To our valued subscribers,

Thank you for supporting us these past nine years. As you heard through our newsletter, we are tremendously excited about launching our new subscriber-only online content in the spring.

Over the past six months since publishing Issue No. 31, Next American City’s staff, board and advisers have considered various strategies to continue to produce influential content, engage the next generation of urban leaders, take advantage of new media technology and become increasingly self-sustaining. We asked ourselves: Should we keep printing magazines, or should we dive into digital media that will enable us to spend more money on producing content rather than on paper and distribution?

Ultimately, we think now is the right time to invest heavily in digital media so that our content has the greatest impact and better connects cities and the people working to improve them. Our new weekly long-form online product, Forefront, does just that.

Forefrontstories will be delivered to your inbox and will cover the topics of transportation, planning, housing, education, cultural affairs and the economy, not only in the United States but in cities around the world. In the coming months we will also be making changes to our site to begin curating material provided by local urban affairs outlets such as City Limits, The New York World, The Transport Politic, The Lens and many others around the country. We think you will find both the content, design and user interface groundbreaking.

While the main content on americancity.org will continue to be free, we will be putting the premium Forefront content behind a paywall that only subscribers can access.

• Current Next American City subscribers with more than four issues left in their subscription will receive a year-long subscription to Forefront.

• Subscribers with four issues remaining in their subscription will receive a subscription for eight months of Forefront.

• Subscribers with three issues remaining in their subscription will receive a subscription for six months of Forefront.

• Subscribers with two issues remaining in their subscription will receive a subscription for four months of Forefront.

• Subscribers with one issue remaining in their subscription will receive a subscription for two months of Forefront.

All subscribers will receive instructions on how to redeem these subscriptions in March 2012, in advance of the launch of our new site.

Next American City can issue refunds to people who have subscribed since July 2011. To be refunded, please send an email to paypal@americancity.org with the word “refund” in the subject line by January 31, 2012. We would be truly sad to see you go and hope you will re-subscribe next spring.

Anyone who has purchased back issues of the magazine but not yet received material will receive copies in January.

If you have questions or concerns about the situation, please send them to me at diana@americancity.org, or feel free to comment below. We value your opinion and appreciate your patience. Next American City is a small, independent organization and while we aim to match established publishers in terms the quality of our content, we can’t match the scale of their operations. We apologize if you have been frustrated by a lack of communication lately, but know that you’ll be hearing from us much, much more frequently in the future and that we aim to respond to all of your concerns in the coming weeks.

Sincerely yours,

Diana Lind

Diana Lind is the former executive director and editor in chief of Next City.