Infinite Earth Radio – weekly conversations with leaders building smarter, more sustainable, and equitable communities

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**Infinite Earth Radio – weekly conversations with leaders building smarter, more sustainable, and equitable communities**

Infinite Earth Radio is a weekly podcast produced by Skeo and the Local Government Commission and hosted by Mike Hancox and Vernice Miller-Travis. Each week they interview visionary leaders, dedicated government officials, savvy businesses and forward thinking individuals who are working to build smarter, more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous communities through social and economic inclusion that values the contribution of all citizens and seeks meaningful lives for everyone.
You will discover new leading edge strategies for lifting up and building great 21st century communities, along with cutting edge strategies for revitalizing under resourced communities and empowering excluded populations. Smart Growth, Prosperity and Sustainability are not possible without social, civic, and economic inclusion for people of all economic, social, and racial backgrounds.

Latest Episodes:

Local Policies and the Transportation Revolution Jul 13, 2018

Show notes

Topic:

Smart Growth and Livable Communities Series – integrating new mobility technology into cities

Guest & Organization:

Working out of BB&K’s Washington, D.C. office, Greg uses his unique experience working on Capitol Hill and as in-house counsel for a transportation planning agency to provide legal and regulatory guidance concerning federal grant and contracting requirements, and monitors, counsels and advocates for clients on federal legislation, rulemakings and funding opportunities related to transportation infrastructure. Greg’s practice includes providing strategic guidance, policy tracking, and legal assistance on the regulation and incorporation of emerging transportation technologies into our transportation network, including on-demand mobility, automated and connected vehicles, and drones. Greg is a co-host on the @MobilityPodcast and can be found on Twitter at @smartertranspo.

Resources:

BB&K Attorneys at Law

Mobility Podcast

The First Self-Driving Death

Roads of the Future Today

Dockless Disruption: Maximizing Opportunities Through Smart Regulations

Automated Vehicle Regulatory Challenges: Avoiding Legal Potholes Through Collaboration

Local Government Commission

Resilience for All Jul 13, 2018

Show notes

Topic:

Urban Resilience Series – Resiliency planning, equity and community-driven design

Guest & Organization:

Barbara Brown Wilson is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. Barbara Brown Wilson’s research and teaching focus on the ethics, theory, and practice of sustainable community design and development, and on the history of urban social movements. Wilson’s current research projects include understanding how grassroots community networks reframe public infrastructure in more climate and culturally appropriate ways across the U.S. and helping to elevate the standards of evaluation for community engaged design around notions of social and ecological justice. Her research is often change-oriented—she collaborates with real community partners to identify opportunities for engaged and integrated sustainable development. She is a member of the Equity Collective, whose work is currently featured in the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s By the People: Designing a Better America Exhibition. Alongside Architect Jeana Ripple, Wilson is coordinating the community engaged aspects of the Public Art Installation for the ArtHouse Social Kitchen Project in Gary, Indiana. She is also working, as a researcher, an educator, and a board member of the Piedmont Housing Alliance (PHA) with their leadership to identify venues where PHA residents can more actively engage in and shape their communities. In those collective posts, Wilson is serving as a resource ally to PHA’s new Youth Leadership in Land Use program that brings in resident youth from Friendship Court as valued members of the design team for the Redevelopment project currently underway in their neighborhood.

She is a co-founder of the Design Futures Student Leadership Forum, a five day student leadership training which convenes students and faculty from a consortium of universities with leading practitioners all working to elevate the educational realms of community engaged design; and a co-founder of the Austin Community Design and Development Center (ACDDC), a nonprofit design center that provides high quality green design and planning services to lower income households and the organizations that serve them.

Resources:

Resilience for All – Striving for Equity Through Community-Driven Design

Island Press Urban Resilience Project

Download the Island Press APP! Learn more about the APP here, and find it on Google Play and Apple App Store!

