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**Densely Speaking**

Densely Speaking: Conversations About Cities, Economics & Law

Latest Episodes:

S5E2 - Cities in Bad Shape: Urban Geometry in India (Nina Harari) Aug 27, 2026

Show notes

Cities in Bad Shape: Urban Geometry in India (Nina Harari)

Mariaflavia (Nina) Harari, Associate Professor of Real Estate and Leonard J. Horwitz Faculty Scholar at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Cities in Bad Shape: Urban Geometry in India.

Appendices:

Nina Harari: Spatial Spillovers from High-Rise Developments: Evidence from the Mumbai Mills by Michael Gechter and Nick Tsivanidis.

Greg Shill: The Housing Strategy That Has California NIMBYs in a Corner by Conor Dougherty.

Jeff Lin: The Impact of City Shape on Economic Growth by Econimate. Additionally, the Jennifer Roback paper discussed is Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life.

Producer: Nathan Spindler-Krage

The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S5E1 - Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through AI (Arianna Salazar-Miranda) Jul 14, 2026

Show notes

Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces through AI (Arianna Salazar-Miranda)

Welcome to the fifth season of Densely Speaking! Subscribe today for automatic delivery of future interviews, and please take a moment to rate and review us—it helps others find the show and become introduced to wonderful authors doing cutting-edge work on cities, economics & law.

Arianna Salazar-Miranda is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Data Science at the Yale School of the environment. She is the author of Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through AI (with Zhuangyuan Fan, Michael Baick, Keith N. Hampton, Fabio Duarte, Becky P. Y. Loo, Edward Glaeser, and Carlo Ratti).

Appendices:

Arianna Salazar-Miranda: The World in the Year 2000

Greg Shill: Sidewalk Government and Sidewalk Nation: The Life and Law of America's Most Overlooked Resource by Michael Pollack.

Jeff Lin: What Holly Whyte’s “Social Life” Film Can Teach Us Today by Anne Tan-Detchkov at Project for Public Spaces discusses the film in question and Statistical Models and Shoe Leather by David Freedman discusses regression analysis and advocates for broader, holistic observational work within the social sciences.

Producer: Nathan Spindler-Krage

S4E7 - The (Express)Way to Segregation: Evidence from Chicago (Sara Bagagli) Apr 21, 2025

Show notes

The (Express)Way to Segregation: Evidence from Chicago (Sara Bagagli)

Sara Bagagli is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate Economics and Finance at London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research contributes to our understanding of what drives the (unequal) distribution of people and economic activity across space, focusing on the role of transportation infrastructure and urban forms. Her 2023 paper, The (Express)Way to Segregation: Evidence from Chicago, examines the long-established view that highways acted to increase segregation. Did expressways increase racial segregation in urban centers? Professor Bagagli establishes that expressways contributed to racial segregation in Chicago through two channels: (1) local price and amenity effects and (2) barrier effects. From these findings, she then constructs a structural urban model to study the link between urban barriers and racial preferences in shaping the allocation of people across space.

Appendices:

Sara Bagagli: Ann Petry, The Street.

Greg Shill: Pete Saunders, Two Chicagos, Defined.

Jeff Lin: Hammond's Pictorial Travel Atlas of Scenic America. Follow us on the web or on “X,” formerly known as Twitter: @denselyspeaking. Jeff and Greg can be found on Bluesky at @jeffrlin.bsky.social, and @gregshill.com.

Producer: Nathan Spindler-Krage

S4E6 - Procurement and Infrastructure Costs (Zach Liscow) Mar 21, 2025

Show notes

Procurement and Infrastructure Costs (Zach Liscow)

Zach Liscow is Professor of Law at Yale Law School. From 2022-23, he was the Chief Economist at the White House Office of Management and Budget. We discuss his recent article, Procurement and Infrastructure Costs (with William Nober and Cailin Slattery), which collects new project-level data and surveys of state DOT officials to document variation in infrastructure procurement costs across states and identify cost drivers, including capacity and competition.

Appendices: Zach Liscow: Robert Kagan, Adversarial Legalism Greg Shill: Brian Potter, Why Can’t the U.S. Build Ships? Jeff Lin: Abhay Aneja & Guo Xu, Strengthening State Capacity: Civil Service Reform and Public Sector Performance during the Gilded Age Follow us on the web or on “X,” formerly known as Twitter: @denselyspeaking. Jeff, Greg, and Zach can be found on Bluesky at @jeffrlin.bsky.social, @gregshill.com, and @zliscow.bsky.social.

Producer: Nathan Spindler-Krage The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S4E5 - How Much Road Does America Have? (Erick Guerra) Feb 24, 2025

Show notes

How Much Road Does America Have? (Erick Guerra)

Professor Erick Guerra is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. We discuss his recent article,Urban Roadway in America: The Amount, Extent, and Value (with Gilles Duranton & Xinyu Ma), which provides the first comprehensive estimate of the amount, share, and value of roadways across over 300 U.S. metro areas.

