This week on Talking Headways I’m joined by a big roster of guests to talk able about California’s climate legislation and how it will change transportation policy. Lauren Michelle of Policy in Motion and Kate White, Deputy Secretary for Environmental and Housing at the California State Transportation Agency, give us the lay of the land when it […]

This week we chat with Rodney Harrell of the AARP Public Policy Institute about their new Livability Index Tool. I ask him who the tool was created for and tell him why it should be regarded as more than just magazine clickbait. We talk about the robust policy tools that were included for each section […]

This week we’re joined by Trish Wallace and Jillian Harris, transportation planners at the City of San Antonio. Tune in and hear about the history of the San Antonio Riverwalk, the city’s bike master plan, and the inner workings of the SATomorrow Plan. Our discussion of San Antonio’s growth leads us to all sorts of Texas planning […]

This week we have Talking Headways alum Tanya Snyder back on the podcast to talk about a few things that were in the news over the last few weeks. We talk about all the new streets babies that have been born recently which leads to a discussion about living in cities with kids. We also […]

This week we’re talking with Brendan Wittstruck about St. Louis’s never built freeway, I-755, which he recently wrote about at Streetsblog member NextSTL. Brendan discusses the history of the project and how drawing lines on maps can be seductive to planners, who always have to be careful about trying to “fix” cities. He also talks about the racial politics of freeway […]

This week we’re joined by Eric Eidlin, a community planner and sustainability lead at the Federal Transit Administration. Over the last few years Eric has also been studying high-speed rail in Germany and France as a fellow with the German Marshall Fund. He recently published a report, “Making the Most of High-Speed Rail in California: Lessons from France and Germany.” Eric […]

This week’s guest is Janne Flisrand, an independent consultant and writer at Streets.mn. In her work as a “network weaver,” Janne thinks about how to elevate different voices and make sure everyone in a movement has a place to share their expertise and opinions. In this episode we talk about the importance of relationships in cities — between neighbors and between […]

Mary Newsom of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute joins me this week to discuss everything Charlotte, from its beginnings as a crossroads of Native American pathways to its current incarnation as a fast-growing metropolis. The enormous growth of the region, she says, includes a recent surge of suburban subdivisions that were lying in wait during the recession. Transit is expanding in Charlotte, […]

On this week’s podcast, Brooks Rainwater, director of the at the National League of Cities City Solutions and Applied Research Center, tells us about their new report, Shifting Perceptions of Collaborative Consumption, which gauges perceptions of city leaders on the sharing economy. What is the “sharing economy,” actually, and are companies like Uber and Lyft really a part of it? Hear […]

This week we’re joined by Tara Pham, a San Francisco native who took her talents to St. Louis for college and stuck around. She talks about her company CTY, which creates tools for tracking local data, and how living in St. Louis and the perception of neighborhoods led her and her friends to the idea of […]

This week I’m joined by Bruce Katz, vice president of the Brookings Institution and founder of its Metropolitan Policy Program. We chat about devolution in Great Britain –the idea of moving power away from national bureaucracies and towards metropolitan governance — and the power of metropolitan areas around the world. There is much that America could learn from […]

This week on the podcast, Dan Parolek of Opticos Design talks about their new website themissingmiddle.com, which explores housing types between high- or mid-rise buildings and single-family homes that cities don’t make much anymore. We get into Austin’s development code, Cincinnati’s walkable neighborhoods, and how people are often worried by the phrase “density,” then surprised by density designed well. Why are developers and bankers […]