Episodes

  • What The Election Means for Cities

    What The Election Means for Cities
    Nov 20 2024
    In this special episode, Next City’s editorial leaders share what they’re hearing from readers and listeners about resisting setbacks at the federal level and driving changes locally.
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    38 mins
  • On Making Appalachia Safer from Climate Change

    On Making Appalachia Safer from Climate Change
    Nov 6 2024
    “There's that R-word that wants to come up that I despise – resilience,” says Tiffany Sturdivant, executive director of Appalshop, a media, arts and community economic development organization that's been operating in the Kentucky mountains for more than five decades.

    “People are so strong….I think that's probably a testament to mountain people, right, or people anywhere who are disenfranchised and are just working with what they have. Use what you have until you can get more.”

    When you think about climate issues, your mind might go first to the coasts and rising sea levels. But climate issues in the middle of the country are also urgent – and the solutions being forged offer lessons for all of us, urban and rural alike. Appalachia reminds us that no matter where we’re from, our futures are linked—and we’re better when we work together to solve shared challenges.

    That's a critical lesson we took away at this year’s Vanguard conference in Kentucky, where we brought together 40 emerging leaders in urban Lexington and rural Berea to learn from the region's innovators and gain fresh perspectives. Today's episode features Kelsey Cloonan of Community Farm Alliance; Chris Woolery from the Mountain Association; Sturdivant from Appalshop; Baylen Campbell with Invest Appalachia; and Jeff Fugate, Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky, who works closely with communities on urban planning and development. Together, they unpack the ways communities here are addressing the impacts of climate change, while also honoring Appalachian values and strengths.

    This episode is part of the series we're bringing you from this year's Vanguard conference in Lexington, Kentucky, where our theme was exploring the dynamics of urban-rural interconnection.
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    46 mins
  • What Lexington Taught Us About Urban-Rural Interconnection

    What Lexington Taught Us About Urban-Rural Interconnection
    Oct 30 2024
    In today's episode, we're bringing you highlights from our conversations at this year's Vanguard conference in Lexington, Kentucky, where our theme was exploring the dynamics of urban-rural interconnection – not urban-rural divisions.

    We will explore how communities are stronger when we stand in solidarity, and when we learn from each other's experiences.We'll hear from Mandy Higgins, Executive Director at the Lexington History Museum; Mark Lenn Johnson, president of Art Inc. Kentucky; as well as Jim Gray, the former two-term Mayor of Lexington and Kentucky's current Secretary of Transportation, who went from living in a small town to leading the growth of one of the state's largest cities. With a population of over 320,000, Lexington is a model for how urban and rural can coexist, collaborate and thrive.
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    29 mins
  • Revisiting Lexington - "This ‘Big Town’ Has Solutions for Cities Everywhere"

    Revisiting Lexington - "This ‘Big Town’ Has Solutions for Cities Everywhere"
    Oct 23 2024
    This week, we’re revisiting an episode we released earlier this year, all about Lexington, Kentucky — a city where collaboration and creativity are transforming challenges into opportunities. In this episode, we highlighted how Lexington’s leaders are finding ways to foster nonpartisanship, boost civic engagement, and narrow the racial wealth gap.

    We’re bringing this episode back now because it offers a window into the themes we explored in even greater depth during our Vanguard conference, held in Lexington just last month. Over the next couple of weeks on this podcast, we’ll be sharing special episodes that bring you along with Next City to the conference.

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    28 mins
  • Why Urban Farms Should Be Taken Seriously

    Why Urban Farms Should Be Taken Seriously
    Oct 9 2024
    In Newark and across Essex County, New Jersey, urban farms do more than grow food — they're strengthening a community. But advocates say that convincing the state and local governments that these farms are worth investing in has not been easy.

    “At a local level, most urban farms, they don't own their land. It's borrowed from the city's adopt-a-lot program,” says Kimberly Izar, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Segregation, who has reported for us on urban farming in the region. “At any point, that means that the city can take away the land in favor of, let's say, like a luxury developer. Another thing is that the vast majority of New Jersey municipalities don't have zoning laws specifically for urban farms, which makes it really hard for your average urban farmer to carry out their operations.”

    To combat these challenges, Newark-based urban farming advocate Fallon Davis – who founded the education nonprofit STEAM Urban and its urban farming progam, and who heads the Black and Brown Indigenous Immigrant Farmers United – is working on a critical new set of policy recommendations for uplifting local urban farmers of color.

