Category Archives: Blog

(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 410: One Year of the Infrastructure Bill

December 1, 2022

This week we’re joined once again by Stephanie Gidigbi Jenkins and Helen Chin to talk about the one year anniversary of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. They chat about what they liked, the issue with capacity for applying for and implementing grants, transformative justice, and what states are actually doing well.

To listen to the episode, check it out at Streetsblog USA or the hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited transcript of the episode:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 409: Congressman Earl Blumenauer

November 16, 2022

This week we sit down with US Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon’s 3rd District at the Rail~Volution conference in Miami. We chat about the one year anniversary of the infrastructure bill, where we’re at with vision zero, the coming Farm Bill discussion, and the important connections between housing, transportation, and health.

You can find the audio of the show at Streetsblog USA or the hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited transcript of the discussion:

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Mondays 121: The Public Utility

November 15, 2022

This week we’re joined by The Greater Marin’s David Edmondson!  We talk about the importance of Time, whether  freight railroad tracks should be publicly owned and managed, and the boom in ridership on Van Ness.  We also talk a bit of Andor and the hill slums of Sierra Leone

Check out the show notes below the fold:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 408: California High Speed Rail Update

November 10, 2022

This week we’re joined by Northern California Director for High Speed Rail Boris Lipkin and Streetsblog San Francisco editor Roger Rudick to talk about high speed rail’s progress in California. Boris discusses what’s next for the High Speed Rail program, funding, and station design and Roger pushes back on recent negative media.

To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA’s podcast page or the Libsyn hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited transcript of this episode:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 407: A New World of Transportation Demand Management

November 2, 2022

This week we’re joined by Tien-Tien Chan of Nelson Nygaard and Jessica Roberts of Alta Planning and Design to talk about Transportation Demand Management or TDM. Tien-Tien and Jessica discuss how TDM acts as the soft side of transportation and the flip side of infrastructure and they dive deep into the different types of programs are employed.

To listen to this episode head over to Streetsblog USA or find it in our hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited transcript for the episode:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 406: Sidewalk Delivery Robots

October 26, 2022

This week we’re joined by Amanda Howell of Urbanism Next at The University of Oregon to talk about Sidewalk Robots. We chat about their study on sidewalk delivery robots with the Knight Autonomous Vehicle Initiative and what they learned about community engagement and small delivery vehicles on city sidewalks.

For the podcast audio, visit Streetsblog USA or our hosting site at Libsyn.

Below is a full unedited transcript of this week’s podcast.

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Mondays 120: Not So Self Driving

October 24, 2022

Happy Mondays! This week on Mondays at The Overhead Wire we dive into a number of topics including the hype around self driving cars, the monetary benefits of using parking spaces for more than just cars, recycling whole buildings, and thinking about community input.  We also throw in a little highway talk and parks on top of a Costco.

Below are the links from the news items:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 405: Yes to the City

October 19, 2022

This week we’re joined by Max Holleran to talk about his book Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing.  We talk about the rise of YIMBY vs NIMBY housing politics, the changes in housing activism, and how housing fights are going global.

To listen to this episode, find the audio at Streetsblog USA or our hosting site.

Below is a full unedited transcript of the show:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 404: The Public Wealth of Cities

October 13, 2022

This week we’re joined by Diana Ramirez, Executive Director of the Harris County Department of Economic Equity and Opportunity, former Salt Lake County Mayor and Congressman Ben McAdams, Matt Prewitt, President of RadicalxChange and Joel Rogers, Director of COWS at the University of Wisconsin Madison to talk about how cities can understand the public wealth owned by our cities. We talk about how cities can create inventories of existing assets to generate public wealth and how economic value can be harnessed for public good.

Two articles referenced in this show:

How To Harness Cities’ Hidden Public Wealth – NOEMA Magazine

Harris County putting billions of assets to public use – Urban Edge

Putting Assets to Work – Government Finance Officers Association

To listen to this episode, visit the podcast page at Streetsblog USA or find it on our hosting site.

Below is a full unedited transcript of the show:

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Mondays 119: The Happiest Commute

October 10, 2022

This week on Mondays Jeff talks about a whole host of articles from whether your commute makes you happy to if our economies are becoming less dynamic as they age.  Also what’s keeping you from returning to your office?  I bet childcare would help!  All that and more this week on Mondays!

Show notes are below the fold:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 402: Broward County Transportation

September 28, 2022

This week we’re joined by Broward MPO Executive Director Greg Stuart to talk about the history of Broward County, it’s connections to the rest of South Florida, the historic MAPS transportation plan, and how they are dealing with potential sea level rise and impacts of the pandemic.