Charlottesville Beyond the Headlines May 11, 2018

Show notes

Topic:

Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Environmental Justice and Equitable Development Series – current political climate in Charlottesville and beyond

Guest & Organization:

Dayna Bowen Matthew is the William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and F. Palmer Weber Research Professor of Civil Liberties and Human Rights at the University of Virginia. Matthew is a leader in public health who focuses on racial disparities in health care. She joined the Virginia faculty in 2017. She is the author of the book “Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care.”

Matthew previously served on the University of Colorado law faculty as a professor, vice dean and associate dean of academic affairs. She was a member of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities on the Anschutz Medical Campus and held a joint appointment at the Colorado School of Public Health.

She has also taken on many public policy roles. Matthew worked with a law firm partner in 2013 to found the Colorado Health Equity Project, a medical-legal partnership incubator aimed at removing barriers to good health for low-income clients by providing legal representation, research and policy advocacy. In 2015 she served as the senior adviser to the director of the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she expedited cases on behalf of historically vulnerable communities besieged by pollution. She then became a member of the health policy team for U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and worked on public health issues.

During 2015 and 2016 she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, in residence in Washington, D.C., and pivoted her work toward population-level clients. She forged relationships with influential policy groups such as the Brookings Institution, where she is currently a non-resident senior fellow, and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

Resources:

Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care

University of Virginia School of Law

Transportation, Place & Prosperity — GoTRANS May 11, 2018

Show notes

Topic:

Smart Growth and Livable Communities Series – active transportation and community design

Guest:

Peter Katz has been a leader in advancing innovative approaches to community planning and transportation for more than a quarter century. He helped to catalyze the New Urbanism movement, first as author of The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community, and later as founding director of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). At CNU, Katz set up a strategic partnership with the US Department of Housing & Urban Development that led the agency to adopt more neighborhood-oriented development models. He was recently named a fellow of CNU in recognition of his contributions to the New Urbanism movement. As consultant to government, public agencies, and private-sector clients, Katz addresses real-world needs with state-of-the-art strategies. He was lead advisor to local redevelopment officials on the highly successful Contra Costa Centre Transit Village (American Planning Association National Award Winner, 2012).

Organization:

GoTRANS, a recently formed nonprofit organization, is building a community of car-free and car-light individuals and families across the United States. It provides a range of consumer and municipal supports to advance the use of active transportation (walking and bicycling), public transportation and other shared-mobility formats. Through its programs, products and services, GoTRANS seeks to lower the cost of urban living for families that would otherwise “drive until they qualify” for car-dependent housing at the suburban edge.

Resources:

Congress for the New Urbanism

Local Government Commission

**Replay – Portland is a Movable Side Yard Feast** May 11, 2018
Show notes

Topic:
Providing Local Food to the Local Community
Guest & Organization:
Stacey Givens is the farmer/chef/owner of The Side Yard Farm & Kitchen. She grew up in a big fat Greek family and was instilled with DIY values from a very young age. Farming in their backyard, foraging olives with her mom from the nearby hills and learning to brine them with her Yiayia (grandmother). Givens has been in the food industry since the age of 15. Working her way through kitchens up the west coast from LA to SF to Pdx. After landing in Pdx in 2006, she cooked in various kitchens including Lincoln, Southpark, Rocket and Noble Rot. Currently, she is based in the Ne Cully Neighborhood, where her team grows diverse vegetables on a 1 acre plot of land. She sells her harvests to nearby restaurants in what she calls an invaluable “chef-to-chef” produce service. Since then, Givens has established the first ‘urban’ seed to plate catering company and supper club in the Portland area where she uses Side Yard grown goods. She also sources from other urban farms in her hood for goat milk, eggs, honey and fruit. Its urban craft all the way, from the seed to the plate. Making her own cheese, charcuterie, vinegars, pollen, spices and pickles. Her inspiration to get her hands in the dirt sprouted when she was cooking at Rocket (now Noble Rot), which had the first rooftop garden of its kind in Portland. Crafting ‘urban farm to table’ meals led Givens into what she calls her ‘seed to plate’ food philosophy.
Find Stacey on Twitter
The Side Yard is an urban farm, supper club and catering company located in the NE Cully Neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. They have been providing local restaurants with creative organic produce and the community with food, education and opportunity since 2009. The farm is largely operated by volunteers and interns who gain hands on experience with the urban seed to plate movement. The Side Yard offers farm suppers & brunches, private catering, pop-ups, DIY workshops, farm tours and more. Their focus is to provide local food for the local community, from the seeds we sow, animals we raise and to the craftsmanship we embrace. They grow our produce sustainably and ethically, with a creative touch. The farm produces a wide range of seasonal veggies, fruits, seeds and culinary herbage that are harvested within hours of delivery to ensure quality and freshness. They are known for our unique selection of specialty herbs and micro crops.
Resources:
The Side Yard Farm and Kitchen
Local Government Commission

