NYU Furman Center Book Talk: Sidewalk Nation with Author Michael Pollack
Please join the NYU Furman Center for a book talk event:
Sidewalk Nation: The Life and Law of America’s Most Overlooked Resource
with
Author Michael Pollack
Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Faculty Development
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Date: Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. E.T.
Location: Furman Hall, Room 210
245 Sullivan Street, New York, NY, 10012
A light lunch will be provided. Seating is limited.
About the Book: Public infrastructure is as essential to our communities as it is easily overlooked. A case in point is the humble sidewalk: constantly taken for granted, yet linked to nearly every pressing issue of local governance in urban, suburban, and even rural areas. From commerce, taxes, and property rights to policing, homelessness, and surveillance; from free speech and socioeconomic equity to public health and climate resilience—sidewalks, surprisingly, are at the core of numerous major debates.
Sidewalk Nation offers a vivid travelogue spanning more than a dozen cities and towns across the United States to show how diverse communities are grappling with big challenges. Some are prosaic, if critical: How do we ensure that sidewalks facilitate mobility for disabled people? Whose job is it to clear snow from public space? And some touch on the most profound issues in law, including our rights under the First and Fourth Amendments. While traversing the country, Michael Pollack provides expert insight into the property, tax, and zoning laws that shape sidewalk management and land use more broadly. Offering a holistic vision for improving a vital resource, Pollack argues for reforms to ensure that local governments have both the obligation and the funding needed to give due attention to sidewalks and all that they offer.
Whether elected officials, civil servants, engineers, developers, or voters, everyone has a stake in the question of where sidewalks should be placed and how they should be used. Indeed, as Sidewalk Nation makes clear, what’s under our feet should be at the front of our minds as we decide how to build, regulate, and protect our neighborhoods.
About the Author: Michael Pollack is a Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Faculty Development. Prior to joining the Cardozo faculty in 2017, Professor Pollack was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and to Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, an attorney at the Department of Justice’s Federal Programs Branch in Washington, D.C., and a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.
Professor Pollack graduated with a J.D. summa cum laude from the New York University School of Law, where he was a Furman Scholar, and with a B.A. with highest honors from Swarthmore College. He teaches and conducts research primarily in the areas of property law, state and local government law, land use regulation, and administrative law to explore how local institutional decision-making and the public and private regulation of space affect people’s lives, wallets, health, satisfaction, and overall welfare.