Podcast appearances and mentions of Jane Jacobs

Jane's Walk terá edição no próximo sábado, dia 31, às 14 horas. Foi um rio que passou em minha vida – Cidade e Rios. Inspirado pelas ideias da ativista urbana Jane Jacobs, o movimento Jane's Walk surgiu em 2007 como uma homenagem à sua visão de cidades mais humanas e participativas. Celebrando a sua terceira edição, a Jane's Walk Santa Cruz do Sul é organizada pelo Grupo de Pesquisa e Estudos Urbanos e Regionais – GEPEUR do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Desenvolvimento Regional da Universidade de Santa Cruz do Sul (UNISC). A caminhada abordará o tema Cidade e Rios, tendo um percurso plano de 3,6 Km (ida e volta) e um olhar atento ao bairro Várzea/Navegantes que foi atingido pela grande enchente de 2024. Caminhada será no próximo sábado, dia 31, a partir das 14 horas com início na Escola Guido Herberts. Roteiro segue pelo bairro falando sobre a enchente, com depoimentos de moradores do Bairro Várzea. A atividade encerra por volta das 15h45 no Campo de futebol Navegantes.

Jane's Walk terá edição no próximo sábado, dia 31, às 14 horas. Foi um rio que passou em minha vida – Cidade e Rios. Inspirado pelas ideias da ativista urbana Jane Jacobs, o movimento Jane's Walk surgiu em 2007 como uma homenagem à sua visão de cidades mais humanas e participativas. Celebrando a sua terceira edição, a Jane's Walk Santa Cruz do Sul é organizada pelo Grupo de Pesquisa e Estudos Urbanos e Regionais – GEPEUR do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Desenvolvimento Regional da Universidade de Santa Cruz do Sul (UNISC). A caminhada abordará o tema Cidade e Rios, tendo um percurso plano de 3,6 Km (ida e volta) e um olhar atento ao bairro Várzea/Navegantes que foi atingido pela grande enchente de 2024. Caminhada será no próximo sábado, dia 31, a partir das 14 horas com início na Escola Guido Herberts. Roteiro segue pelo bairro falando sobre a enchente, com depoimentos de moradores do Bairro Várzea. A atividade encerra por volta das 15h45 no Campo de futebol Navegantes.

Ross Barkan joins the pod to discuss 9/11 memes, life in the Outer Boroughs, Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses, the unironic pursuit of greatness, and his novel Glass Century.Read Stephen's review of Glass Century in COMPACT https://www.compactmag.com/article/a-new-york-epic-for-our-time/Subscribe to the Substack: https://cracksinpomo.substack.com

Ross Barkan joins the pod to discuss 9/11 memes, life in the Outer Boroughs, Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses, the unironic pursuit of greatness, and his novel Glass Century.Read Stephen's review of Glass Century in COMPACT https://www.compactmag.com/article/a-new-york-epic-for-our-time/Subscribe to the Substack: https://cracksinpomo.substack.com

"What are uses of land that the market won't provide but are still worthwhile?"Are you interested in the urban aspects not supported by market, like parks and beauty? What do you think about AI evolution? How can we retrofit the urban fabric for better futures? Interview with Fin Moorhouse, advanced AI researcher at Forethought. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, AI and its progress, urban retrofit, job automation, beauty as urban externality, and many more. Fin Moorhouse is a researcher at Forethought focused on advanced AI, previously working at Longview Philanthropy and Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. He co-hosts Hear This Idea, a podcast exploring solutions to pressing global problems. A former Roots of Progress writing fellow, he has contributed to EA initiatives, UN policy discussions, and research on space governance. He studied philosophy at Cambridge.Find out more about Finn through these links:finmoorhouse website@finmoorhouse as Fin Moorhouse on XHear this idea podcast, co-hosted by Fin MoorhouseFin Moorhouse on GoodreadsRoots of Progress websiteOrder Without Design - book by Alain Bertaud, recommended by Fin MoorhouseSoonish - book by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith, recommended by Fin MoorhouseThe Death and Life of Great American Cities - book by Jane Jacobs, recommended by Fin MoorhouseForethought websiteConnecting episodes you might be interested in:No.126 - Interview with Corey Gray about beautyNo.300 - Panel conversation on urban food production with Adam Dorr, Nadun Hennayaka, and Simon BurtNo.304 - Interview with Nick Bray about AI agentsNo.314 - Interview with Andrew Vass about how repeated construction decreases costsNo.323R - Planning ahead for better neighborhood: Long run evidence from TanzaniaWhat was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WTF4Cities⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or on the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wtf4cities.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ website where the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠shownotes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are also available.I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.Episode generated with ⁠⁠⁠Descript⁠⁠⁠ assistance (⁠⁠⁠affiliate link⁠⁠⁠).Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lesfm ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Pixabay⁠

Exploring Urban Fabric, Adaptive Reuse, and Iconic Influences in ArchitectureIn this episode, Jamie and Kurt delve into the concept of adaptive reuse in architecture, discussing how existing buildings can be revitalized to meet modern needs. Influential books such as Jane Jacobs' 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' and Carl Elefante's 'Going for Zero' are highlighted for their insights into urbanism and sustainability. The hosts share sketches depicting bustling downtown environments, emphasizing the importance of creativity in transforming existing structures. They also touch on the upcoming walkie-talkie event in Boston and compare favorite coffees. Join the conversation on how historical context and modern ambitions intersect in the field of architecture.00:00 Welcome and Introduction00:26 YouTube and Content Creation03:01 Influences and Inspirations03:58 Robocop and Prop Design14:46 Coffee Talk19:37 Nostalgic Toys and Childhood Memories20:34 Podcast Dynamics and Listener Engagement21:43 Upcoming Event: Boston Walkabout25:54 Sketching and Architectural Discussions31:20 Sustainable Architecture and Existing Buildings41:05 Educational Insights and Future PlansSend Feedback :) Support the showBuy some Coffee! Support the Show!https://ko-fi.com/coffeesketchpodcast/shop Our Links Follow Jamie on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/falloutstudio/ Follow Kurt on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kurtneiswender/ Kurt's Practice - https://www.instagram.com/urbancolabarchitecture/ Coffee Sketch on Twitter - https://twitter.com/coffeesketch Jamie on Twitter - https://twitter.com/falloutstudio Kurt on Twitter - https://twitter.com/kurtneiswender

A Berna, nella zona della Reitschule, sta per aprire una gelateria per contrastare la criminalità e lo spaccio. Un'idea che affonda le sue radici nel pensiero di Jane Jacobs, un'attivista e pioniera dell'urbanismo: la sicurezza non nasce dal controllo, ma dalla presenza. Dalla gente in strada, dagli “occhi sulla città”.Da qui parte il viaggio: un percorso tra storie e luoghi dove la sicurezza urbana non si costruisce con barriere o sorveglianza, ma con gelati, panchine, portoni di vetro, scale mobili e biblioteche.Dalla Svizzera al Bronx, da New York a Medellín, scopriamo come urbanistica, relazioni e senso di appartenenza possano cambiare il volto (e il destino) di un quartiere.

Jens Ludwig has an idea for how to fix America's gun violence problem — and it starts by rejecting conventional wisdom from both sides of the political aisle.  SOURCES:Jens Ludwig, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. RESOURCES:Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence, by Jens Ludwig (2025)."Scope Challenges to Social Impact," by Monica Bhatt, Jonathan Guryan, Jens Ludwig, and Anuj Shah (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021)."Citywide cluster randomized trial to restore blighted vacant land and its effects on violence, crime, and fear," by Charles Branas, Eugenia South, Michelle Kondo, Bernadette Hohl, Philippe Bourgois, Douglas Wiebe, and John MacDonald (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018)."Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago," by Sara Heller, Anuj Shah, Jonathan Guryan, Jens Ludwig, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Harold Pollack (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016).Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2013)."Homicide and Suicide Rates Associated With Implementation of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act," by Jens Ludwig and Philip Cook (Journal of the American Medical Association, 2000).The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs (1992).The University of Chicago Crime Lab."Becoming a Man" (University of Chicago Crime Lab). EXTRAS:"Do the Police Have a Management Problem?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023)."From prison to Ph.D, this activist fights for peace in Chicago," by Kenya Downs (PBS News, 2016).

Jean Beaudoin, architecte et ingénieur passionné par le design urbain et l'héritage de Jane Jacobs, vous guide sur l'avenue du Mont-Royal, au cœur du Plateau-Mont-Royal. À travers son regard sensible, cette artère emblématique devient le théâtre d'une réflexion sur la vie de quartier, l'importance des espaces collectifs et le rôle central des rues principales dans l'animation des communautés. Chaque été, l'avenue Mont-Royal se transforme en l'une des plus grandes rues piétonnes au monde, s'étendant sur plus de deux kilomètres et rassemblant quelque 400 commerces, ainsi qu'une foule de passants. Dans cet épisode, Jean met en lumière les couches d'histoire, les choix d'aménagement et les transformations urbaines qui façonnent et nourrissent l'identité unique de cette rue principale. Une promenade qui célèbre la rue comme le cœur vivant de nos quartiers!  Une production du Centre d'écologie urbaine dans le cadre des Promenades de Jane.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/nDrV443aLWASpotify: https://spoti.fi/35ZJGLTSummaryIn this episode of Beyond the Resume, hosts Chris Papa and Lisa Flicker from Jackson Lucas sit down with Gunnar Branson, CEO of AFIRE (Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate), to discuss the future of global real estate investing, trends in U.S. markets, leadership, and the power of storytelling in business.Gunnar shares insights on:- Navigating foreign investment in U.S. real estate- The impact of political uncertainty and tariffs- Real estate market slowdowns and recovery timelines- Investment hot spots like New York, Dallas, and the Sunbelt- Climate risk and insurance impacts on real estate- Lessons from his career in theater, radio, and executive leadershipIf you're interested in real estate, foreign capital, urban development, or organizational leadership—this episode is packed with insight.Chapters(03:32) Leading AFIRE and the guide for foreign investors(05:49) Foreign investment outlook in a volatile market(08:11) Market distress, recovery timeline, and “Stay Alive Till 25”(10:34) U.S. markets attractive to foreign investors: NY, Dallas, Sunbelt(12:49) Climate risk and the insurance dilemma(13:50) Asset class shift: from office to multifamily and logistics(14:14) Gunnar's storytelling roots and radio beginnings(19:28) Becoming CEO at NAREIM and AFIRE(22:03) Leadership lessons and designing meaningful meetings(25:10) Book & podcast picks: Murakami, Jane Jacobs(28:34) Hiring philosophy and love for career-switchers(32:20) Leadership through inspiration, not control(35:33) Mentors and shoutouts: Peter Dubner and Jeff Barclay(40:20) Starting the AFIRE Podcast and learning to interview(46:23) Real estate is the most important invisible industry(46:53) Outro: What's next for Gunnar?

Nadina Galle, an ecological engineer and the mind behind the Internet of Nature (IoN)—a global movement harnessing technology to restore and enhance urban ecosystems. Born in the Netherlands and raised in Canada, Nadina's passion for nature conservation started young, influenced by urbanist thinkers like Jane Jacobs and James Howard Kunstler.We explore:How cities are losing nature faster than we realize—and what needs to changeSmart strategies and innovative projects that bring nature back into urban spacesHer book The Nature of Our Cities—what's inside and who it's forTune in for a fascinating discussion at the intersection of technology, ecology, and urban resilience!Learn more about Nadina and her work: ⁠www.nadinagalle.com⁠___Keep Up the Good Work. Keep Loving Cities ❤️️All opinions expressed in each episode are personal to the guest and do not represent the Host of Urbanistica Podcast unless otherwise stated.Let's connect and talk further about this episode⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mustafa Sherif Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Visit  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mustafasherif.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for collaborations and nominations or email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠info@mustafasherif.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Urbanistica on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ &⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Thanks to Urbanistica Podcast partner AFRY (Urban Planning and Design)AFRY is an international engineering and design company providing sustainable solutions in the fields of energy, industry, and infrastructure.

Entre las recomendaciones comenzamos con el primer ensayo, ´Necesidad de la literatura´ del escritor Emilio Lledó, este libro es una forma de entretenimiento que sirve como herramienta de pensamiento y de construcción que aporta un pensamiento renovador. La siguiente obra es 'Muerte y vida de las grandes ciudades´ de la escritora Jane Jacobs, este libro se publicó en el año 1961. Plantea un debate sobre como las grandes ciudades van deshumanizando la sociedad o destruyen esa cierta vitalidad. Con respecto a la literatura nos encontramos con ´Los Burnell´ de la escritora Katherine Mansfield, nos abre la puerta de la casa de los Burnell que cuenta con tres relatos donde se ve reflejado la frustración y la rabia que hay detrás de la apariencia serena de Linda, atrapada en el papel de madre y esposa ideal, a la inocencia de sus tres hijas. Por otro lado encontramos ´La gran serpiente´ del autor Pierre Lemaitre, se trata de un thriller de humor negro, donde se relata como un hombre ha sido asesinado y se sospecha de una dulce señora de 60 años, esta historia esta ambientada en París.Por últimos, las novedades para el día del libro: ´La increíble historia del Chimponauta´ de David Walliams, es estilo cómic que cuenta las aventuras del Chimpancé Tito. ´La escuela de etiqueta Millicient Quibb para jóvenes científicas chifladas´ de Kate Mckinnon, libro juvenil, que trata sobre tres chicas que no encajan en ninguna escuela hasta que llegan a una y tienen que llevar a cabo una misión. ´Murdle Junior - Casos curiosos para mentes curiosas´ de G.t. Karber, se trata de 40 misterios que se deben ir resolviendo con una lectura pausada y tomando apuntes de los datos.

