This week, we're joined by planner Robin Renner, author of "Urban Being: Anatomy and Identity of the City." Robin talks about how living in a number of places around the world got him to think differently about cities — and how urban areas can be improved.

Let's face it, we can learn a lot from the Dutch!

This week's podcast — our 200th! — celebrates city life. To do that, we'll read, in full, "Urbanism as a Way of Life" by Louis Wirth from the Journal of Sociology in 1938, with help from Dr. Lisa Schweitzer, a professor at USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. Schweitzer believes this piece and others sometimes get overshadowed by Jane Jacobs but have something great to tell us about cities and how we live in them. So let's change that!

This week we’re joined by Nancy Andrews, former CEO of the Low Income Investment Fund (Liif). Nancy discusses her work in community development, poverty reduction strategies, breaking down institutional silos, and how the Bay Area Transit Oriented Housing fund works.

This week we're joined by Doug Farr, president of Farr Associates and author of Sustainable Nation. Doug tells us about the different patterns of urbanism he describes in the book, and how we can take a bottom-up approach to changing our cities. He also gives his take on the Burning Man festival and the "forced boredom" that induces great conversations, and discusses why Alexis de Tocqueville's 1835 work, Democracy in America, is still relevant today.

This week we're joined by Andrew Salzberg, head of transportation policy and research at Uber. Andrew talks about growing up in Montreal and his previous transportation work at the World Bank. We also chat about the importance of transportation policy at the city level and Uber's support for congestion pricing.

This week I chat with Susan Henderson of PlaceMakers about the use and benefits of form-based codes. A form-based approach to development codes can support transit and affect the feel and function of streets. Susan tells us why people might push back against form-based codes and how to frame conversations about their benefits.

This week Patrick Siegman of Siegman & Associates joins the podcast for spirited discussion about parking. We chat about the etymology of the word parking, the legend that is Donald Shoup, and why the topic of parking gets so personal.

This week, Mikael Colville-Andersen joins the podcast to talk about his book, Copenhagenize. Mikael tells us how his children influence his work and his feelings about bike culture. He also shares which innovations he believes help move bikes as transportation forward, and elaborates on his disdain for e-bikes and scooters -- which recently received a lot of pushback on social media.