are about New York and they are full of his love of the city and the day-to-day gripes about the way it is being planned.

Only a few days after I had started reading these pieces, I woke up to an email from my friend Marianna in New York saying that Michael had died overnight, an early victim of covid-19. Marianna in her time has worked for both Urbed and Sorkin Studio and had arranged an interview with him only six months ago with my Urbed+ colleague Lucy Montague. The obituaries naturally focused on his architecture, but he was also a great, irascible, endlessly knowledgeable urbanist.

I recommend the book as reading for an urbanist in lockdown. Four weeks in and I’m really missing the real city, so the vicarious experience of reading about New York is some comfort. My pre-lockdown life used to involve a lot of time on trains, travelling down the west coast to London and to the towns and cities of the UK where I spent at least half of every week.

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