Today's guest is Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He spent two years as a police officer in Baltimore. I asked him to come on and talk about his new book, Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. It's one of my favorite books I've read this year (and it was one of my three book recommendations on Ezra Klein's show last week).Peter spoke with hundreds of police officers and NYC officials to understand and describe exactly how the city's leaders in the early 1990s managed to drive down crime so successfully.We discussed:* How bad did things get in the 1970s?* Why did processing an arrest take so long?* What did Bill Bratton and other key leaders do differently?* How did police get rid of the squeegee men?I've included my reading list at the bottom of this piece. Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits.Subscribe for one new interview a week.Peter, how would you describe yourself?I would say I'm a criminologist: my background is sociology, but I am not in the sociology department. I'm not so big on theory, and sociology has a lot of theory. I was a grad student at Harvard in sociology and worked as a police officer [in Baltimore] and that became my dissertation and first book, Cop in the Hood. I've somewhat banked my career on those 20 months in the police department.Not a lot of sociologists spend a couple of years working a police beat.It's generally frowned upon, both for methodological reasons and issues of bias. But there is also an ideological opposition in a lot of academia to policing. It's seen as going to the dark side and something to be condemned, not understood.Sociologists said crime can't go down unless we fix society first. It's caused by poverty, racism, unemployment, and social and economic factors — they're called the root causes. But they don't seem to have a great impact on crime, as important as they are. When I'm in grad school, murders dropped 30-40% in New York City. At the same time, Mayor Giuliani is slashing social spending, and poverty is increasing. The whole academic field is just wrong. I thought it an interesting field to get into.We're going to talk about your new book, which is called Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. I had a blast reading it. Tell me about the process of writing it.A lot of this is oral history, basically. But supposedly people don't like buying books that are called oral histories. It is told entirely from the perspective of police officers who were on the job at the time. I would not pretend I talked to everyone, because there were 30,000+ cops around, but I spoke to many cops and to all the major players involved in the 1990s crime drop in New York City.I was born in the ‘90s, and I had no idea about a crazy statistic you cite: 25% of the entire national crime decline was attributable to New York City's crime decline.In one year, yeah. One of the things people say to diminish the role of policing is that the crime drop happened everywhere — and it did end up happening almost everywhere. But I think that is partly because what happened in New York City was a lot of hard work, but it wasn't that complicated. It was very easy to propagate, and people came to New York to find out what was going on. You could see results, literally in a matter of months.It happened first in New York City. Really, it happened first in the subways and that's interesting, because if crime goes down in the subways [which, at the time, fell under the separate New York City Transit Police] and not in the rest of the city, you say, “What is going on in the subways that is unique?” It was the exact same strategies and leadership that later transformed the NYPD [New York Police Department].Set the scene: What was the state of crime and disorder in New York in the ‘70s and into the ‘80s?Long story short, it was bad. Crime in New York was a big problem from the late ‘60s up to the mid ‘90s, and the ‘70s is when the people who became the leaders started their careers. So these were defining moments. The city was almost bankrupt in 1975 and laid off 5,000 cops; 3,000 for a long period of time. That was arguably the nadir. It scarred the police department and the city.Eventually, the city got its finances in order and came to the realization that “we've got a big crime problem too.” That crime problem really came to a head with crack cocaine. Robberies peaked in New York City in 1980. There were above 100,000 robberies in 1981, and those are just reported robberies. A lot of people get robbed and just say, “It's not worth it to report,” or, “I'm going to work,” or, “Cops aren't going to do anything.” The number of robberies and car thefts was amazingly high. The trauma, the impact on the city and on urban space, and people's perception of fear, all comes from that. If you're afraid of crime, it's high up on the hierarchy of needs.To some extent, those lessons have been lost or forgotten. Last year there were 16,600 [robberies], which is a huge increase from a few years ago, but we're still talking an 85% reduction compared to the worst years. It supposedly wasn't possible. What I wanted to get into in Back from the Brink was the actual mechanisms of the crime drop. I did about fifty formal interviews and hundreds of informal interviews building the story. By and large, people were telling the same story.In 1975, the city almost goes bankrupt. It's cutting costs everywhere, and it lays off more than 5,000 cops, about 20% of the force, in one day. There's not a new police academy class until 1979, four years later. Talk to me about where the NYPD was at that time.They were retrenched, and the cops were demoralized because “This is how the city treats us?” The actual process of laying off the cops itself was just brutal: they went to work, and were told once they got to work that they were no longer cops. “Give me your badge, give me your gun."The city also was dealing with crime, disorder, and racial unrest. The police department was worried about corruption, which was a legacy of the Knapp Commission [which investigated NYPD corruption] and [Frank] Serpico [a whistleblowing officer]. It's an old police adage, that if you don't work, you can't get in trouble. That became very much the standard way of doing things. Keep your head low, stay out of trouble, and you'll collect your paycheck and go home.You talk about the blackout in 1977, when much of the city lost power and you have widespread looting and arson. 13,000 off-duty cops get called in during the emergency, and only about 5,000 show up, which is a remarkable sign of the state of morale.The person in my book who's talking about that is Louis Anemone. He showed up because his neighbor and friend and partner was there, and he's got to help him. It was very much an in-the-foxholes experience. I contrast that with the more recent blackout, in which the city went and had a big block party instead. That is reflective of the change that happened in the city.In the mid-80s you get the crack cocaine epidemic. Talk to me about how police respond.From a political perspective, that era coincided with David Dinkins as [New York City's first black] mayor. He was universally disliked, to put it mildly, by white and black police officers alike. He was seen as hands off. He was elected in part to improve racial relations in New York City, to mitigate racial strife, but in Crown Heights and Washington Heights, there were riots, and racial relations got worse. He failed at the level he was supposed to be good at. Crime and quality of life were the major issues in that election.Dinkins's approach to the violence is centered around what they called “community policing.” Will you describe how Dinkins and political leaders in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s thought about policing?This is under Ben Ward, the [NYPD] Commissioner at the time. The mayor appoints the police commissioner — and the buck does stop with the mayor — but the mayor is not actively involved in day-to-day operations. That part does go down to the police department.Community policing was seen as an attempt to improve relations between the police and the community. The real goal was to lessen racial strife and unrest between black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) communities and the NYPD. Going back to the ‘60s, New York had been rocked by continued unrest in neighborhoods like Central Harlem, East New York, and Bushwick. Community policing was seen as saying that police are partly to blame, and we want to improve relations. Some of it was an attempt to get the community more involved in crime fighting.It's tough. It involves a certain rosy view of the community, but that part of the community isn't causing the problems. It avoids the fact there are people who are actively criming and are willing to hurt people who get in their way. Community policing doesn't really address the active criminal element, that is a small part of any community, including high-crime communities.Arrests increased drastically during this era, more than in the ‘90s with broken windows policing. If the idea is to have fewer arrests, it didn't happen in the ‘80s. Some good came out of it, because it did encourage cops to be a bit more active and cops are incentivized by overtime. Arrests were so incredibly time-consuming, which kind of defeated the purpose of community policing. If you made an arrest in that era, there was a good chance you might spend literally 24 hours processing the arrest.Will you describe what goes into that 24 hours?From my experience policing in Baltimore, I knew arrests were time-consuming and paperwork redundant, but I could process a simple arrest in an hour or two. Even a complicated one that involved juveniles and guns and drugs, we're talking six to eight hours.In the ‘80s, Bob Davin, [in the] Transit Police, would say they'd make an arrest, process at the local precinct, search him in front of a desk officer, print him, and then they would have to get a radio car off patrol to drive you down to central booking at 100 Centre Street [New York City Criminal Court]. Then they would fingerprint him. They didn't have the live scan fingerprints machine, it was all ink. It had to be faxed up to Albany and the FBI to see if it hit on any warrant federally and for positive identification of the person. Sometimes it took 12 hours to have the prints come back and the perp would be remanded until that time. Then you'd have to wait for the prosecutor to get their act together and to review all the paperwork. You couldn't consider bail unless the prints came back either positive or negative and then you would have that initial arraignment and the cop could then go home. There are a lot of moving parts, and they moved at a glacial pace.The system often doesn't work 24/7. A lot of this has changed, but some of it was having to wait until 9 am for people to show up to go to work, because it's not a single system. The courts, the jails, and policing all march to their own drummer, and that created a level of inefficiency.So much of the nitty-gritty of what cops actually do is boring, behind-the-scenes stuff: How do we speed up the paperwork? Can we group prisoners together? Can we do some of this at the police station instead of taking it downtown? Is all of this necessary? Can we cooperate with the various prosecutors? There are five different prosecutors in New York City, one for each borough.There's not a great incentive to streamline this. Cops enjoyed the overtime. That's one of the reasons they would make arrests. So during this time, if a cop makes an arrest for drug dealing, that cop is gone and no cop was there to replace him. If it's a minor arrest, there's a good chance in the long run charges will be dropped anyway. And you're taking cops off the street. In that sense, it's lose-lose. But, you have to think, “What's the alternative?”Bob Davin is a fascinating guy. There's a famous picture from 1981 by Martha Cooper of two cops on a subway train. It's graffitied up and they're in their leather jackets and look like cops from the ‘70s. Martha Cooper graciously gave me permission to use the picture, but she said, "You have to indemnify me because I don't have a release form. I don't know who the cops are." I said, "Martha, I do know who the cop is, because he's in my book and he loves the picture.” Bob Davin is the cop on the right.Davin says that things started to get more efficient. They had hub sites in the late ‘80s or ‘90s, so precincts in the north of Manhattan could bring their prisoners there, and you wouldn't have to take a car out of service to go back to Central Booking and deal with traffic. They started collecting prisoners and bringing them en masse on a small school bus, and that would cut into overtime. Then moving to electronic scan fingerprints drastically saves time waiting for those to come back.These improvements were made, but some of them involve collective bargaining with unions, to limit overtime and arrests that are made for the pure purpose of overtime. You want cops making arrests for the right reason and not simply to make money. But boy, there was a lot of money made in arrests.In 1991, you have the infamous Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn. Racial tensions kick off. It's a nightmare for the mayor, there's this sense that he has lost control. The following year, you have this infamous police protest at City Hall where it becomes clear the relationship between the cops and the mayor has totally evaporated. How does all that play into the mayoral race between Dinkins and Giuliani?It was unintentional, but a lot of the blame for Crown Heights falls on the police department. The part of the story that is better known is that there was a procession for a Hasidic rabbi that was led by a police car. He would go to his wife's grave, and he got a little three-car motorcade. At some point, the police look at this and go "Why are we doing this? We're going to change it." The man who made the deal said ‘I"m retiring in a couple weeks, can we just leave it till then? Because I gave him my word." They're like, "Alright, whatever."This motor car procession is then involved in a car crash, and a young child named Gavin Cato is killed, and another girl is severely injured. The volunteer, Jewish-run ambulance shows up and decides they don't have the equipment: they call for a professional city ambulance. Once that ambulance is on the way, they take the mildly-injured Jewish people to the hospital. The rumor starts that the Jewish ambulance abandoned the black children to die.This isn't the first incident. There's long been strife over property and who the landlord is. But this was the spark that set off riots. A young Jewish man was randomly attacked on the street and was killed.As an aside, he also shouldn't have died, but at the hospital they missed internal bleeding.Meanwhile, the police department has no real leadership at the time. One chief is going to retire, another is on vacation, a third doesn't know what he's doing, and basically everyone is afraid to do anything. So police do nothing. They pull back, and you have three days of very anti-Semitic riots. Crowds chanting "Kill the Jews" and marching on the Lubavitch Hasidic Headquarters. Al Sharpton shows up. The riots are blamed on Dinkins, which is partly fair, but a lot of that's on the NYPD. Finally, the mayor and the police commissioner go to see what's going on and they get attacked. It's the only time in New York City history that there's ever been an emergency call from the police commissioner's car. People are throwing rocks at it.It took three days to realise this, but that's when they say “We have to do something here,” and they gather a group of officers who later become many of Bratton's main chiefs at the time [Bill Bratton was Commissioner of the NYPD from 1994-1996, under Giuliani]: Mike Julian, Louis Anemone, Ray Kelly, and [John] Timoney. They end the unrest in a day. They allow people to march, they get the police department to set rules. It still goes on for a bit, but no one gets hurt after that, and that's it.It was a huge, national story at the time, but a lot of the details were not covered. Reporters were taken from their car and beaten and stripped. The significance was downplayed at the time, especially by the New York Times, I would say.That's followed by the Washington Heights riots, which is a different story. A drug dealer was shot and killed by cops. There were rumors, which were proven to be false, that he was executed and unarmed. Then there were three days of rioting there. It wasn't quite as severe, but 53 cops were hurt, 120 stores were set on fire, and Mayor Dinkins paid for the victim's family to go to the Dominican Republic for the funeral. The police perspective again was, “You're picking the wrong side here.”Then there's the so-called Police Riot at City Hall. Nominally, it was about the CCRB, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and setting up an accountability mechanism to control cops. But really it was just an anti-Dinkins protest. It was drunken and unruly. The cops stormed the steps of City Hall. I have the account of one of the cops who was on the top of those steps looking at this mob of cops storming to him, and he's getting worried he's going to be killed in a crush. There were racist chants from off-duty cops in the crowd. It did not reflect well on police officers. But it showed this hatred of David Dinkins, who was seen as siding with criminals and being anti-police. The irony is that Dinkins is the one who ends up hiring all the cops that Giuliani gets credit for.In the “Safe Streets, Safe City” program?Yes. That was because a white tourist, Brian Watkins, was killed in a subway station protecting his parents who were getting robbed. That led to the famous headline [in the New York Post] of “Dave, do something! Crime-ravaged city cries out for help.” He, with City Council President Peter Vallone, Sr., drafted and pushed through this massive hiring of police officers, “Safe Streets, Safe City.”The hiring wasn't fast-tracked. It might be because Dinkins's people didn't really want more cops. But it was a Dinkins push that got a massive hiring of cops. When the first huge class of police officers graduated, Bill Bratton was there and not David Dinkins.Some interviewees in your book talk about how there's physically not enough room in the police academies at this time, so they have to run classes 24/7. You cycle cohorts in and out of the same classroom, because there are too many new cops for the facilities.You have thousands of cops going through it at once. Everyone describes it as quite a chaotic scene. But it would have been hard to do what the NYPD did without those cops. Ray Kelly, who was police commissioner under Dinkins at the end [from 1992 to 1994] before he became police commissioner for 12 years under Bloomberg [from 2002 to 2013] probably could have done something with those cops too, but he never had the chance, because the mayoral leadership at the time was much more limiting in what they wanted cops to do.Crime starts declining slowly in the first few years of the ‘90s under Dinkins, and then in ‘93 Giuliani wins a squeaker of a mayoral election against Dinkins.One of the major issues was the then-notorious “squeegee men” of New York City. These were guys who would go to cars stopped at bridges and tunnel entrances and would rub a squeegee over the windshield asking for money. It was unpleasant, intimidating, and unwanted, and it was seen as one of those things that were just inevitable. Like graffiti on the subway in the ‘80s. Nothing we can do about it because these poor people don't have jobs or housing or whatever.The irony is that Bratton and Giuliani were happy to take credit for that, and it was an issue in the mayoral campaign, but it was solved under David Dinkins and Ray Kelly and Mike Julian with the help of George Kelling [who, with James Wilson, came up with broken windows theory]. But they never got credit for it. One wonders if, had they done that just a few months earlier, it would have shifted the entire campaign and we'd have a different course of history in New York City.It's a great example of a couple of things that several people in your book talk about. One is that disorder is often caused by a very small set of individuals. There's only like 70 squeegee men, yet everybody sees them, because they're posted up at the main tunnel and bridge entrances to Manhattan. And getting them off the streets solves the problem entirely.Another emphasis in the book is how perceptions of crime are central. You quote Jack Maple, the father of Compstat, as saying, “A murder on the subway counts as a multiple murder up on the street, because everybody feels like that's their subway.” The particular locations of crimes really affect public perception.Absolutely. Perception is reality for a lot of these things, because most people aren't victimized by crime. But when people perceive that no one is in control they feel less safe. It's not that this perception is false, it just might not be directly related to an actual criminal act.The other thing I try to show is that it's not just saying, “We've got to get rid of squeegee men. How do you do it?” They had tried before, but this is why you need smart cops and good leadership, because it's a problem-solving technique, and the way to get rid of graffiti is different to the way you get rid of squeegee men.This book is in opposition to those who just say, “We can't police our way out of this problem.” No, we can. We can't police our way out of every problem. But if you define the problem as, we don't want people at intersections with squeegees, of course we can police our way out of the problem, using legal constitutional tools. You need the political will. And then the hard work starts, because you have to figure out how to actually do it.Will you describe how they tackle the squeegee men problem?Mike Julian was behind it. They hired George Kelling, who's known for broken windows. They said, “These people are here to make money. So to just go there and make a few arrests isn't going to solve the problem.” First of all, he had to figure out what legal authority [to use], and he used Traffic Reg 44 [which prohibits pedestrians from soliciting vehicle occupants]. He talked to Norm Siegel of the NYCLU [New York Civil Liberties Union] about this, who did not want this crackdown to happen. But Norman said, “Okay, this is the law, I can't fight that one. You're doing it legally. It's all in the books.” And So that took away that opposition.But the relentless part of it is key. First they filmed people. Then, when it came to enforcement, they warned people. Then they cited people, and anybody that was left they arrested. They did not have to arrest many people, because the key is they did this every four hours. It was that that changed behavior, because even a simple arrest isn't going to necessarily deter someone if it's a productive way to make money. But being out there every four hours for a couple of weeks or months was enough to get people to do something else. What that something else is, we still don't know, but we solved the squeegee problem.So in 93, Giuliani is elected by something like 50,000 votes overall. Just as an aside, in Prince of the City, Fred Siegel describes something I had no idea about. There's a Puerto Rican Democratic Councilman who flips and supports Giuliani. Mayor Eric Adams, who at the time was the head of a nonprofit for black men in law enforcement, calls him a race traitor for doing that and for being married to a white woman. There was a remarkable level of racial vitriol in that race that I totally missed.10 years ago when I started this, I asked if I could interview then-Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, and he said yes, and the interview kept getting rescheduled, and I said, “Eh, I don't need him.” It's a regret of mine. I should have pursued that, but coulda, woulda, shoulda.Giuliani is elected, and he campaigns very explicitly on a reducing crime and disorder platform. And he hires Bill Bratton. Tell me about Bratton coming on board as NYPD commissioner.Bratton grew up in Boston, was a police officer there, became head of the New York City Transit Police when that was a separate police department. Right before he becomes NYPD Commissioner, he's back in Boston, as the Chief of Police there, and there is a movement among certain people to get Bratton the NYC job. They succeed in that, and Bratton is a very confident man. He very much took a broken windows approach and said, “We are going to focus on crime.” He has a right-hand man by the name of Jack Maple who he knows from the Transit Police. Maple is just a lieutenant in transit, and Bratton makes him the de facto number two man in the police department.Jack Maple passed away in 2001 and I didn't know what I was going to do, because it's hard to interview a man who's no longer alive. Chris Mitchell co-wrote Jack Maple's autobiography called Crime Fighter and he graciously gave me all the micro-cassettes of the original interviews he conducted with Maple around 1998. Everyone has a Jack Maple story. He's probably the most important character in Back from the Brink.Jack Maple comes in, no one really knows who he is, no one respects him because he was just a lieutenant in Transit. He goes around and asks a basic question — this is 1994 — he says, “How many people were shot in New York City in 1993?” And nobody knows. That is the state of crime-fighting in New York City before this era. There might have been 7,000 people shot in New York City in 1990 and we just don't know, even to this day.One citation from your book: in 1993, an average of 16 people were shot every day. Which is just remarkable.And remember, shootings have been declining for two or three years before that! But nobody knew, because they weren't keeping track of shootings, because it's not one of the FBI Uniform Crime Report [which tracks crime data nationally] index crimes. But wouldn't you be curious? It took Jack Maple to be curious, so he made people count, and it was findable, but you had to go through every aggravated assault and see if a gun was involved. You had to go through every murder from the previous year and see if it was a shooting. He did this. So we only have shooting data in New York City going back to 1993. It's just a simple process of caring.The super-short version of Back from the Brink is it was a change in mission statement: “We're going to care about crime.” Because they hadn't before. They cared about corruption, racial unrest, brutality, and scandal. They cared about the clearance rate for robbery a bit. You were supposed to make three arrests for every ten robberies. It didn't matter so much that you were stopping a pattern or arresting the right person, as long as you had three arrests for every ten reported crimes, that was fine.This is a story about people who cared. They're from this city — Bratton wasn't, but most of the rest are. They understood the trauma of violence and the fact that people with families were afraid to go outside, and nobody in the power structure seemed to care. So they made the NYPD care about this. Suddenly, the mid-level police executives, the precinct commanders, had to care. and the meetings weren't about keeping overtime down, instead they were about ”What are you doing to stop this shooting?”Tell listeners a little bit more about Jack Maple, because he's a remarkable character, and folks may not know what a kook he was.I think he was a little less kooky than he liked to present. His public persona was wearing a snazzy cat and spats and dressing like a fictional cartoon detective from his own mind, but he's a working-class guy from Queens who becomes a transit cop.When Bratton takes over, he writes a letter up the chain of command saying this is what we should do. Bratton read it and said, “This guy is smart.” Listening to 80 hours of Jack Maple, everyone correctly says he was a smart guy, but he had a very working-class demeanor and took to the elite lifestyle. He loved hanging out and getting fancy drinks at the Plaza Hotel. He was the idea man of the NYPD. Everyone has a Jack Maple imitation. “You're talking to the Jackster,” he'd say. He had smart people working under him who were supportive of this. But it was very much trying to figure out as they went along, because the city doesn't stop nor does it sleep.He was a bulls***er, but he's the one who came up with the basic outline of the strategy of crime reduction in New York City. He famously wrote it on a napkin at Elaine's, and it said, “First, we need to gather accurate and timely intelligence.” And that was, in essence, CompStat. “Then, we need to deploy our cops to where they need to be.” That was a big thing. He found out that cops weren't working: specialized units weren't working weekends and nights when the actual crime was happening. They had their excuses, but basically they wanted a cushy schedule. He changed that. Then, of course, you have to figure out what you're doing, what the effective tactics are. Then, constant follow up and assessment.You can't give up. You can't say “Problem solved.” A lot of people say it wasn't so much if your plan didn't work, you just needed a Plan B. It was the idea that throwing your hands in the air and saying, “What are you going to do?” that became notoriously unacceptable under Chief Anemone's stern demeanor at CompStat. These were not pleasant meetings. Those are the meetings that both propagated policies that work and held officers accountable. There was some humiliation going on, so CompStat was feared.Lots of folks hear CompStat and think about better tracking of crime locations and incidents. But as you flesh out, the meat on the bones of CompStat was this relentless follow-up. You'd have these weekly meetings early in the morning with all the precinct heads. There were relentless asks from the bosses, “What's going on in your district or in your precinct? Can you explain why this is happening? What are you doing to get these numbers down?” And follow-ups the following week or month. It was constant.CompStat is often thought of as high-tech computer stuff. It wasn't. There was nothing that couldn't have been done with old overhead projectors. It's just that no one had done it before. Billy Gorta says it's a glorified accountability system at a time when nobody knew anything about computers. Everyone now has access to crime maps on a computer. It was about actually gathering accurate, timely data.Bratton was very concerned that these numbers had to be right. It was getting everyone in the same room and saying, “This is what our focus is going to be now.” And getting people to care about crime victims, especially when those crime victims might be unsympathetic because of their demeanor, criminal activity, or a long arrest record. “We're going to care about every shooting, we're going to care about every murder.”Part of it was cracking down on illegal guns. There were hundreds of tactics. The federal prosecutors also played a key role. It was getting this cooperation. Once it started working and Giuliani made it a major part of claiming success as mayor, suddenly everyone wanted to be part of this, and you had other city agencies trying to figure it out. So it was a very positive feedback loop, once it was seen as a success.When Bratton came on the job, he said, “I'm going to bring down crime 15%.” No police commissioner had ever said that before. In the history of policing before 1994, no police commissioner ever promised a double-digit reduction in crime or even talked about it. People said “That's crazy.” It was done, and then year after year. That's the type of confidence that they had. They were surprised it worked as well as it did, but they all had the sense that there's a new captain on this ship, and we're trying new things. It was an age of ideas and experiment.And it was a very short time.That's the other thing that surprised me. Giuliani fired Bratton in the middle of ‘96.It's remarkable. Bratton comes in ‘94, and August 1994 is where you see crime drop off a cliff. You have this massive beginning of the reduction that continues.That inflection point is important for historical knowledge. I don't address alternatives that other people have proposed [to explain the fall in crime] — For example, the reduction in lead [in gasoline, paint, and water pipes] or legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade [proposed by Stephen Dubner].Reasonable people can differ. Back from the Brink focuses on the police part of the equation. Today, almost nobody, except for a few academics, says that police had nothing to do with the crime drop. That August inflection is key, because there is nothing in a lagged time analysis going back 20 years that is going to say that is the magic month where things happened. Yet if you look at what happened in CompStat, that's the month they started getting individual officer data, and noticing that most cops made zero arrests, and said, “Let's get them in the game as well.” And that seemed to be the key; that's when crime fell off the table. The meetings started in April, I believe, but August is really when the massive crime drop began.To your point about the confidence that crime could be driven down double digits year over year, there's a great quote you have from Jack Maple, where he says to a fellow cop, “This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. As long as we have absolute control, we can absolutely drive this number into the floor.”One detail I enjoyed was that Jack Maple, when he was a transit cop, would camp out under a big refrigerator box with little holes cut out for eyes and sit on the subway platform waiting for crooks.For people who are interested in Jack Maple, it is worth reading his autobiography, Crime Fighter. Mike Daly wrote New York's Finest, which uses the same tapes that I had access to, and he is much more focused on that. He's actually the godfather of Jack Maple's son, who is currently a New York City police officer. But Maple and co were confident, and it turned out they were right.As well as having changes in tactics and approach and accountability across the NYPD, you also have a series of specific location cleanups. You have a specific initiative focused on the Port Authority, which is a cesspool at the time, an initiative in Times Square, the Bryant Park cleanup, and then Giuliani also focuses on organized crime on the Fulton Fish Market, and this open-air market in Harlem.I was struck that there was both this general accountability push in the NYPD through CompStat, and a relentless focus on cleaning up individual places that were hubs of disorder.I'm not certain the crime drop would have happened without reclamation of public spaces and business improvement districts. Bryant Park's a fascinating story because Dan Biederman, who heads the Corporation, said, “People just thought it was like a lost cause, this park can't be saved. The city is in a spiral of decline.” He uses Jane Jacobs' “eyes on the street” theory and then George Kelling and James Q. Wilson's broken windows theory. The park has money — not city money, but from local property owners — and it reopens in 1991 to great acclaim and is still a fabulous place to be. It showed for the first time that public space was worth saving and could be saved. New York City at the time needed that lesson. It's interesting that today, Bryant Park has no permanent police presence and less crime. Back in the ‘80s, Bryant Park had an active police presence and a lot more crime.The first class I ever taught when I started at John Jay College in 2004, I was talking about broken windows. A student in the class named Jeff Marshall, who is in my book, told me about Operation Alternatives at the Port Authority. He had been a Port Authority police officer at the time, and I had not heard of this. People are just unaware of this part of history. It very much has lessons for today, because in policing often there's nothing new under the sun. It's just repackaged, dusted off, and done again. The issue was, how do we make the Port Authority safe for passengers? How do we both help and get rid of people living in the bus terminal? It's a semi-public space, so it makes it difficult. There was a social services element about it, that was Operational Alternatives. A lot of people took advantage of that and got help. But the flip side was, you don't have to take services, but you can't stay here.I interviewed the manager of the bus terminal. He was so proud of what he did. He's a bureaucrat, a high-ranking one, but a port authority manager. He came from the George Washington Bridge, which he loved. And he wonders, what the hell am I going to do with this bus terminal? But the Port Authority cared, because they're a huge organization and that's the only thing with their name on it — They also control JFK Airport and bridges and tunnels and all the airports, but people call the bus terminal Port Authority.They gave him almost unlimited money and power and said, “Fix it please, do what you've got to do,” and he did. It was environmental design, giving police overtime so they'd be part of this, a big part of it was having a social service element so it wasn't just kicking people out with nowhere to go.Some of it was also setting up rules. This also helped Bratton in the subway, because this happened at the same time. The court ruled that you can enforce certain rules in the semi-public spaces. It was not clear until this moment whether it was constitutional or not. To be specific, you have a constitutional right to beg on the street, but you do not have a constitutional right to beg on the subway. That came down to a court decision. Had that not happened, I don't know if in the long run the crime drop would have happened.That court decision comes down to the specific point that it's not a free-speech right on the subway to panhandle, because people can't leave, because you've got them trapped in that space.You can't cross the street to get away from it. But it also recognized that it wasn't pure begging, that there was a gray area between aggressive begging and extortion and robbery.You note that in the early 1990s, one-third of subway commuters said they consciously avoided certain stations because of safety, and two thirds felt coerced to give money by aggressive panhandling.The folks in your book talk a lot about the 80/20 rule applying all over the place. That something like 20% of the people you catch are committing 80% of the crimes.There's a similar dynamic that you talk about on the subways, both in the book and in your commentary over the past couple years about disorder in New York. You say approximately 2,000 people with serious mental illness are at risk for street homelessness, and these people cycle through the cities, streets, subways, jails, and hospitals.What lessons from the ‘90s can be applied today for both helping those people and stopping them being a threat to others?Before the ‘80s and Reagan budget cuts there had been a psychiatric system that could help people. That largely got defunded. [Deinstitutionalization began in New York State earlier, in the 1960s.] We did not solve the problem of mental health or homelessness in the ‘90s, but we solved the problem of behavior. George Kelling [of broken windows theory] emphasized this repeatedly, and people would ignore it. We are not criminalizing homelessness or poverty. We're focusing on behavior that we are trying to change. People who willfully ignore that distinction almost assume that poor people are naturally disorderly or criminal, or that all homeless people are twitching and threatening other people. Even people with mental illness can behave in a public space.Times have changed a bit. I think there are different drugs now that make things arguably a bit worse. I am not a mental health expert, but we do need more involuntary commitment, not just for our sake, but for theirs, people who need help. I pass people daily, often the same person, basically decomposing on a subway stop in the cold. They are offered help by social services, and they say no. They should not be allowed to make that choice because they're literally dying on the street in front of us. Basic humanity demands that we be a little more aggressive in forcing people who are not making rational decisions, because now you have to be an imminent threat to yourself or others. That standard does need to change. But there also need to be mental health beds available for people in this condition.I don't know what the solution is to homelessness or mental health. But I do know the solution to public disorder on the subway and that's, regardless of your mental state or housing status, enforcing legal, constitutional rules, policing behavior. It does not involve locking everybody up. It involves drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It's amazing how much people will comply with those rules.That presents the idea that someone's in charge, it's not a free-for-all. You get that virtuous loop, which New York had achieved in 2014–2016, when crime was at an all-time low in the city. Then the politicians decided public order wasn't worth preserving anymore. These are political choices.I had a similar version of this conversation with a friend who was shocked that there were zero murders on the subway in 2017 and that that number was stable: you had one or two a year for several years in the mid-2010s.It was five or fewer a year from 1997 to 2019, and often one or two. Then you have zero in 2017. There were [ten in 2022]. It coincides perfectly with an order from [Mayor] de Blasio's office and the homeless czar [Director of Homeless Services Steven] Banks [which] told police to stop enforcing subway rules against loitering. The subways became — once again — a de facto homeless shelter. Getting rule-violating homeless people out of the subway in the late ‘80s was such a difficult and major accomplishment at the time, and to be fair it's not as bad as it was.The alternative was that homeless outreach was supposed to offer people services. When they decline, which 95% of people do, you're to leave them be. I would argue again, I don't think that's a more humane stance to take. But it's not just about them, it's about subway riders.There's one story that I think was relevant for you to tell. You were attacked this fall on a subway platform by a guy threatening to kill you. It turns out he's had a number of run-ins with the criminal justice system. Can you tell us where that guy is now?I believe he's in prison now. The only reason I know who it is is because I said, one day I'm going to see his picture in the New York Post because he's going to hurt somebody. Am I 100 percent certain it's Michael Blount who attacked me? No, but I'm willing to call him out by name because I believe it is. He was out of prison for raping a child, and he slashed his ex-girlfriend and pushed her on the subway tracks. And then was on the lam for a while. I look at him and the shape of his face, his height, age, build, complexion, and I go, that's got to be him.I wasn't hurt, but he gave me a sucker punch trying to knock me out and then chased me a bit threatening to kill me, and I believe he wanted to. It's the only time I ever was confronted by a person who I really believe wanted to kill me, and this includes policing in the Eastern District in Baltimore. It was an attempted misdemeanor assault in the long run. But I knew it wasn't about me. It was him. I assume he's going to stay in prison longer for what he did to his ex-girlfriend. But I never thought it would happen to me. I was lucky the punch didn't connect.Peter Moskos's new book is Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop.My reading listEssays:Johnny Hirschauer's reporting, including “A Failed 'Solution' to 'America's Mental Health Crisis',“ “Return to the Roots,” and “The Last Institutions.” “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. ​“It's Time to Talk About America's Disorder Problem,” Charles Lehman.Books:Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, Jill Leovy.​Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life, Fred Siegel.​ Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District, Peter Moskos.​Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, Sam Quinones.​Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Um dos sonhos vendidos pela internet era a da praça global em que todos poderiam discutir todos os assuntos relevantes para a sociedade. Muitas terras planas depois, porém, mudamos de ideia. Hoje o Escuta Essa faz uma jornada que vai desde um podcast do Danilo até uma série de vídeos do TikTok, passando pela solução da navegação, a revolução do beisebol e um novo conceito de urbanismo. Tudo isso unido pela opinião do leigo e pelo “hot take”, a expressão em inglês para uma opinião forte, polêmica e sem muita abertura para conversa que tomou conta da internet. Este é mais um episódio do Escuta Essa, podcast semanal em que Denis e Danilo trocam histórias de cair o queixo e de explodir os miolos. Todas as quartas-feiras, no seu agregador de podcasts favorito, é a vez de um contar um causo para o outro.Não deixe de enviar os episódios do Escuta Essa para aquela pessoa com quem você também gosta de compartilhar histórias e aproveite para mandar seus comentários e perguntas no Spotify, nas redes sociais , ou no e-mail escutaessa@aded.studio. A gente sempre lê mensagens no final de cada episódio!...NESTE EPISÓDIO-O Debate de Bolso foi uma seção do podcast Pouco Pixel que virou um programa próprio de 2017 a 2018.-O Pouco Pixel está refazendo o Debate de Bolso em sua nova temporada comemorativa de 10 anos que estreou na semana passada.-O Subway Takes, de Kareem Rahma, tem mais de 800 mil seguidores no Instagram, 350 mil no YouTube e 894 mil no TikTok.-O The Guardian e a New Yorker já fizeram perfis de Rahma e seu programa viral.-Moneyball, livro de Michael Lewis, foi lançado em 2003 e fala como o Oakland A's revolucionou o beisebol nos EUA ao passar a usar estatísticas e novas formas de análise de desempenho para tomar suas decisões.-O livro da escritora e jornalista Jane Jacobs que mudou o urbanismo foi o “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, de 1961.-O filósofo Henri Bergson é um dos que mais estudou o riso e o humor e quem afirma que eles são sociais, sempre em grupo. -O cientista social Michael Billing é um acadêmico britânico que estuda a relação do humor com o constrangimento....AD&D STUDIOA AD&D produz podcasts e vídeos que divertem e respeitam sua inteligência! Acompanhe todos os episódios em aded.studio para não perder nenhuma novidade.