Art and Creative Place Making Apr 12, 2018

Show notes

Topic:

The arts and community engagement as highly effective community and economic development strategies

Guest & Organization:

Juanita Hardy is the Senior Visiting Fellow (SVF) for Creative Placemaking at the Urban Land Institute (ULI). Her work supports the Institute’s Building Healthy Places Initiative by deepening and broadening ULI’s focus on creative placemaking through content, the ULI District Council network, and the Healthy Corridors grant program.

Hardy has a passion for making business and cultural connections that foster healthy, thriving, and culturally rich places to work, live, and enjoy. She founded Tiger Management Consulting Group, a global training and business consulting services firm, after retiring from IBM in 2005. Hardy has over 43 years of business experience, including 31 years with IBM, and over 35 years in the arts as a nonprofit leader, trustee, collector, and patron of the arts. For IBM, she led many client transformational leadership initiatives and frequently coached leaders on making change at the individual and organizational level. Her work with Tiger Management included helping clients build successful relationships with businesses in other countries and cultures.

As SVF for ULI, Hardy has done extensive research and identified best practices, conducted an assessment on the presence of creative placemaking at ULI, worked with ULI District Councils on programming and capacity building activities, and authored a guide on implementing creative placemaking in real estate development.

Hardy is the former Executive Director of CulturalDC, a nonprofit committed to making space for artists and art organizations and fostering cultural and economic vibrancy in communities through its creative placemaking services. While at CulturalDC, she worked closely with area developers to integrate arts and culture into development projects across the Washington, D.C., area. She served as an awards program juror for the ULI Washington District Council’s Real Estate Trends Conference for three years, 2015-2017. Since 2006, Hardy has served as an executive coach with Right Management, a global human capital development firm, and has served on many nonprofit art boards dating to the 1980s. She co-founded Millennium Arts Salon, an art education initiative, in 2000. Hardy is an accomplished writer and public speaker. Her recent writing includes a trilogy of creative placemaking articles in Urban Land magazine.

Resources:

Urban Land Institute’s Building Healthy Places Initiative

Urban Land Institute’s Creative Placemaking

National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts’ Creative Placemaking Paper by Ann Markusen, Markusen Economic Research Services and Anne Gadwa, Metris Arts Consulting

Local Government Commission

Collateral Environmental Federalism Apr 05, 2018

Show notes

Topic:

Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Environmental Justice and Equitable Development Series – Advancing environmental justice and equity at the state and local levels

Guest & Organization:

Dr. Adrienne L. Hollis is the Director of Federal Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, in the Washington, DC office. Dr. Hollis is an experienced environmental toxicologist as well as an environmental attorney. She has worked with a number of community organizations and has a wealth of experience in community-based participatory research around environmental justice issues.

