In 2013 he was appointed Senior Fellow at the Center for Urban Real Estate in Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, to direct a pioneering research and conference initiative called Building the Digital City: Tech and the Transformation of New York.

Mr. Sanders' architecture, urban design, and development strategy projects include the Seaport Culture District, a coordinated program of seven installations in re-imagined indoor and outdoor spaces stretching across the South Street Seaport in Manhattan, sponsored by The Howard Hughes Corporation and activated by ten New York cultural partners including the AIA/NY Center for Architecture, Guggenheim Museum, American Institute of Graphic Arts/NY Chapter, Eyebeam, HarperCollins, and the Parsons School of Design; NYU Open House, a public event space and cultural center in Greenwich Village for New York University, "Seaport Past & Future" for General Growth Properties, and projects for the Related Companies, André Balazs Properties, South Street Seaport Museum, Ian Schrager Company, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, the Pershing Square Management Association in Los Angeles, and the Parks Council, where in the early 1980s he co-designed and co-developed the coordinated series of amenities—bookmarket, flower market, cafes—that initiated the revitalization of Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, an effort described by MIT's Susan Silberberg as “one of the most dramatic examples of successful place-making in the last half century.” Mr. Sanders' residential, commercial, and cultural design projects, for clients including New Yorker editor Bill Buford, the Columbia professor Edward W. Said, and the actress Molly Ringwald, have been featured in Interiors, Oculus, The Architect's Newspaper, The New Yorker, House Beautiful, The New York Times, and Architectural Digest, and have been exhibited at The Skyscraper Museum and the Museum of the City of New York.

In 2001, Sanders published his landmark study on the relationship of the city and film, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, which received an award from the Theatre Library Association in 2002, which was hailed as a "marvellous -- miraculous -- book" by the celebrated urbanist Jane Jacobs, and received unusually high praise from the film critic Richard Schickel in the Los Angeles Times: "Brilliantly acute...wonderfully informed and informative, Celluloid Skyline...is virtually without precedent...given its depth of research, the richly detailed elegance of its critical argument and, most important, its ability to expand and redirect the way we think....As [Sanders] observes, New York remains the single greatest locus…of American dreaming.

The new edition features two new chapters tracing the story of 21st century New York, new contributions by Adam Gopnik, Suketu Mehta and Ester Fuchs, and over 120 new illustrations, including the work of some of the city's most admired contemporary photographers.

[citation needed] His exhibition "Three Buildings," sponsored by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission and held at the CUNY Graduate Center, explored the architecture and urbanism of Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library, and the Times Tower.