This week on Talking Headways we’re joined by Erin Clark, Chief Real Estate Investment Officer of the Denver Housing Authority. We chat about the redevelopment of Sun Valley, a public housing project built in the 1950s that is being reinvigorated by new investments in public housing, parks, and community. This podcast was produced in partnership

The philanthropic wing of America’s largest Medicaid insurer has pledged $1B towards affordable housing by offering below market loans to a development partner. As noted in the Forbes article, 80% of health outcomes are driven by what happens outside the doctors office and are often referred to as the social determinants of health. Dr. Mindy

This week we’re joined once again by Jarrett Walker to talk about the release of the revised edition of his influential book Human Transit. We chat about Ursula Le Guin, expanding access to opportunity, how to think about transit riders, the free transit movement and thoughts on anger as a response to change. To listen

First before I share today’s thoughts, just wanted to let everyone know we passed 100,000!! links in the news archive. Since 2013 we’ve been collecting and tagging the links we share in the newsletter and now it is over 100,000 items tagged by topic and city in our archive that’s available to subscribers. We’re working

This week we’re Han Solo but have a lot of news to cover including items on skateboarding, new types of segregation, third places, and some ancient ways to cool cities and streets. Check out the show notes below for more information.

An interesting paper about growth in big cities compares housing construction and prices between Texas and California. What researchers found is that housing construction costs are much cheaper as cities continue to sprawl, as California did up until the 90’s and Texas continues to do now, but once that is constrained either by distance to

This week we’re joined by Megan Kimble to talk about her book City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways. We chat about the folks fighting back against highways, the history behind building big roads, and what the future looks like for advocacy. To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or our

First let me offer a super congrats to Elaine Clegg on getting nominated to the Amtrak Board! Very exciting. Second, today a piece in Grist jumped out at me, especially after sharing yesterday’s article about a new way to measure GDP around health and happiness by Lloyd Alter. The Grist article discussed the use of

Back in August we shared a paper on state capacity that was written up in The American Prospect that basically said when transportation departments are looking to resurface roads, the places with more public sector capacity are likely to have more bids and lower construction costs. I thought at the time it’s something that likely

This week were sharing part 2 of our discussion with Jim Kumon. We chat about the challenges of development, how to crowdfund a building, coming to the end of an 80 year economic cycle, how the built environment is an outcome of how we structure capital, and how more information can make it harder to