In a bygone time, we had celebrated architecture critics, historians and thought leaders like; Ada Louise Huxtable, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs and Vincent Scully. These were gifted thought leaders with a willingness to share their views, good or bad, but never indifferent. They and others influenced the manner in which we looked critically at the shape and purpose of the spaces where we live work and play. Arch Daily wrote a piece in 2012 called The Architect Critic is Dead (just not for the reason you think). Is it. Is it, really? I don't think the architect critic is dead, it has changed. It's like Syndrome's quote from The Incredibles. That when everyone has superpowers, no-one will be a superhero. It's this dilution of meaning through social media where everyone has an opinion and no hesitation about sharing it. Very little self-awareness and a platform, then everyone is a critic but without the critical thinking or communication skills to articulate their ideas effectively. Enda Donagher and I chop this idea up a Biot and he shares his experience in the business over the past 30-years plus. Enda and I talk about the business and his work.  Designer Resources Pacific Sales Kitchen and Home. Where excellence meets expertise. ThermaSol - Redefining the modern shower experience. Without steam, it's just a bathroom. Design Hardware - A stunning and vast collection of jewelry for the home!  - Where service meets excellence TimberTech - Real wood beauty without the upkeep Donagher's firm addresses the architecture and interior design and his work is nuanced through a personalized approach and sensibly modern in look and feel. The ideas regarding the architect critic is relevant for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the opportunity to deconstruct the ideas that go into creating amazing work. If the work can be deconstructed, it provided a forum for critical thought to better our architecture and design. If we can apply critical thought, share ways to improve, then Syndrome was wrong. Everyone truly can be a super because everyones work is better and the level of expectation is raised. I enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too. You'll hear all about it, right after this. Thank you, Enda. Loved our chat. Thank you to my incredible partner sponsors, ThermaSol, TimberTech, Pacific Sales, and Design Hardware. Amazing companies and great friends to the trade so please give them an opportunity for your next project. And, thank you for listening, subscribing the show and sharing with your colleagues. If not already subscribing, please consider that so you receive every new episode automatically to your podcast feed. Until next week, thank you for sharing this time together, until the next episode, be well, stay focused and now that it has arrived in earnest, try to rise above the chaos. - CXD

