Living for the City

In a wrap-up session at the end of an 18-month of field work, four participating cities report out on their work to invest in low-income city residents while financing public infrastructure Pittsburgh, Saint Paul, the District of Columbia and San Francisco - field-tested collaborative approaches to paying for things that cities need. Guests on this episode: Jen Meyer, Infrastructure Finance Advisor, Living Cities Seth Miller Gabriel, Director, Office of Public-Private Partnerships, District of Columbia Elizabeth Reynoso, Associate Director, Living Cities Kristin Saunders, Transportation Planner, Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, City of Pittsburgh, PA Wes Saunders-Pierce, Water Resource Coordinator, City of Saint Paul, MN Kristen Scheyder, Senior Program Officer, Citi Foundation Brian Strong, Chief Resilience Officer, City and County of San Francisco, CA

Three cities – Philadelphia, Louisville and Nashville – have served as laboratories of behavioral science, human-centered design and public entrepreneurship for the last several years as part of the City Accelerator, an initiative of Living Cities and the Citi Foundation to improve the lives of low-income urban residents. The first in a special series of three pop-up podcasts that capture key learnings from Philadelphia, Louisville, and Nashville - the first three cities to graduate from the City Accelerator. 

The second in a special series of three pop-up podcasts that capture key learnings from Philadelphia, Louisville, and Nashville - the first three cities to graduate from the City Accelerator. Guests in this episode: Theresa Reno-Weber, Chief of Performance and Technology in Louisville Metro Government Kristine LaLonde, Former Chief Innovation Officer for Nashville, who now serves as Associate Dean for the College of Leadership and Public Service at Lipscomb University Marisa Goren Waxman, Deputy Chief Revenue Collections Officer, City of Philadelphia

The third in a special series of three pop-up podcasts that capture key learnings from Philadelphia, Louisville, and Nashville - the first three cities to graduate from the City Accelerator.  There is a hunger out there for people to see their government working. It’s important to do it differently than the typical – i.e. you’re mandated by some federal rule that you have to have a public hearing, and you have these really long notices that have all this legalistic language to get people to come to a community meeting, and then somebody reads from a PowerPoint display. That’s just awful. To change the engagement with the public around how we talk about our ideas and what we're trying to do, that aspect and the energy it generated, I think has been surprising to me.