Appendices:

Erick Guerra: Erick Guerra, Overbuilt: The High Costs and Low Rewards of US Highway Construction.

Greg Shill: Jeffrey Brinkman & Jeffrey Lin, Freeway Revolts! The Quality of Life Effects of Highways.

Jeff Lin: Foursquare OS Places.

Follow us on the web or on “X,” formerly known as Twitter: @denselyspeaking. Jeff and Greg can be found on Bluesky at @jeffrlin.bsky.social and @gregshill.com. Greg also has a Substack newsletter.

Producer: Nathan Spindler-Krage

S4E4 - In a Bad State: State & Local Budget Crises (David Schleicher) Sep 23, 2024

Show notes

In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises (David Schleicher)

David Schleicher is the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises. He also co-hosts the podcast Digging a Hole with YLS colleague Samuel Moyn.

Appendices: David Schleicher: New York Times article The Queen Bee of Bidenomics and American Compass proposal On Infrastructure Financing.

Greg Shill: Fire & Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain by Christian Wolmar.

Jeff Lin: Interstate: Highway Politics and Policy Since 1939 by Mark Rose and Raymond Mohl.

Producer: Nathan Spindler-Krage

S4E3 - Neighborhood Formation and Neighborhood Effects (Dionissi Aliprantis) Aug 07, 2024

Show notes

Neighborhood Formation and Neighborhood Effects (Dionissi Aliprantis)

Dionisi Aliprantis is an assistant vice president and a senior research economist in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the director of the Bank’s Program on Economic Inclusion, and the founding director of the Math Movement. He is the author of “Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves”: A Review Essay with Daniel Hartley.

Appendices:

Dionissi Aliprantis: Brilliant.org and Vsauce on The Banach-Tarski Paradox

Greg Shill, Professor of Law & Michael and Brenda Sandler Faculty Fellow in Corporate Law, University of Iowa College of Law: The Radical Fair Housing Act, by Noah Kazis

Jeff Lin: 3Blue1Brown Series on Neural Networks

Producer: Courtney Campbell The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S4E2 - Blockbusting and the Challenges Faced by Black Families in Building Wealth through Housing (Jonathan Rose) Jul 08, 2024

Show notes

Blockbusting and the Challenges Faced by Black Families in Building Wealth through Housing in the Postwar US (Jonathan Rose)

Jonathan Rose is the Historian of the Federal Reserve System and senior economist and economic advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He is the co-author of Blockbusting and the Challenges Faced by Black Families in Building Wealth through Housing in the Postwar United States (with Daniel Hartley).

Other Materials Mentioned: A Spatial Animation of Blockbusting Racial Segregation in Housing Markets and the Erosion of Black Wealth The Saturday Evening Post: Confessions of a Block-Buster

Appendices: Jonathan Rose: East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity”

Greg Shill: Detroit’s Birwood Wall: Hatred and Healing in the West Eight Mile Community.

Jeff Lin: Urban Life in the Distant Past: The Prehistory of Energized Crowding (Urban Archaeological Pasts).

The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia or Chicago, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.

S4E1 - The National Zoning Atlas (Sara Bronin and Scott Markley) May 20, 2024

Show notes

The National Zoning Atlas (Sara Bronin and Scott Markley)

Densely Speaking programming note: this is the first episode of our new season.

Sara Bronin, Professor at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, is the Director of the National Zoning Atlas. Scott Markley is the Geospatial Project Coordinator at the National Zoning Atlas and a visiting professor at Cornell.

Appendices:

Scott Markley: Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

Sara Bronin: Lowcountry at High Tide; The Sirens of Mars.

Greg Shill, Professor of Law and Michael and Brenda Sandler Faculty Fellow in Corporate Law, University of Iowa College of Law: A Research Agenda for US Land Use and Planning Law.

Jeff Lin: House Size and Household Size: The Distributional Effects of the Minimum Lot Size Regulation.

S3E6 - Remote Work and City Decline: Lessons From NYC's Garment District (Clay Gillette) Dec 04, 2023

Show notes

Remote Work and City Decline: Lessons From the Garment District (Clay Gillette)

Clay Gillette is the Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law at New York University School of Law. He is the author of Remote Work and City Decline: Lessons from the Garment District, 15 Journal of Legal Analysis 201 (2023).

Appendices:

Clay Gillette: the book In a Bad State (by David Schleicher), work by Joan Didion, TV shows Borgen, Fauda, Shtisel, and The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, and the movie Oppenheimer.

Greg Shill: the novel A Confederacy of Dunces, the New Yorker short story series Sell Out, and the TV show Rough Diamonds.

Jeff Lin: journal articles Networking off Madison Avenue and The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate, and Trees? Not in My Backyard. (Jerusalem Demsas) in the Atlantic.

Follow us on the web or on Twitter/X: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill. The hosts are also on Bluesky at @jeffrlin and @gregshill.

Producer: Courtney Campbell