Jane Jacobs (1916 to 2006) was a pioneering urbanist and activist best known for her influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), which challenged conventional urban planning ideas by advocating for vibrant, community-centered, and pedestrian-friendly city design. For Further Reading: On Jane Jacobs - Salmagundi Magazine Jane Jacobs’s Street Smarts | The New Yorker Social Welfare History Project Jacobs, Jane — 1916 – 2006 This month, we’re talking about Architects. These women held fast to their visions for better futures, found potential in negative space, and built their creations from the ground up. History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should. Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures. Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Adrien Behn, Alyia Yates, Vanessa Handy, Melia Agudelo, and Joia Putnoi. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. Original theme music composed by Miles Moran. Follow Wonder Media Network: Website Instagram Twitter See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's program, we bring you highlights from a public meeting and open house that took place at the Main Public Library on March 18th about the Downtown & NuLu Street Network Plan. Louisville Metro Government is leading a plan to advance quick-term action projects for streets in Downtown and NuLu, intended to promote walkability and safety for pedestrians and to serve as a blueprint for capital improvement projects over the next several years. The public was invited to come be a part of this planning effort by joining this open house and kickoff of the plan activities - featuring a presentation from Jeff Speck from Metro's planning consultant team! So listen in as renowned urban planner and author Jeff Speck shared his insights on reimagining downtown Louisville through the lens of walkability and why fostering a pedestrian-friendly environment is imperative for a flourishing city. The evening kicked off with Joel from Stantech. Jeff Speck is a city planner and author who advocates internationally for more walkable cities. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he presided over the Mayors' Institute on City Design and created the Governors' Institute on Community Design. Prior to his federal appointment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at DPZ & Co., the principal firm behind the New Urbanism movement. Since 2007, he has led Speck & Associates — now Speck Dempsey —an award-winning urban planning firm serving public and private clients around the world. With Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Mr. Speck is the co-author of Suburban Nation, which the Wall Street Journal calls "the urbanist's bible.” His 2012 book Walkable City was the best selling city planning title of the past decade and has been translated into eight languages. He is also the principal author of The Smart Growth Manual and Walkable City Rules. Jeff Speck has been named a fellow of both the American Institute of Certified Planners and the Congress for New Urbanism. In a recent Planetizen poll, he was voted one of the ten “most influential urbanists of all time.” Mr. Speck was the 2022 recipient of the Seaside Prize, whose former awardees include Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander. His TED talks and YouTube videos have been viewed more than six million times. Truth to Power airs every Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 11am, and Sunday at 7pm on Louisville's grassroots, community radio station, Forward Radio 106.5fm WFMP and live streams at https://forwardradio.org

On local economies, health, Jane Jacobs, Joan Didion, The Idiot by Dostoevsky, Frugal Hedonism, and more.hotliterati.com

