For most of the nineteen-seventies, the official route map of the New York City subway system was a beautiful thing.

He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City. Paul Goldberger has also written The City Observed: New York The Skyscraper On the Rise: Architecture and Design in a Post-Modern Age Above New York and The World Trade Center Remembered. They are the parents of three sons: Adam a composer for film and television in Los Angeles; Ben a Senior Editor at Time magazine in New York and Alex senior Olympics researcher at NBC Sports.

From 1997 to 2011 he was the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker where he wrote the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City.