Dear Colleagues, As the election season comes to a close, we have spent the last month considering both the range of challenges successfully overcome by the Bloomberg administration, those that should be continued, and those that have yet to be addressed. The candidates have said there is "more to be done," and we agree - more affordable housing, more investment throughout the five boroughs, and more innovative ways to make our city healthier for all age groups and populations. In our meetings with those running for elected office we have stressed the expertise of the architectural community and the value we will bring to informing their policies. We have been encouraged by invitations to bring together experts in sustainability, resiliency, design, and economic development. As people read through our "Platform for the Future of the City," the feedback we hear is that the format is clear and the message and topics of critical importance. We hope you have read it as well - please contact Jay Bond, AIANY policy director, if you would like a copy. On our "top 5" list for city officials, we cite creating affordable housing; infrastructure investment; streamlining approvals; healthy city initiatives; resiliency and sustainability. Always intended as a "living document," we hope to build upon these ideas, add to and delete as necessary, to keep our focus relevant over the coming year. We were particularly gratified to see Michael Kimmelman refer to our platform in his recent New York Times article, "Building a Better City," noting our proposal for a deputy mayor of planning and design to elevate this focus and to provide greater coordination among the many agencies involved in urban planning and development. In addition, earlier this month, Rick Bell, FAIA, AIANY executive director and I spoke to city & state about our platform. One key challenge facing the new administration will be the allocation of funds coming to the region as a result of Superstorm Sandy, and how they are distributed to guarantee that we build back better and smarter. We sponsored the FAR ROC competition, which yielded four exceptional design solutions for an affordable, mixed-use resilient community on 80 acres along the Far Rockaway coast. The winning team, announced at our Heritage Ball, was Swedish firm White Arkitekter + Gensler + Arup. We truly hope that Enterprise, Bluestone, L+M, and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) will move forward to implement this innovative solution. We have also honed our message on the importance of design. Looking back over the past 12 years, the bar has been raised on New Yorkers' expectations. The transformational success of so many projects, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Via Verde housing in the Bronx, and the Highline to name a few, are all tied to design vision, quality and innovation, blending the talents of multiple disciplines - engineers with architects, landscape designers with urban planners, environmental experts and urban sociologists. As I speak around the globe, people are truly interested in what we see as the future of New York. Most of the world now lives in cities, and our policies, particularly our healthy city initiatives and our focus on resiliency, are well received and widely studied. Finally, I hope everyone enjoyed AIANY's third annual month-long celebration of architecture and design, Archtober. This year, 54 organizations participated in 25 exhibitions, 29 tours and 163 calendared events all focused on design. Archtober opened with our new exhibition at the Center for Architecture titled "Practical Utopias: Global Urbanism in Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo," showcased 31 exceptional "buildings of the day," celebrated architecture in the "New York New World" Subway Show at West 4th St., and concluded with an exceptional talk on Building Seagram, the new book by Phyllis Lambert, client for this timeless landmark in N.Y.C. Jill Lerner, FAIA, is the 2013 president of the AIANY, New York, N.Y.