Vanderbilt was born in Oak Forest, Illinois and raised in Wisconsin, he now resides in Brooklyn, New York. He is married to Jancee Dunn, a former features writer for Rolling Stone.

A freelancer, Vanderbilt has contributed articles on a broad range of subjects encompassing design, technology, science, and culture to such publications as Slate, Wired, The London Review of Books, Artforum, The Financial Times, Rolling Stone, New York Times Magazine, Harvard Design Magazine, Cabinet, Metropolis, The Wilson Quarterly, and Popular Science.

He is also a contributing editor of I.D. and Print.

In 2002 he published his first full length book, Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America. H-Net Reviews said of the book, "Survival City offers an insightful exploration of the ruins of atomic America that demands attention in our current moment. In the poignant aftermath of September 11 the futility of Cold War architecture suggested throughout the book takes on new resonance."

After three years of research, in 2008 he released Traffic which, according to the publisher Knopf’s promotional material, had a first run printing of 150,000 copies and was a feature of Book of the Month Club. The Wall Street Journal called Traffic, “a fascinating survey of the oddities and etiquette of driving”. The Boston Globe wrote, "He found no serious general books about [driving] but did find a mountain of research. So for three years he immersed himself in the subject, traveled around the world, interviewing drivers, researchers, and traffic engineers. With almost 90 pages of footnotes, the book is a bottomless compendium of research."

He is also a contributing writer for the blog Design Observer. He has his own blog, How We Drive, which continues his findings about the sociology of driving.

As author

• The Sneaker Book: Anatomy of an Industry and an Icon, The New Press, 1998
• Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002
• Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), Knopf, 2008

As contributor

He has also contributed to a number of books, including:

• Season’s Gleamings: The Art of the Aluminum Christmas Tree, Melcher Media, 2004 (afterword)
• Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age, The MIT Press,
• Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler, W.W. Norton,
• Boob Jubilee: The Mad Cultural Politics of the New Economy (W.W. Norton), and
• The World and the Wild (University of Arizona Press).

Online articles

• Harvard Design Review, It’s a Mall World After All: Disney, Design, and the American Dream, , Fall 1999
• New York Times, Walker in the Wireless City, November 24, 2002
• Slate, Courier, Dispatched: How the U.S. State Department put the kibosh on the typewriter font., February 20, 2004
• Slate U.S. Army's New ClothesWhy has the Army redesigned its uniforms?, Sept. 8, 2004
• The Guardian Is this Bush's secret bunker?, August 28, 2006