Has America ceased to be the land of opportunity? Many people here take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn't always the case. Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn't like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for 200 years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity. Join us as Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, argues that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in 19th-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York's Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan, to Jane Jacobs' efforts to protect her vision of the West Village—has raised housing prices, deepened political divides, emboldened bigots, and trapped generations of people in poverty. Appelbaum says these problems have a common explanation: people can't move as readily as they used to. They are, in a word, stuck. Applebaum will cut through more than a century of mythmaking, sharing the surprising story of the people and ideas that caused our economic and social sclerosis and laying out commonsense ways to get Americans moving again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Joshua Turek returns with a solo episode of Turek Books after a few months hiatus and his relocation to Tucson. He discusses the very timely book, "Technofeudalism" at length as it was the first pick for a book club on his Turek Books IG live. He also gets into what else he's reading. "Debt" by David Graeber, "The Bible" by whoever wrote it, "All the Shahs Men" a book on U.S. interference in Iran, and "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry whom Joshua pines away about for awhile. Also mentioned are McMurtry's books "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers" and "Moving On" and the next book club pick "The Death and Life of the Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs. Joshua is touring comedy this summer and releasing a new poetry book. Be sure to let him know which cities he should visit, follow his Substack @joshuaturek and be sure to check joshuaturek.com for tour dates and signed copies of his debut poetry book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comYoni is a journalist and academic. He used to be a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard, and also taught at Babson College and Brandeis. He subsequently served in many editorial and writing roles at The Atlantic, where he's currently a deputy executive editor. He just published his first book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. It's an engrossing account of how zoning in America — yes, zoning — evolved from the Puritans onward. I was unexpectedly fascinated.For two clips of our convo — on the racist origins of zoning, and how progressivism is keeping poor people in place — see our YouTube page.Other topics: raised as an orthodox Jew in the Boston area; spending a year at a yeshiva in Israel; interning for the Gore campaign in 1999; working for the Public Advocate in NYC; studying the Gilded Age in grad school; discovering Ta-Nehisi Coates as a Dish reader and getting hired at The Atlantic through TNC's comments section; mobility as a core feature of early America; the Pilgrims; how the Puritans branched off; moving to construct one's identity; Tocqueville; American Primeval; the “warning out” of early American towns; Lincoln's mobility; the Moving Day of pre-war NYC; Chinese laundries; violence against immigrants; the Progressive drive for zoning; Yoni defending tenements; Hoover's push for single-family homes; defaulting in the Depression; FDR's push for long mortgages; the feds distorting the market; racial segregation; Jane Jacobs vs central planning; Thatcher and public housing; the rise of shitty architecture; cognitive sorting; Hillbilly Elegy; mass migration and rising costs in the UK; how leftist regulations stifle building; and the abundance movement.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Chris Caldwell on the political revolution in Europe, Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Nick Denton on China and AI, Francis Collins on faith and science, Michael Lewis on government service, Ian Buruma on Spinoza, Michael Joseph Gross on bodybuilding, and the great and powerful Mike White, of White Lotus fame. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Replaying our episode with Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman.  Katrina is an urban anthropologist that specializes in human behavior in public spaces. In 2019, she was selected as one of the BBC's 100 Influential Women Around the World and currently works as a data fellow for the City of Philadelphia within the Smart Cities Department doing research on data equity and privacy. She is dedicated to the improvement of public space, with extensive experience teaching and researching the topics we speak about.   We talk about: - What is urban anthropology and how did it grow from the work of Jane Jacobs and Holly Whyte? - Surprising things you find in the city and what stories those items tell. - How cities identify and address problems to improve life for residents. - We discuss urban design improvements and lessons learned from the South Street Headhouse Square District, Barcelona, and Çatalhöyük. - Katrina shines a light on the bias of cities and how these biases impact layout, function, and policy. - We talk about strategies to invoke the spirit of urban anthropology in your professional and personal life.  - I ask Katrina her opinion regarding the rising trend of suburban "Fake Downtowns", public space, and decentralization. Other Episodes You Might Like: 002: Martha Cross: Planners Build Trust and Communities 020: Dena Prastos: Pairing Architecture and Engineering for Resilient Waterfronts 014: Patrícia Akinaga: Impactful Landscape Architecture in the US and Brazil 040: Melissa Daniel: Why/ How Architecture is Political 038: Olivia Asuncion: Architect, Ramp Enthusiast, and Accessibility Advocate

Durk Kooistra in gesprek met Ruben Hanssen, drijvende kracht achter Youtubekanaal 'The Aesthetic City'. Waarom is moderne architectuur vaak zo lelijk? Veruit de meeste mensen hebben een voorkeur voor klassieke, traditionele gebouwen, maar architecten hebben zo hun eigen smaak. Volgens Ruben Hanssen moet het roer om: "Bouw wat mensen fijn vinden, verdomme!" -- Steun DNW en word patroon op http://www.petjeaf.com/denieuwewereld. Liever direct overmaken? Maak dan uw gift over naar NL61 RABO 0357 5828 61 t.n.v. Stichting De Nieuwe Wereld. Bronnen en links bij deze uitzending: - Het artikel in het AD: https://www.ad.nl/buitenland/trumps-oproep-tot-traditionele-overheidsgebouwen-is-volgens-critici-gevaarlijker-dan-hij-lijkt~aaae080a/ (0:30) - Het decreet van Trump: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/promoting-beautiful-federal-civic-architecture/ (1:57) - Het onderzoek van de NCAS: https://www.civicart.org/news-and-events/2020/10/13/ncasharris-survey-shows-americans-overwhelmingly-prefer-traditional-architecture-for-federal-buildings (2:53) - Het Youtubekanaal van Ruben Hanssen: https://www.youtube.com/@the_aesthetic_city, met bijbehorende website: https://theaestheticcity.com/ (5:35, 54:17) - Het alternatief van Sjoerd Soeters, Pleasant Places Happy People, voor de Amsterdamse Sluisbuurt: https://pphp.nl/project/sluisbuurt-amsterdam/ (33:08) - Jane Jacobs, 'Dood en leven van grote Amerikaanse steden': https://www.deslegte.com/dood-en-leven-van-grote-amerikaanse-steden-843497/ (47:44) - De website van Ruben Hanssen: https://www.rubenhanssen.com/

 Greenwich Village is one of America's great music capitals, an extraordinary distinction for an old neighborhood of tenements, townhouses, dive bars and a college campus.So many musical titans of jazz, folk, pop and rock and roll got their start in the Village's many small nightclubs and coffeehouses, working alongside artists, writers, actors and comedians to create an American cultural mecca unlike any other.And it was here, on January 24, 1961, that a nineteen-year-old young man from Minnesota entered the fray -- Robert Zimmerman, otherwise known as Bob Dylan.The Village completely transformed the young folk singer into the voice of a generation, working out his transformation on the minuscule stages of the Gaslight, Cafe Wha? and Gerde's Folk City.But this show isn't strictly about Dylan's ascent to greatness, but the neighborhood -- the people, the streets, the basements! -- which cultivated artists like Dylan (and Billie Holiday and Nina Simone and Pete Seeger and Barbra Streisand and Joan Baez and so on.)PLUS: Bob Moses and Jane Jacobs stop by for a hootenanny (and a protest)Visit the website for a list of music credits, research sources and further listening ideasJoin us on Patreon for extra podcasts and lots of other goodiesShare your love of the city's history with a Bowery Boys Walks gift certificate! Our digital gift cards let your loved ones choose their perfect tour and date.Grab a Bowery Boys tee-shirt, mug or water bottle at our merchandise store.

Dan and Greg recap Unfrozen in 2024 and look ahead to 2025. -- Show Notes: Intro/Outro: “I Still Wear the Uniform,” by The Cooper Vane - Our Spotify Wrapped Stats for 2024 - AndrewAndrew - That time in 2005 when Greg wrote that podcasts would never amount to anything. If you find it, send us the link! --- TOP EPISODES OF 2024: - Top episode of 2024 was also the top episode of 2023: Show Me the Bodies - Horror in Architecture, with Joshua Comaroff - Glass Houses, with Madeline Ashby - Domo Arigatou, Mike 2.0 with Robert Otani - On Balance: Architecture and Vertigo, with Davide Deriu - Innovation Design Consortium, with Peter Devereaux - Salty Urbanism, with Jeffrey Huber - Cornell Tech Urban Tech Summit In 2025…maybe?: - Jane Jacobs the Musical: A Marvelous Order - La Biennale Architettura 2025 – curated by Carlo Ratti - Who will build the Wall? - Who has built the Line – and died? - Data Towers: -             33 Thomas Street – the AT&T Long Lines / Neutron Bomb Building -             1 Brooklyn Bridge Plaza – the Verizon telephone exchange

Award-winning architect and designer Umesh Kelkar, Project Designer II in the Aviation Studio, spills on his Summer Design Competition-winning project, "Deep Rooted Ellum." Intended to revitalize the district in the Southeast Dalla neighborhood, Unmesh's vision for a vibrant mixed-use development on the Southeast side of Dallas garnered critical acclaim from the Urban Land Institute and AIA Dallas as well as the Texas Society of Architects and won the FW Land Award.   Long known for its deep roots in Dallas and contributing to the urban fabric as the center of art, music, history, and culture, this mixed-use plan draws upon jazz music and blues, creating a vibrant, connected environment focused on vitality, richness, and cultural flourishes. His aviation and public spaces background informs his project, which the City of Dallas embraced.   Influenced by Jane Jacobs, the renowned writer American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) argued that "urban renewal" and "slum clearance" did not respect the needs of city dwellers. Profoundly influential in changing the built environment, she coined the terms "mixed primary uses" and "eyes on the street" and remains one of the most influential thinkers and leaders of 21st-century urban architecture. Don't miss this riveting episode of The Square as Unmesh shares his inspiration and design processes. Be sure to include your thumbs up and comments below.   Visit: https://www.Corgan.com/    Also connect with us on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CorganInc/    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CorganInc/    Twitter: https://twitter.com/CorganInc    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/corgan    Video Produced by: Corgan   Have Questions? We'd love to hear from you.    Email: communications@corgan.com

Jane Jacobs and the City as Liturgy w/ Dr. Timothy Patitsas, Michael Sellas and Ashley

About the initiative: Celebrate Your Local Jane Jacobs, a campaign dedicated to acknowledge and honour women who have made substantial hands-on contributions to their communities. In a world where the recognition of women's achievements is often limited, we believe that those who have devoted themselves to civic engagement, participatory planning, enhancing their communities and constructing better towns for future generations deserve appreciation. We see their influence as not only inspiring but also capable of extending to other communities. Guests: Amir Gohar (Senior Lecturer & Programme LeaderSenior Lecturer & Programme Leader University of the West of England, Bristol, England, United Kingdom) Yasmine D'Alessandro (Senior Development Expert, Cairo, Egypt) Links: Website: https://celebrateyourlocaljanejacobs.org LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/celebrate-your-local-jane-jacobs ______ Keep Up the Good Work. Keep Loving Cities ❤️️ All opinions expressed in each episode are personal to the guest and do not represent the Host of Urbanistica Podcast unless otherwise stated. Let's connect and talk further about this episode ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mustafa Sherif Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mustafasherif.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for collaborations and nominations or email me at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠info@mustafasherif.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Urbanistica on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Thanks to Urbanistica Podcast partner AFRY (Urban Planning and Design) AFRY is an international engineering and design company providing sustainable solutions in the fields of energy, industry, and infrastructure.

Hvordan ivaretar vi trygghet i det vi planlegger og bygger? I denne episoden snakker Alexander med Christina og Joakim i Oslopolitiet om trygghet i planprosesser. Hva snakker vi om når vi snakker om trygghet? Hva er trygge byrom? Hva er gode og dårlige eksempler på trygge og utrygge steder i Oslo? Og har Jacobs og Gehl egentlig hatt løsningen hele tiden? https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/o3KjxB/nylandsbrua-er-elefanten-i-uterommet https://www.politiet.no/globalassets/nyheter/oslo/2024-04-30-u-innsats-i-prioriterte-omrader-oslo-pd.pdf  Send oss en mail på podkast@lpo.no og følg oss gjerne på Instagram! PS. Gartnerløkka får gjennomgå i denne episoden, men BYM er på saken:  https://www.oslo.kommune.no/fag-og-utviklingsprosjekter/omradesatsingenes-prosjekter/oppgradering-av-gartnerlokka-1/#gref    Alles ist Architektur!   

In this episode, we dive into the decline of Dublin's inner city, a reflection of urban decay across the English-speaking world. Drawing on Jane Jacobs' urban theories, we explore how cities like Kreuzberg in Berlin and Hackney in London turned around from dereliction to thriving hubs—and ask whether Dublin can do the same. We discuss the importance of repopulating cities with residents, not just tourists, and why mixed-use spaces are crucial for community vibrancy. Can initiatives like “meanwhile use” transform dead zones into lively areas again? Or is Dublin—and cities like it—stuck in a cycle of neglect and decay? Join us as we explore the future of urban living and what it will take to revive dying cities. Join the gang! https://plus.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jim talks with Nikos Salingaros about architectural theory, urbanism, and urban planning. They discuss inherited knowledge, the capability to distinguish between ugly & beautiful buildings, John Vervaeke's 4 kinds of knowing, vertical vs horizontal design, how architecture went so wrong, backward evolution, a Messianic futurism cult, the destruction of living geometry, how the real estate racket works, biophilic design, the correlation between modern architecture & modern art, the human scale, James Gibson, the Fibonacci sequence, deconstructivism, architectural assassins, fractals in architecture, richness, interpretability, medical health, functional ornamentation, information overload, cultural continuity & erasure, the ruse of postmodernism, algorithmic design, the AI revolution in architecture, an opportunity for new entrants, wonderful modern buildings, failed typologies, urban planning, making several systems work together simultaneously, autopoietic systems, urban DNA, Jane Jacobs, the city as a living system, post-war zoning, peer-to-peer urbanism, why it hasn't worked, the "yes in my backyard" movement, the future of architecture, and much more. Episode Transcript A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander JRS EP 227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life The Death and Life of American Cities, by Jane Jacobs How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, by Stewart Brand "P2P Urbanism," by Nikos Salingaros Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics and Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio. An internationally recognized Architectural Theorist and Urbanist, his publications include seven books on architecture and design, two of them co-authored with Michael Mehaffy. Salingaros collaborated with the visionary architect and software pioneer Christopher Alexander over more than twenty years in editing Alexander's monumental four-volume book The Nature of Order. Salingaros won the 2019 Stockholm Cultural Award for Architecture, and shared the 2018 Clem Labine Traditional Building Award with Michael Mehaffy. Salingaros holds a doctorate in Mathematical Physics from Stony Brook University, New York. He has directed and advised twenty-five Masters and PhD theses in architecture and urbanism.

This week, we talk with Evan Friss, author of The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, out now from Penguin Random House. Starting with Benjamin Franklin and moving up to the present day, it is a love letter to bookstores that The New York Times calls "A spirited defense of this important, odd and odds-defying American retail category."Books We Talk About: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs and the works of Donna Tartt, Haruki Murakami, Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders.

