Michael Al-Rashid is a journalist and urban planner whose work explores how cities reveal our private lives in public. Born in Dearborn, Michigan, he studied engineering at Wayne State University before earning a master's in urban planning from Columbia and a journalism degree from NYU. He reports on housing, public space, and civic conflict, and also writes fiction that turns the mechanics of urban systems into intimate, high-pressure stories.
His reporting has appeared in City Limits, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, and he has consulted on community engagement for small cities across the Northeast. A recipient of the Urban Reporting Fellowship from the Metro Policy Lab and a Front Page Award for feature writing, he is the author of the nonfiction works Sidewalk Atlas, Metered, and Last Rites for Bleecker. His fiction, including the thriller Lantern: An Inventory, extends his preoccupations with infrastructure, surveillance, and neighborhood memory into narrative form.
Michael Al-Rashid teaches adjunct courses in participatory planning at Pratt Institute and lives in Brooklyn with his partner and an elderly rescue mutt that insists on walking the long way home.