    “For black farmers, we don't have a right to farm in New Jersey. We're not even covered and protected” by the USDA's Right to Farm Act, which only covers farms with more than five acres, Davis argues. “And that is extremely discriminatory.”

    Read Izar's original reporting, published in collaboration with The Jersey Bee as part of our series on segregation in Essex County, here.
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    33 mins
  • Where Artists Are Taking Over Vacant Storefronts

    Where Artists Are Taking Over Vacant Storefronts
    Oct 2 2024
    The pandemic hollowed out our cities, leaving empty downtowns and office buildings in its wake. With galleries and art venues closed and disposable income at a low, the arts sector took a major hit.

    What if we killed two birds with one stone by using our cities' vacant commercial space as affordable artist studios and galleries? That's the idea behind Zero Empty Spaces. Since its launch in June 2019, the Florida-based organization has placed more than 600 artists in 10 commercial buildings in 10 cities. Most are in the group's home state of Florida but they've extended as far as Little Rock, Arkansas and Boston.

    “We now have what we believe to be the first art studio in the world in a former Burberry store – located next to a Louis Vuitton in the Natick Mall in Massachusetts, the largest mall in New England,” Evan Snow, co-founder of Zero Empty Spaces tells Next City. “Somebody is walking out of a Louis Vuitton store, spending tens of thousands of dollars and saying, 'Oh, what's this artist in the window doing here?' And we've had people buy artwork after leaving the Louis store.”

    Read the original Next City article, by Cinnamon Janzer, here.
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    29 mins
  • The Truth About Whether Speed Cameras Make Us Safer

    The Truth About Whether Speed Cameras Make Us Safer
    Sep 25 2024
    American roads are dangerous. The Department of Transportation reports that in 2021, nearly 43,000 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes. Of those, 7,388 were pedestrians. On Philadelphia's Roosevelt Boulevard, reckless driving and speeding in pedestrian zones have led the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to try a pilot program that allows speed cameras.

    On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Erick Guerra, associate professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, the lead researcher for a study looking into whether automated traffic enforcement has any effect on safety and on our traffic behavior. Based on the Roosevelt Boulevard pilot, the study concluded that the economic benefits of reduced crashes substantially exceed the total fines paid by violators.

    Not only has Philadelphia's program increased traffic safety while avoiding the disadvantages of increased police enforcement, revenue from the fines is also routed back into other traffic and pedestian safety projects; in 2021, the fines generated $22 million for such efforts.

    Speed cameras, like so many measures that inconvenience drivers, can be controversial in America. So the results of this pilot – and finding that speed cameras are actually making our city streets safer – is crucial to understand.

    “When people see things like, traffic fine violations, parking tickets, things like that, it can be frustrating – and particularly the idea that a city … is collecting revenue off of these violations, off of these fines,” Guerra says. “It's important to document that the benefits to society are much larger than those fines, in terms of the effects on collisions, injuries, fatalities.”

    Read the original article, by Next City reporting fellow Maylin Tu, here.
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    27 mins
  • These Loans Help Poor Families Rebuild After Climate Disasters

    These Loans Help Poor Families Rebuild After Climate Disasters
    Sep 18 2024
    When Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida in 2022, it was the third-costliest weather disaster on record worldwide. Damages totaled over $100 billion dollars. So you can imagine what that looks like, because we've all seen the images of communities across Florida and the Carolinas left grappling with the aftermath of climate disasters like this one—damaged homes, displaced families, and an unclear road to recovery.

    The wait for aid can stretch on for months. And that's where predatory lendors come in, offering loan terms with sky-high interest rates that mean risking your home and property as collateral.

    But the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund means new federal money is incoming to help support community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, fill in that gap and help vulnerable low- and middle-income people facing climate emergencies.

    In this episode of the Next City podcast, part of our CDFI Futures series in collaboration with Partners for the Common Good, we hear from the Solar Energy Loan Fund's Ann Vanek-Dasovich about how the fund allowed familites to start rebuilding immediately by offering them loans with zero-interest and no collateral; Beneficial State Bank's Jae Easterbrooks about how environmentally-conscious banking can help America's response to climate change; and Partners for the Common Good CEO Jeannine Jakokes about how CDFIs might be able to scale these solutions with new federal dollars on the way.
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    37 mins