I bystudier forstås modernisme som en ambisiøs og overordnet kommunal politikk med sosiale mål. Fra og med 1960-tallet ble den form for velferdspolitikk kritisert for å hindre byen i å blomstre fritt, en kritikk som ofte tok utgangspunkt i det intellektuelle arbeidet til den nord-amerikanske urbanisten Jane Jacobs. Dette plan-kritiske tankegodset representerer i dag det dominerende  synet på byen.  Bør modernismens overordnede planer og reguleringer hentes frem fra historien for å utfordre dette tankegodset, og bidra til å skape et mulighetsrom for det som lenge har blitt oppfattet som motsatsen, motkultur og urbanitet? Må vi finne tilbake til fortidens ambisjonsnivå for å unngå at det vi elsker med byen sakte, men sikkert forsvinner i takt med stigende leie- og tomtepriser?  Gjester er Alf Jørgen Schnell, stipendiat i samfunnsgeografi og forfatter av "På sporet av den tapte fremtid" (2023) og Nazneen Khan-Østrem, forfatter av "London" (2019) og kommentator i Aftenposten. Sammen drøfter de fortidens, samtidens og fremtidens Oslo og London. Programleder er professor Per Gunnar Røe fra institutt for sosiologi og samfunnsgeografi ved Universitetet i Oslo.           

I bystudier forstås modernisme som en ambisiøs og overordnet kommunal politikk med sosiale mål. Fra og med 1960-tallet ble den form for velferdspolitikk kritisert for å hindre byen i å blomstre fritt, en kritikk som ofte tok utgangspunkt i det intellektuelle arbeidet til den nord-amerikanske urbanisten Jane Jacobs. Dette plan-kritiske tankegodset representerer i dag det dominerende  synet på byen.  Bør modernismens overordnede planer og reguleringer hentes frem fra historien for å utfordre dette tankegodset, og bidra til å skape et mulighetsrom for det som lenge har blitt oppfattet som motsatsen, motkultur og urbanitet? Må vi finne tilbake til fortidens ambisjonsnivå for å unngå at det vi elsker med byen sakte, men sikkert forsvinner i takt med stigende leie- og tomtepriser?  Gjester er Alf Jørgen Schnell, stipendiat i samfunnsgeografi og forfatter av "På sporet av den tapte fremtid" (2023) og Nazneen Khan-Østrem, forfatter av "London" (2019) og kommentator i Aftenposten. Sammen drøfter de fortidens, samtidens og fremtidens Oslo og London. Programleder er professor Per Gunnar Røe fra institutt for sosiologi og samfunnsgeografi ved Universitetet i Oslo.           

Professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University and the Cato Institute discusses his work in drafting amicus papers in the Kelo case, working with Jane Jacobs, writing a book on Kelo (The Grasping Hand) a decade after the decision, and his current work on the costs of exclusionary zoning. Throughout, Bobby and Prof. Somin discuss the common ground that otherwise-differing philosophies find in property law.   Links: https://www.law.gmu.edu/faculty/directory/fulltime/somin_ilya  https://www.cato.org/people/ilya-somin https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/constitutional-case-against-exclusionary-zoning/678659/  https://www.amazon.com/Grasping-Hand-London-Limits-Eminent/dp/022642216X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Av65EcHKeo7CqGfLDs_9-g.tENW9VkASB1jBty2_iVzTu5b5-S5ECKGI_CBiubYZHA&qid=1724864661&sr=1-1 

Joey Taylor & Sam Pressler speak with Pete Davis about Join or Die, which he directed with Rebecca Davis.The Lost Prophets PodcastPete's Interview with SamDedicated by Pete DavisBowling Alone by PutnamThe Upswing by PutnamSum of Us by McGheeAgainst Everyone with Conner Habib PodcastWeird Studies PodcastLindy Effect - Nicholas Nassim TalebThe MaintainersQuest for Community by NisbetFebruary 2nd, 1968 by Wendell Berry Small is Beautiful by SchumacherThe Creation of the American Republic by WoodOur Divided Political Heart by DionneTriplets of Evil Speech by KingBoy in the Bubble by Paul SimonJane Macelevy, Eddie Glaude, Frederick Law Olmsted, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jane Jacobs, Buckminster Fuller, Ralph Nader, Paul Goodman, Ella Baker, Ivan Illich, Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, Marshal McLuhan, Tony Judt, Thomas Merton, Michael Lind, Frank Capra, Elias Krim, Roberto Unger, Alexis De Tocqueville, Priya Parker

Vishaan Chakrabarti is the founder and creative director of the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU), and the author of "The Architecture of Urbanity." He has worn many hats - in development, architecture, government and academia, and brings this experience to bear in his public advocacy work. -- Intro: "Rebel Rebel" by David Bowie Show Notes: - The "Joy" Thing with Tim Walz - Obama > Biden Infrastructure Bill - Is it really Rural vs Urban, or Suburban vs Everyone Else? Is it Rurbanity? - UC Berkeley analysis of carbon footprints of cities vs rural vs suburban - The mortgage interest tax deduction - The Federal gas tax - Out-migration from expensive to affordable cities - not the suburbs - Railroad suburbs: Montclair and Maplewood NJ - Carbon pricing - Jane Jacobs' idea that cities formed around trade - James C. Scott - The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber & David Wengrow - Alternate civilizational origin stories at the Venice Biennale - The places we go on vacation all have lousy parking - The energy source powering cars is not really the issue - it's the degree to which we design our cities around cars - or not - Copenhagen - the urban planning Mecca - but where are the immigrants? - InterOculus, PAU, Columbus, Indiana - "Because they've been told their definition of excellence is to design spaceships to be built by slaves in the sand, that's what architects are off doing. And so of course they're not at the adult table influencing policy. We can't relegate ourselves to the kiddie table by talking about irrelevant things and then complain about the chicken nuggets." - "We don't help everyday people visualize the power of policy change as well as we could." - "I think we are at a moment where it is really, important for people who understand the physical world to sit down and be able to speak the language of government." - "Designing policy is a form of design." - New York Times collaboration with PAU = NYC = Not Your Car - Gov. Kathy Hochul's cancellation of congestion pricing - Robert Caro, The Power Broker - "The city's permanent government" - the "deep state" might actually be OK - "New York, New York, New York," by Tom Dyja - Accepting imperfection as a necessary democratic outcome - instead of going Roark on imperfection and blowing it up - Uber's hiring of Bradley Tusk, Bloomberg's third mayoral campaign manager - Alejandro Aravena - an architect literally being the architect of the new Chilean constitution - Norman Foster - adviser to the United Nations on rebuilding Ukraine - Book design by Michael Beirut and Britt Cobb at Pentagram Outro: "Don't Worry About the Government," by Talking Heads

Un día normal en muchas ciudades consiste en sumar horas de coche para realizar las tareas diarias como llevar a los niños a la escuela, ir al trabajo o comprar el pan. Ya hablaba la urbanista y activista Jane Jacobs sobre el modelo de ciudad contemporánea cercado por autopistas que se estructura en torno al vehículo privado. Susana García Bujalance, doctora arquitecta urbanista, ha expresado a a los micrófonos del 24 horas de RNE que la vida en la ciudad es algo "complejo". Ha explicado que uno de los problemas que tiene el debate sobre la vivienda es "el deseo de simplificar y dar titulares": "El problema de la vivienda no es algo que se pueda abordar ni con un una única decisión ni en una sola legislatura. Hace falta un abordaje amplio", defiende. Añade también que, a pesar de que se hable de las ciudades como motores económico, no podemos pensar que esto siempre ha sido así: "La economía eran las empresas, ahora la ciudad es una empresa en sí misma", insiste. Añadido al urbanismo de las ciudades, muchas de éstas se convierten en infiernos de hormigón cuando en verano el termómetro supera los 40 grados, como está pasando estas últimas semanas en nuestro país. Las ciudades, en su mayoría, no están correctamente adaptadas a estas altas temperaturas, sobre todo aquellas en las que cuesta encontrar la sombra de los árboles. Sara Pizzinato, portavoz de Greenpeace, sostiene que en la temperatura en las zonas de arbolado puede ser 15 grados inferior: "Nosotros lo llamamos renaturalizar las ciudades, y debe ser más de una moda: debe ser una verdadera transformación humana [...] Es fundamental tener zonas de sombra a través de las cuales poder desplazarse de forma segura para nuestra salud", sentencia.Escuchar audio

En este episodio de #PodcastLaTrinchera, Christian Sobrino entrevista a Terestella González Denton, aspirante por el Partido Popular Democrático a la alcaldía del Municipio de San Juan. En la conversación discuten su crianza y desarrollo personal, su trayectoria en el servicio público como directora de Turismo en el Municipio de San Juan bajo Sila María Calderón y Directora Ejecutiva de la Compañía de Turismo bajo Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, su entrada a la política en este ciclo electoral, su visión para la Ciudad Capital de prevalecer a la alcaldía y mucho más.  Este episodio de La Trinchera es presentado a ustedes por La Tigre,  el primer destino en Puerto Rico para encontrar una progresiva selección de moda Italiana, orientada a una nueva generación de profesionales que reconocen que una imagen bien curada puede aportar a nuestro progreso profesional. Detrás de La Tigre, se encuentra un selecto grupo de expertos en moda y estilo personal, que te ayudarán a elaborar una imagen con opciones de ropa a la medida y al detal de origen Italiano para él, y colecciones europeas para ella. Visiten la boutique de La Tigre ubicada en Ciudadela en Santurce o síganlos en Instagram en @shoplatigre.Por favor suscribirse a La Trinchera con Christian Sobrino en su plataforma favorita de podcasts y compartan este episodio con sus amistades.Para contactar a Christian Sobrino y #PodcastLaTrinchera, nada mejor que mediante las siguientes plataformas:Facebook: @PodcastLaTrincheraTwitter: @zobrinovichInstagram: zobrinovichThreads: @zobrinovichBluesky Social: zobrinovich.bsky.socialYouTube: @PodcastLaTrinchera"Esperamos demasiado de edificios nuevos y muy poco de nosotros mismos." - Jane Jacobs