This episode was produced in partnership with Rail~Volution.

To listen to this episode, go to Streetsblog USA’s podcast archive or our Libsyn hosting archive.

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Mondays 118: Interior Block Urbanism

September 26, 2022

This week on Mondays we cover a ton of ground including Transportation Insecurity, putting retail away from arterial streets, pattern book building, bad intersections, forced flood buyouts and much more!

Check out links in the show notes below:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 401: Health Gains for the Compact Walkable City

September 22, 2022

This week we’re joined by Billie Giles-Corti, Director of the Healthy Livable Cities Lab at RMIT,  Melanie Lowe of the University of Melbourne, and Geoff Boeing of USC to talk about their papers in The Lancet Global Health series on Urban Design, Transport, and Health. They chat about the importance of walkability to public health, why Sao Paulo Brazil connects policy and outcomes so well, and how cities can use the detailed indicators they’ve created including bus stop and intersection density to fill policy gaps that lead to positive health outcomes.

You can find the papers at The Lancet Global Health

or visit The Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities

To listen to this episode, go to Streetsblog USA or our hosting site at Libsyn.

Below is a full unedited transcript of this episode:

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Mondays 117: Convening with the Ancients

September 12, 2022

This week on the show I’m Han Solo again, but that won’t stop us from covering interesting news about cities from around the world!  We chat about Phoenix’s ancient canals, some of California’s potential new laws, Black migration, and making friends in sprawl.

Check out the show links and notes below:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 399: Ancient Cities and Energized Crowding

September 7, 2022

This week we’re joined by Michael E. Smith, Professor of Anthropology and Archeologist at Arizona State’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change.  We talk with Michael about his article in Aeon Magazine entitled Energized Crowding about life in early cities and neighborhoods.

To listen to this episode, you can find the show at Streetsblog USA or at our hosting site on Libsyn.

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Cars are Cholesterol: The Shirt

September 2, 2022

When I went into planning I never thought I would be self employed. I thought I’d work for a city or continue in the non-profit world. After my previous job at Reconnecting America, there was a short time where I wondered what I was going to do.  But after a while I started getting emails from folks who wanted to keep getting the newsletter I started there. I had also started a podcast with Tanya Snyder at Streetsblog USA and it seemed like a “media company” would come together.  I can’t believe that’s what this turned into but here we are and I couldn’t be more happy to be sharing information on cities as my job.

But it also allows me to be a bit more creative and think of new ideas for fun. One of those ideas was the “Bus Only” scarves. Another was the Audio Book Town Planning in Practice. And our Overhead Wire Book Club partnership with Bookshop.org is a way to share the books we read and talk with the authors about on the podcast with a larger audience.

Some folks have been asking for shirts and I have been thinking of a few ideas for a while.  So I wrote Richard Wezensky who I knew to be an amazing artist and we collaborated on a shirt that I think encompasses how cities and active transportation advocates are seeing the transportation landscape these days.  The result is a new shirt: “Cars are Cholesterol”.

The design is a heart made of a city and arteries that are clogged by cars. Richard did an amazing job and I really love how it all came together.

We’re selling the design as a shirt at TeePublic (you can also order stickers and mugs etc) and they are definitely good quality as you can see from the one I got below. The shirt will definitely help you start conversations at conferences or on the streets of your city. Get one today at our TeePublic shop and let me know what you think!

 


(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 398: The Arbitrary Lines of Zoning

September 1, 2022

This week we’re joined by Nolan Gray to talk about his new book Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. We talk about how cities were regulated before zoning, why state and national reforms are important and why zoning abolition should be the ultimate goal.

You can find audio for this show at Streetsblog USA or on our hosting site.

Below is a full unedited transcript of the show:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 396: Tech Won’t Save Transportation

August 18, 2022

This week we’re joined by author Paris Marx to talk about their book Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation. We talk about Technologists and the stories they tell themselves, Ursula K Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory, and Uber’s impact on labor laws.

To listen to this show visit Streetsblog USA or our find it at our hosting site.

Below is a full unedited transcript of the episode:

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(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 394: Let’s Go to the Mall!

August 3, 2022

This week we’re joined by architecture writer and journalist Alexandra Lange to talk about her book: Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. We chat about the evolution of the mall, equity and legal implications, and of course pop culture.

Listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or on our hosting page.

Below is a full unedited transcript of the episode:

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