It is well-documented that some of the most polluted environments in America are where people of color live, work, play, and pray. WE ACT was started in 1988 when three fearless community leaders saw that environmental racism was rampant in their West Harlem neighborhood, and they demanded community-driven, political change. Today, the organization has grown to over 16 staff members and 2 locations in NYC and Washington, D.C., and is considered an active and respected participant in the national Environmental Justice Movement.

WE ACT’s mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.

WE ACT envisions a community that has:

informed and engaged residents who participate fully in decision-making on key issues that impact their health and community.
strong and equal environmental protections.
increased environmental health through community-based participatory research and evidence-based campaigns.

Resources:

WE ACT

WE ACT’s Cleaner Air, Cleaner Communities: 6 Steps to Develop Environmentally Just State Implementation Plans was created to provide state agencies, local governments and community-based organizations with a step-by-step process, tools and case studies to integrate environmental justice considerations into Clean Air Act State Implementation Plans (SIPs).

The Clean Air Act SIP is a federally-required plan under the Clean Air Act that describes how each state will reduce criteria air pollutants to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The SIP provides a consistent opportunity for communities to engage in clean air policy.

Environmental Justice Forum Releases Guidance on Incorporating Environmental Justice in State Implementation Plans

Coastal Adaptation in Louisiana Mar 29, 2018

Show notes

Topic:

Adaptation and Livable Communities Series – Issues Facing Coastal Communities

Guest & Organization:

Liz Williams Russell is the Coastal Community Resilience Director at the Foundation for Louisiana where she designs strategies to support communities influenced by land loss and relative sea-level rise across coastal Louisiana. With a background and training in architectural design, landscape systems, and urban planning, Liz incorporates the complexities of the developed urban ecosystem to promote equitable opportunities in areas altered and affected by land change. Liz manages coastal grant-making areas with an advisory committee and relevant partners that work to help communities face a range of issues and challenges that range in scale from mega-regional networks and hydrologic basins to stormwater management and flood insurance.

Risk mitigation and resilience-based programs require an awareness of and participation with these transitioning watersheds. In order to better provide opportunities, establish and cultivate partnerships, and advocate for informed and diverse public engagement, Liz supports fundraising initiatives and guides the common campaign and funding plan across Foundation for Louisiana’s Coastal Resiliency Leverage Fund.

Liz previously has worked as a Research Fellow and Affiliate with the Coastal Sustainability Studio at Louisiana State University. In this role she led and collaborated with cohorts of civil engineers, urban planners, coastal scientists, and landscape architects alongside economic, legal, and cultural advisors. Each project engaged a set of unique conditions within the coastal landscape and proposed developments through which residents and communities might advance and thrive in a future with evolving challenges.

The mission of the Foundation for Louisiana is to invest in people and practices that work to reduce vulnerability and build stronger, more sustainable communities statewide.

Resources:

Foundation for Louisiana

Local Government Commission

Adaptation Professionals – ASAP Mar 22, 2018

Show notes

Topic:

Adaptation and Livable Communities Series – An Introduction to Adaptation Professionals

Guest & Organization:

Beth Gibbons is the Executive Director of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP). In this role, she is responsible for strengthening the ASAP network and bringing adaptation best practices into the broader conversation across sectors and scales. Beth brings a decade of experience in sustainable development and climate adaptation to her role. Previously, Beth supported urban resilience initiatives at the Institute for Sustainable Communities alongside her role as ASAP Managing Director. Prior to leading ASAP she was Director of the University of Michigan Climate Center and managed NOAA’s Great Lakes Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments Center. She served in the Peace Corps in Agodopke, Togo. Beth earned her undergraduate degree in Comparative Politics from the Catholic University of America and holds a Master of Urban Planning from the University of Michigan.

ASAP connects and supports climate adaptation professionals, while advancing innovation in the field of climate change adaptation. Through ASAP’s website, affinity groups, webinars and meetings climate adaptation leaders interact, share what’s working, collaborate with their colleagues and build essential climate resilience for communities across the country.

Resources:

American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP)

Local Government Commission

California Adaptation Forum