The image of the skyscraper is the hallmark of the modern city. Futuristic depictions of urban landscapes nearly always feature towering structures high above the clouds. Today, however, developing countries seem to be putting the greatest effort into building the most impressive skyscrapers, from the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, to the future Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia. Whether you love them or hate them, it's worth asking why we build skyscrapers and what their role will be in future cities. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I sit down with Jason Barr, author of Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers.Barr is a professor of economics at Rutgers University – Newark, and is a member of the Rutgers Global Urban Systems PhD program. He is also the author of Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan's Skyscrapers.In This Episode* Demand for the skyscraper (1:35)* The end of the skyscraper (9:00)* Pillars of commerce (14:05)* The sky's the limit (18:36)* Manhattan extension (23:04)* Trends and styles (24:23)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationThe image of the skyscraper is the hallmark of the modern city. Futuristic depictions of urban landscapes nearly always feature towering structures high above the clouds. Today, however, developing countries seem to be putting the greatest effort into building the most impressive skyscrapers, from the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, to the future Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia. Whether you love them or hate them, it's worth asking why we build skyscrapers and what their role will be in future cities. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I sit down with Jason Barr, author of Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers.Barr is a professor of economics at Rutgers University – Newark, and is a member of the Rutgers Global Urban Systems PhD program. He is also the author of Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan's Skyscrapers.Demand for the skyscraper (1:35)Pethokoukis: You obviously love skyscrapers, you're fascinated by them. You wrote a whole book on them. So I want to just start the very basic question: Why do skyscrapers fascinate you, and the people who aren't fascinated by them, what are they missing?Barr: Great questions. Well, I grew up on Long Island, and so I was always really fascinated with Manhattan. I grew up in the '70s, and so New York back then was a very dark, mysterious place for a youngster. So when I grew up, actually when I was in college, I started hanging out in the city. So to me, the skyline of Manhattan and New York City, they're just two sides of the same coin. I really developed an interest in tall buildings through my interest and fascination with Manhattan's and New York City's history.So when I came to Rutgers Newark, I just started doing research on tall buildings, especially in New York City: what was driving the heights of these buildings; there's all these interesting height cycles over the last 150 years. So I wrote my first book on the Manhattan skyline, that was called Building the Skyline, and then after that I thought, let's see what's happening around the rest of the world. So to me, the tall building is an interesting thing because it's part and parcel with urbanization, and I just personally don't think you could have one without the other.I think some people might think that skyscrapers are, at least for rich countries, that they're kind of a 20th-century thing that we did as we were growing, and cities were getting bigger, and skyscrapers are a part of that, but now they're for other parts of the world, parts of the world which are still urbanizing, which are still getting richer. Are skyscrapers are still a thing for America?The short answer is yes, but, given how dense cities are, tall buildings are just being added a lot more slowly. In New York, the population's kind of slowly growing, and so tall buildings are either replacing old buildings that are wearing out, or there's always this push by big global corporations to be in the newest and latest tall building. And obviously there's this international demand from people abroad to have an apartment — or national demand — global demand to have some kind of residential presence in New York. But the thing is, people in other countries: cities, planners, residents in other countries, they look to New York, they look to Chicago, and I think, for many of them, they see New York as something they want to emulate, and New York is, on just about almost any metric, it's probably the top global city. And so I think cities today, especially in China, and Asia more broadly, they're trying to kind of replicate that, what you might call “the Manhattan magic,” and I don't really think people in this country realize how much tall building construction is going on in other cities around the world. People in this country are a little bit more cynical about the role of the tall building in urban growth and in housing affordability and stuff like this, but other cities are basically going gangbusters, is a way to put it.Is that driven by fundamental economic forces? Is it kind of a “national greatness” kinds of signaling projects? Are there fundamental reasons, not just to build skyscrapers, but to build very, very tall skyscrapers?“All of the above” is the answer. Fundamentally, if there's many, many people who want to be working, living, playing in the center, the only way to accommodate the demand to be in the center is to make more land in the center, so the skyscraper, at its heart, is what I would say is “land in the sky.” You just go vertical because there's constraints on how much land there is in the center.Having said that, definitely the skyscraper is seen as a kind of way to advertise, a way to increase confidence in the place, and so you boost foreign direct investment. Observatories are huge money makers, there's a big tourism component. A lot of critics will say, “Oh, it's all about spectacle and ego.” But really, for the book, and just more broadly my research, when you drill down on the economics of these super tall buildings, not all of them are profitable or profit-maximizing, but they all have a strong economic rationale.Now, I just also want to say, China has its own thing going on, which sort of compounds the skyscraper construction-building there because of their unique governance structure and land ownership structure, but China is building tall buildings because, at the end of the day, there's a kind of, what I call, a “tall building bling.” There's just something that says, “This city is growing, this city is drawing population.” So we build a tall building and we boost confidence in the city. And it works, really.The pictures don't have to be too old, if you look at a picture of Shanghai, it looks a lot different not too long ago. It's almost as if a whole other city just kind of fell from the sky, a city of skyscrapers, and where there were once goats or something grazing, there's now a bunch of massive skyscrapers.Yeah, absolutely, and there's a few reasons for this. One is, I think Chinese residents more broadly see tall building as a natural way to live. I've talked to many Chinese residents, whether it's Shanghai or other cities, and to them, to own an apartment in the sky is like the greatest thing. It's their equivalent of the single family home in the United States. Living in the clouds is something many people aspire to. The other aspect of it is, Shanghai, and the Pudong neighborhood in Shanghai, was chosen basically to become a financial hub. Basically, the leaders were looking at Hong Kong and they thought it was a, to quote, I forgot the author, but to quote him in the book, the Shanghai officials and the National Party officials saw Hong Kong as that frustratingly free city, and so they wanted to create a kind of a financial hub in Shanghai. And so the Shanghai Tower, for example, is part of that plan to really draw people's attention to Shanghai, itself. So it was part of a master plan.The end of the skyscraper (9:00)I certainly remember that, after 9/11, I heard about “the end of the skyscraper,” and then during the pandemic, I heard about “the end of the city.” Now I'm guessing that cities will continue to exist and we're going to continue to build tall buildings.Absolutely. What 9/11 did was just make sure that we make our building safer with fire protection measures. In many Asian countries, every 20 floors, let's say, are mechanical floors, so you have the electric equipment, and the heating, and the cooling, and water tanks. They can also surround these in concrete, and so if something's on fire, if a floor is on fire, they can go to this hermetically sealed floor, a refuge floor, and stay there and be protected. And the elevator cores, they're made of concrete, and so you wouldn't have something like what happened on 9/11. So it didn't really impact the demand; 9/11 didn't impact the demand for the tall building, it just made us make tall buildings safer. And of course the downside is if you want to go into an office building, you have to have a swipe and you have to have an entry, so the negative of 9/11 was more about heightened security and increasing protections in a way that engenders a little bit more mistrust of us. But the demand didn't go away.Same thing with Covid. For big cities like New York and San Francisco, I'm sure the empty-office problem is going to dissipate. It'll take a while. This may be an overly broad statement, but the truth is, our present and future is in cities. The funny thing about the internet and social media and all that, it was supposed to allow us to suburbanize more, or run away from these big, overcrowded cities, but the truth is, social media and internet technology has just made cities even more important. So, as long as cities are growing, there'll be a demand for tall buildingsOf the tallest, I don't know, half-dozen buildings, have you been to all of them?That's a good question. I've been to the Shanghai Tower, which was the second-tallest building in the world, now is the third-tallest. The one that replaced it, I think it's [Merdeka 118] in Kuala Lumpur, I believe. I didn't go to that one yet because that just opened up recently. I've been to the Burj Khalifa, which is the world's tallest building. I'd have to look at the list. I've been to the Sears Tower, Empire State Building . . . Anyway, so I've been to a handful of them. I can't say I've been to every single one of the super-tall buildings in the worldAnd in any of those super-tall buildings, can you open a window? Why can't you open the windows in these skyscrapers?Well, the wind forces are just tremendous! The biggest problem engineering tall buildings is making sure that the building doesn't sway so that people feel it. The really fascinating thing about engineering tall buildings is this question: How do you allow the building to sway enough so that you don't have to — you don't want to over-engineer a building so that you make it perfectly stiff because that's just completely uneconomic to do that, but you want to make sure the building sways just enough so if you're sitting there reading a newspaper or drinking a cup of coffee on the top floor, you don't feel it. And so the wind forces high, a thousand feet in the air, are just so tremendous. I think if you open the window, everything would just would just blow away.I was thinking about some of those very, super-skinny residential buildings, which I guess seem to be becoming more popular, and do those people really feel the motion?From what I can tell, the short answer is no. There's one lawsuit in Manhattan, in particular, where the engineering wasn't exactly perfectly right, but I think that represents the exception that proves the rule. The building is safe, that's not the problem, it's just that, when you're dealing with these super-skinny buildings — these are kind of a new kind of breed of super-tall buildings, so sometimes the engineering isn't perfectly right, so they will figure out ways to kind of fix those problems. The problems are solvable, but sometimes if you don't get it 100 percent right, people complain, and obviously there's lawsuits and you have to go back in and tweak the engineering. But these things are selling for 70, 80, 100 million dollars for a penthouse on the 90th floor, so people still value them, and if motion sickness was a problem, they'd be worthless.Pillars of commerce (14:05)In the book, you run through a number of myths: tall buildings being only for the rich, that they drive up housing prices in cities, again, that you mentioned a little bit earlier, that they're somehow bad economic deals. All these myths all tend to be very negative.I'm not going to rename your book, but I could call it “Cathedrals in the Sky,” I mean, I think these are beautiful buildings that say a lot about human aspiration and to create a sense of awe. Boy, but some people just do not see it that way.I think there's a few strands; I've been thinking about this. There's a kind of a NIMBY strand, and sort of a NIMBY/gentrification strand. So people in the middle income, let's say, they see their housing prices going up, their rent going up, and then they see these billionaire condos, and so they, in my opinion, or based on my research, there's a confusion of correlation and causation. So the most visible manifestation in people's minds of gentrification and affordability problems are the super-slim buildings, but New York City has something like 3.6 million housing units, and if you look at the outlying areas of Queens and Staten Island, they're just covered in one- and two-family homes. Those neighborhoods have added barely any housing. So all of the housing — I'm exaggerating here when I say the word “all,” but the vast majority of new housing units happens in the center where either the zoning is more permissive, or old industrial sites come online and things like this, so people don't realize that the problem of housing affordability is citywide, it just looks naturally to be in their neighborhood where high rises are going up.Then there's another strand, which I would say is kind of the “Jane Jacobs strand” / the anti-public-housing strand. Jane Jacobs has some great points in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities about walkability, about eyes on the street. She wasn't a big fan of tall buildings, and this has kind of given rise to this whole movement of “human scale,” where five-story Greenwich Village buildings, or 10-story Parisian mansard-roof-type buildings are perfect, and any other deviation from that is somehow destroying the city. So there's that part of it, that people see tall buildings as somehow destroying the feel or the perfect fabric of the city. And lastly, obviously, some of the failures with the public housing policy has made people convinced that it's unhealthy to live in these tall buildings. I think that gets at what you're inquiring about. I think there's those different strains.I wonder if part of it stems for a confusion about what are cities for, and I mean cities are, for a large part, are where people to come together for jobs and to conduct commerce. And if you think of them that way, then certain things make sense; but if you think of them as, I don't know, some sort of urban retreat, where it's kind of like a garden or . . . I don't know, but it's a very different view, and perhaps it is not just about bike paths, but it's about what facilitates people to connect.Without jobs, without a labor market, there's no purpose to have a city. Maybe in the 18th or 19th century, you can create a city for the king or the empire, as are many examples, or the Vatican or something like this; so you can have these sort of political capital cities, or even Washington DC, but, fundamentally, 99 percent of the world's cities are places where people go to work, and so, if you don't allow the labor market to function properly, which means having a functioning housing market, then all these ideas about “the good city” and “the perfectly crafted city,” they kind of are irrelevant.So you have to start with: what makes a city grow, what makes people productive, and then how do we accommodate that? To the extent that we can improve design, all the better. There's always a million ways to make things better for people design-wise. I think bike lanes are great, and I think pedestrian-friendly cities are better than car-centric cities, but you can't start with designing the city first and then seeing what happens. You have to start with “let's make an attractive place to live and work” first, and then work on the design feature second.The sky's the limit (18:36)How tall are these buildings going to get?Okay, well, the next world's tallest building is going to be one kilometer: The Jeddah Tower, which had started, I think back in 2013 or 2015, had been stalled, there was some sort of political turmoil in Saudi Arabia, and they've just restarted this Jeddah Tower in the city of Jeddah. And so when that's completed, that's going to be one kilometer. There were some plans floated to have a two-kilometer building in Riyadh. I don't think anyone really thinks that's going to happen.How long does it take to get up to your office in a two-kilometer building?Well, that's the thing. They're coming up with new ways to get people up there faster. The old conventional steel cables could maybe go 500 meters or something like that, which is maybe 80 floors or something. Maybe if you had a really good cable, you can get people to 80 floors and then they'd have to switch. Now they have these composite . . . it's KONE UltraRope, which could go 1000 meters, which could go basically one kilometer continuously. So if you can get people from the ground floor to wherever their destination is within a minute, that's kind of like the golden rule here. People are not willing to wait more than a minute once they get in the elevator. The trick really is the ear pressure, and that's probably the hardest part because you're going up so quickly, the air pressure changes, so you have to figure out ways to make sure the cabin remains pressurized, and then there's the air pressure up on the highest floors. So that, I would argue, is the fundamental issue that's going to be coming next on the horizon is how to efficiently pressurize the highest floors. Let's say you're a mile high; if you're a mile high on the top floor, that's the equivalent of going from New York to Denver in a minute, or two minutes. So you have to figure out a way how to pressurize the entire building so it has a constant air pressure.If I were to look at the skyline of major American cities 50 years from now, would you expect them to be radically different, futuristic looking, maybe not two-kilometer buildings, but a lot of very, very tall buildings? Or is it again, if they're not growing, if population isn't growing, then that won't happen?People are always asking me what I think about the doom loops and all that. Pick New York as one end of the spectrum: It's always going to be adding new buildings, that's just in its DNA, and so you're going to have this kind of collage of different building styles. But other cities, smaller cities, maybe where people are moving now because working from home, they'll add a few tall buildings here, they'll have mini-skylines. Then the other cities, like a St. Louis, that's just going to have to kind of figure out a plan for growth. So I don't see the world as a kind of Jetsons-type world.I mean, you never know what's going to happen with the technology. There's one company, TK or Thyssenkrupp elevators, they're working on Maglev elevators, and this can actually be a game changer because you have these shafts, so the Maglev elevator cars, they can go up or down or they can go horizontal. Part of the goal with that is that everybody has their own — if it's an apartment building, they have their own elevator car, it takes them up to their apartment, it becomes the door. So that could be a real game changer . . . And then you could run these things horizontally. So if you have these Maglev elevators, you can not only run them horizontally within the building, but, in principle, if you could work out property rights or whatever, you could connect these things across buildings. But at the end of the day, it's really about preferences and a kind of cultural perception of the tall building, and I just don't see us in the United States us having a dramatic, country-wide rethinking of where we live. There's always going to be this desire for the single-family home in the suburbs. Now maybe that'll diminish to some degree, but as long as people see their own little house as their own little castle . . .Unlike China, where there seems to be a great desire to live in these kinds of buildings.Manhattan extension (23:04)Have you had any takers about your proposal to make Manhattan bigger?No.You would extend it by about 2000 acres and maybe build some tall buildings on that, I don't know.The idea would be to create a new mini-Manhattan extending Manhattan into New York Harbor. Just briefly, the idea was both to add more housing and add more land, and to protect lower Manhattan against sea level rises and so forth. I proposed this in a New York Times op-ed piece, and, naturally, I would say the majority of commenters and people had this sort of kneejerk reaction against it.I had a kneejerk reaction for it! I loved it!You are part of a small, select core of appreciators, let's say. Having said that, in the 21st century it's just not something I think most people are willing to wrap their heads around. SoTo me, that's an idea with the future, and I think you should not be dejected that it was not initially well-received. I think that kind of idea might actually have some legs.Trends and styles (24:23)Finally, let me ask you, whether it's because of computers or new materials, would we expect skyscrapers in the future to look any differently? I think some people would love to go back to the 1930s style. They love that style of skyscraper, and they don't like the glass-and-steel, very rectangular skyscraper; they want it to look like Gotham City or something.Actually, if you look in Manhattan, in Brooklyn there's one, I think they're calling it something like the “Dark Knight Tower” or the “Gotham Tower.” It's in Brooklyn and it has this almost art deco sort of —It slipped my mind, I was thinking art deco, yes.And there's a high rise apartment near Columbia University, which uses the same color masonry as the surrounding buildings. I think it's the Union Theological Seminary, which sold some of the land to build a high rise. It sort of blends in. So I guess the question is really architecturally speaking, and it's sort of hard to say. I think maybe there'll be some neo-historical buildings coming up here or there, but there's two things: One is that people like glass windows. People love to have light and views, and so that's really just pushing the glass buildings. I think developers like glass too, because it's easy to work with, and architects — if you're a developer and you want a super-tall building, you usually go to a handful of architects and you have some kind of design competition, and, chances are, you're going to get something that looks full of glass and has some funky geometry to it.But they seem more twisty than they used to, so they're not just perfect rectangles.Right, so you're creating a lot of illusion. The interesting thing is, at the end of the day, you can only have certain internal shapes because you need functional spaces, so you have to have illusion with the twisting and these sort of Jenga towers, and a lot of that is due to massive improvements in computer technology; so the rendering software has dramatically improved, the engineering know-how, the engineering technology improved, you can send your designs right to the manufacturer where they can then use the computer programs to design exactly the shapes and sizes.So it's the learning curve of every building that you do adds to the knowledge of how to do something a little bit different, or some version of something before, and also just massive computer power. I think there'll be a lot more of these sort of funky architectural shape. How they hold up, only time tells. In the '80s there was this massive postmodern boom with all kinds of pastiche-type buildings with all kinds of references to old buildings, and funky buildings, and some of those haven't held up as well.Frankly, I'm from Chicago, and I know exactly what you're talking about. Also being from Chicago, I appreciate you calling that building the Sears Tower rather than what other name they try to put on it. Last question: Do you have a favorite skyscraper?I'm from New York and I like the Empire State Building, and it's not just because architecturally a classic building, but it speaks to New York as a city of strivers. And the more research I did into the Empire State Building, the more I appreciate the sheer guts of these guys who built this building. And the thing is, when it was completed in 1931, Great Depression was really starting to kick into high gear, and so the building was unrented, and it kind of gave this whole mythology about how these guys didn't know what they were doing, but when you crunch the numbers, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew what the landscape looked like for New York, and the costs, and the revenues. Nobody saw the Great Depression coming, and so to say that the Great Depression showed how foolish these were, I just think it's a bad standard to hold them to. And if you look at the revenues and them building value over its 90-whatever, 93-year history, it's been a money-maker for almost a century. After the Great Depression, it recovered and has become an icon and a moneymaker, so what's not to love about that?Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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Aaron Lubeck and I sat down in Cincinnati, during CNU 32, to talk a lot about housing, policy, and how to actually make change. Aaron writes a Substack called On Housing, where he frequently explores these issues. And, he's one of the founders of Southern Urbanism, which has a terrific array of writers and feature pieces.Some of the posts we discuss:I am Going to Gring Back the Sears HomeWhat's Next for Jane Jacobs' Sidewalk Ballet?A Brief Detour to Honor My Old LadyHow North Carolina became a leader in building code reform to enable affordability.From my archives:Let Urban be Urban, Let Suburban be SuburbanThe video of my presentation on Suburban vs UrbanMomFind more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

