Journalist and author Lisa Chamberlain has just been named executive director at the Forum for Urban Design in New York (outgoing director, David Haskell returned to journalism as deputy culture editor at NY Mag). Chamberlain is a regular contributor to the NY Times where she covers real estate with an emphasis on architecture, design and planning. She also has a book coming out this spring that we just love the name of: Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction (hear her talk about the sad financial state of Gen Xers with Brian Lehrer).

So what’s her plan in her new role? “I hope to take the Forum–a members organization of architects, planners, developers and related fields (journalism, academia, government)–to a new level,” she tells us.