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Category Archives: Blog

Mondays 178: Subways for Cats

September 1, 2025

This week we’re Han Solo but have a lot of great news to share. We talk about the smartest city in the world, Toronto’s TOD ambitions, electric car range and much much more! Below are items we shared on the show:


(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 547: The Menace of Prosperity

This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by professor Daniel Wortel-London to discuss his new book The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1875–1981.  We talk about urban growth and missed opportunities by reformers to allow cities to capture more of their value. We discuss Henry George


Privatizing Profits from Use of Public Land: A Robotaxi Story

As Waymo vehicles saturate San Francisco, I’ve had an unnerving frustration with them that I can’t quite pinpoint. Backers of autonomous technology give endless benefits that we should be expecting from a transition to vehicles without human drivers. Safer streets, safer travel experiences in a vehicle, and greater efficiency. Though as Peter Norton notes, we’re


(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 546: Designing and Delivering Bike Networks

This week we’re joined by Ryan Russo, Executive Director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). Ryan shares with us more wisdom from the revised Urban Bikeway Design Guide and discusses the transformation of street systems and managing space for people and deliveries. NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide Online | Physical Book Urban


The Smart City of Your Imagination

August 19, 2025

I’m currently reading Daniel Wortel-London’s book The Menace of Prosperity which goes deep into many of the possible alternative ways New York could have adopted more egalitarian economic development structures. Rather than allow public property to generate value, the land owning voters and machine politicians sold the city’s land and bonded to within inches of


Mondays 177: Cars Heat the City

August 18, 2025

This week we’re Han Solo on Mondays but we’ve got a lot of news and information for you! We cover the bipartisan housing bill, the impact of new housing stock on older rentals, disgust for density, the car colors that make cities hotter and much more! Check out the show notes below!


(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 545: The Powerless Brokers

This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined once again by Colin Parent of Circulate San Diego to discuss a new report entitled The Powerless Brokers: Why California Can’t Build Transit. We talk about permitting delays and reforms, public sector capacity, and giving transit authorities more authority. Listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA


The Underrepresentative MPO

August 12, 2025

I’ve always felt Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) underrepresented major cities and population centers around the country, leaving us with boards that were more likely to care about how to go through a city than how to get to it or move around in it. I feel like that’s how we’ve gotten a lot of these




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