On this week's program, we bring you highlights from a great event that took place at the Main Public Library on May 21st called "Walkable Louisville: a conversation with urban planner and author Jeff Speck." The University of Louisville's Urban Design Studio Sustainable City Series presented renowned urban planner and author Jeff Speck as he shared his insights on reimagining downtown Louisville through the lens of walkability and why fostering a pedestrian-friendly environment is imperative for a flourishing city. Jeff Speck is a city planner and author who advocates internationally for more walkable cities. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he presided over the Mayors' Institute on City Design and created the Governors' Institute on Community Design. Prior to his federal appointment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at DPZ & Co., the principal firm behind the New Urbanism movement. Since 2007, he has led Speck & Associates — now Speck Dempsey —an award-winning urban planning firm serving public and private clients around the world. With Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Mr. Speck is the co-author of Suburban Nation, which the Wall Street Journal calls "the urbanist's bible.” His 2012 book Walkable City was the best selling city planning title of the past decade and has been translated into eight languages. He is also the principal author of The Smart Growth Manual and Walkable City Rules. Jeff Speck has been named a fellow of both the American Institute of Certified Planners and the Congress for New Urbanism. In a recent Planetizen poll, he was voted one of the ten “most influential urbanists of all time.” Mr. Speck was the 2022 recipient of the Seaside Prize, whose former awardees include Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander. His TED talks and YouTube videos have been viewed more than six million times.

“Something about the motion of walking is conducive to generating both ideas and conversation. You can empty your mind and open your mind at the same time.” —Kevin Kelly In this episode of Deviate, Rolf reports from a “Walk and Talk” across northern Thailand. Interviewees and conversation topics are listed by time-code below. Participant write-ups about (or alluding to) the 2023 Thailand Walk and Talk include: The Walk and Talk: Everything We Know, by Craig Mod Walk and Talk: Everything We Know (PDF document), by Kevin Kelly Walking the Heck out of Thailand, by Craig Mod Walk and Talk, by Derek Sivers Expanding Home, by Liz Danzico Where Do You Call Home?, by Jason Kottke 2023: Walking, by Dan Wang Why Not Pay Teachers $100,000 a Year?, by Daniel Pink Kevin Kelly (4:00-15:00) Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) is a photographer, writer, and futurist, with much of his work centering on Asian and digital culture. His newest book is Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. Travel can be a way to see the future (Deviate episode) Kevin Kelly on the lost world of 1970s Asia (Deviate episode) Wired (technology magazine) The Cotswolds (region in central Southwest England) Liz Danzico (15:00-27:45) Liz Danzico is VP of Design at Microsoft, and the Founding Chair of the MFA Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual Arts. Long-distance hiking at home (Deviate episode) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs (book) Lets Drift (Kenyan hiking club) Hoka (brand of walking shoes) Silvia Lindtner (27:45-46:00) Silvia Lindtner is a writer, ethnographer, and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. Her book Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation was published by Princeton University Press in 2020. Seeking rural places (Deviate episode) Jiangxi (Chinese province) Guangdong (Chinese province) Yunnan (Chinese province) Salzburg (city in Austria) The Vulnerable Observer, by Ruth Behar (book) Anna Greenspan (media professor) Communitas (unstructured community of equals) Daniel Pink (46:00-52:00) Daniel Pink is a best-selling author of books on work, business, and life. His “Why Not?” project in collaboration with the Washington Post to aims to jolt America's imagination about possibilities. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, by Daniel Pink (book) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel Pink (book) The Power of Regret, by Daniel Pink (book) Craig Mod (52:00-69:00) Craig Mod is an author and photographer who has written and photographed about his walks across Japan, his love of pizza toast, and his life in Japan. Walk Japan (tour company) Rich Roll (ultra-endurance athlete) The Glorious Boredom of My Walk in Japan, by Craig Mod (essay) Kissa by Kissa, by Craig Mod (book) Things Become Other Things, by Craid Mod (book) The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel's 2017 album Lumber. Note: We don't host a “comments” section, but we're happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

New York City is a rich city with unique experiences and a rich history. Jane's Walk NYC gives you the opportunity to dive deeper into different cultural, historical, and unique aspects of the city, all for free! This year, NYC's Jane's Walk will take place from Friday, May 3rd, through Sunday, May 5th. While availability lasts, you can register for free walking tours through the hosting group's website, the Municipal Art Society of New York. Keep reading below to learn about some of the unique tours available, more about Jane Jacobs, and why you won't want to miss this once-a-year event!

Ever ponder why our feline friends emit those curious chirps when eyeing birds through the window? We kick off with a whimsical discussion about these endearingly odd behaviors before shifting to the silver screen's latest hot topic – the 'Roadhouse' remake. With Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor stepping into the dance-free zone of this classic's redo, we're stirring the pot and asking: is the magic of the original being sidelined for star power? Bedford Williamson joins us once more, bringing his sharp wit and cinematic savvy to the table, ready to dissect these film industry choices with us.Strap in for a rhythm-infused rollercoaster as we tackle the daring notion of musical numbers busting into the realms of action-packed franchises like 'Fast and Furious.' Could a high-speed car chase suddenly segue into a full-blown ballad? We explore the finesse required to integrate song and dance into unexpected genres, citing the charm of "La La Land" and the quirky beats of "500 Days of Summer." Yet, we're not afraid to call out missteps like that notorious 'Spider-Man 3' boogie. And what about "Brave"? Bedford contributes his expertise on whether a dash of Scottish folk could have seasoned Pixar's animated stew just right.Finally, we sweep through the stars with a symphony of ideas, from the catchy tunes of "Frozen" to the hypothetical melodies of a "Star Wars" space opera. Delving into the realm of musical casting, we applaud Hugh Jackman's transformation into "The Greatest Showman" and even flirt with the notion of a 'Joker' sequel, crescendoing into a Gaga-led spectacle. And as we pull back the curtain on a city's life through song, inspired by urbanist Jane Jacobs, we ponder the enduring significance of the arts in our AI-dominated zeitgeist. So, tune in for a harmonious blend of critique, culture, and creativity that's sure to strike a chord.Help these new solutions spread by ... Subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts Leaving a 5-star review Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference) Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.comAdam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.comScot: @scotmaupinadambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)The Numey (inflation-free currency) Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

In part one of our interview with Brookings Metro fellow Tracy Hadden Loh, we discussed lasting influences of post-pandemic work trends on urban design and governance. Although it is the most recent example, the COVID-19 pandemic is not the first major disruptor of economic activity within major U.S. metros, and it certainly will not be the last. A century earlier, the widespread adoption of automobiles changed the way metropolitan areas function to this day, allowing for mass migration to the outlying suburbs of once-booming central cities. Knowing that perennial industrial and population growth is a fickle thing to maintain, more city leaders, developers, and urban planners are re-acquainting themselves with the idea of ‘placemaking' as a method for creating a resilient community culture. Popularized in the mid-twentieth century by pioneers like Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte, the placemaking movement in the U.S. has long lauded the potential for urban living to foster human connections. Placemaking has since seen a twenty-first-century revival that has gained renewed energy as urban advocates aim to recover city life that was lost during the pandemic—with new insights into the values of equity and sustainability. In this second and final half of their discussion, Tracy Hadden Loh and Ten Across founder Duke Reiter will discuss the ambitions of the placemaking movement, and how it can improve the urban issues that were covered in the previous episode. Articles and sources referenced in this episode by order of appearance: “New census estimates show a tepid rise in U.S. population growth, buoyed by immigration” (Brookings, January 2023) Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World (Vey, S. Jennifer; Storring, Nate, 2022) “How a ‘Golden Era for Large Cities' Might Be Turning Into an ‘Urban Doom Loop'” (The New York Times, November 2022) “The Perfect Height for Urban Buildings” (Next City, February 2024) “Opinion: A Life Without a Home” (The New York Times, February 2024) “Homelessness in US cities and downtowns” (Brookings, December 2023) “AG suing Arizona landlords for ‘corrupting' market, colluding to keep rents high” (12News, February 2024)

Chapter 1 Interpret what The Death And Life Of Great American Cities is about"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" is a book written by Jane Jacobs, first published in 1961. In the book, Jacobs criticizes the urban planning theories and practices that were prevalent at the time and suggests alternative approaches. She argues against the prevailing idea that urban renewal and slum clearance were necessary for improving cities and instead advocates for preserving and revitalizing existing neighborhoods.Jacobs examines the social, economic, and cultural factors that contribute to vibrant and thriving cities. She emphasizes the importance of diverse and mixed-use neighborhoods, pedestrian-friendly streets, and a sense of community. She argues that a city is more than just its physical structures and that the complex interactions and activities of its residents are what truly make it great.The book has had a significant impact on urban planning and has become a classic in the field. It challenged prevailing assumptions about city planning and advocated for a more organic and community-driven approach to urban development. Jacobs' ideas continue to be influential today in shaping discussions and practices around urban design and revitalization.Chapter 2 Is The Death And Life Of Great American Cities A Good BookYes, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs is widely considered to be a classic and influential book in urban planning and sociology. It offers insightful and original ideas about city dynamics, emphasizing the importance of a diverse and active street life, mixed-use development, and community engagement. Many urban planners, architects, and academics regard it as a must-read for anyone interested in understanding and improving cities.Chapter 3 Key Features of The Death And Life Of Great American Cities"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" is a seminal work written by urban activist and journalist Jane Jacobs. Published in 1961, it challenged conventional urban planning theories and presented a compelling critique of urban renewal projects and modernist urban design.Jacobs argues that successful cities are characterized by vibrant and diverse neighborhoods, filled with a mix of residential, commercial, and public spaces. She emphasizes the importance of street life and pedestrian activity in creating a sense of community and safety. In her view, urban planners often overlook the intricate social and economic dynamics of a city, leading to the destruction of local communities in the name of progress.One of the central arguments in the book is the importance of mixed-use development and dense city neighborhoods. Jacobs claims that a mix of old and new buildings, varied building heights, and a mix of businesses and residences creates a lively and dynamic urban environment. She criticizes modernist planning practices that separate residential areas from commercial and industrial zones, resulting in isolated and often deserted neighborhoods.Jacobs further analyzes the social and economic aspects of urban life, highlighting the importance of public spaces, such as parks and plazas, in fostering community interaction. She also puts forth the concept of "eyes on the street," emphasizing the importance of active and engaged citizens in maintaining a safe and vibrant city.Throughout the book, Jacobs offers a series of case studies and observations from various American cities and neighborhoods, providing examples of successful and unsuccessful urban planning practices. She also critiques the prevailing theories of

Close your eyes and imagine exiting your front door. Within moments, everything necessary for your life is a few blocks away, except perhaps your job. Groceries, coffee, toiletries, your bank—if you're still a physical bank-type person—auto shop, all within walking distance. You never have to commute too far to live your life. Sounds like quite a dystopian hellscape, doesn't it?  Believe it or not, that's yet another conspiracy theory that emerged earlier this year, because the ability to access things you need is apparently a Deep State plot. Derek is joined by “The War on Cars” co-host, Doug Gordon, to discuss how this conspiracy started and why smart urban planning is a boon for society. First, we discuss Jane Jacobs, the Scranton, Pennsylvania-born journalist and theorist who brought her civic activism to Toronto in 1968, with Matthew coloring in how her legacy has fared during the rise of the Ford family. Corrections: In his unbridled enthusiasm for the topic and the memories it churned up, Matthew messed up THREE things—the Escalade is a Cadillac, not a Ford, “Downtown” was sung by Petula Clark, not Peggy Lee, and Bill Davis was a Progressive Conservative Premier, not a Liberal! Apologies. Show Notes The Woman Who Saved New York City from Superhighway Hell | Vanity Fair  ‘The streets belong to the people': Why a premier killed the Spadina Expressway | TVO Today  ​Ford family is building a political dynasty  ​​Video shows Councillor Doug Ford handing out $20 bills at TCHC building  Where the Spadina Expressway Didn't Stop | The Local Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Strong Towns founder and president, Charles Marohn, was invited to the Lit with Charles podcast to discuss Jane Jacobs' seminal work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and the impact it has had on urban planning and the building of cities. If you love Jane Jacobs or want to learn more about her views and how Strong Towns advocates are working to make them a reality, you will want to explore this conversation. We have provided a full transcript to go along with the audio version, which we share here with the permission of the Lit with Charles podcast.