Next City

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Revisiting: Emergent City - A Decade-Long Fight Against Displacement Nov 05, 2025

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We're revisiting a favorite episode from the archive to celebrate Next City's Winter Film Festival, this year's series: "Power and Place."
What happens when a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on deep-pocketed developers? In this episode, we talk to the directors of "Emergent City" and the organizers who fought to preserve Sunset Park’s future.
“Emergent City” (emergentcitydoc.com) documents the 10-year saga of how Brooklyn's Sunset Park community came together to fight a rezoning wanted by deep-pocketed developers. Against all odds, residents won. Filmmakers were there from the very beginning, when developers proposed transforming Industry City, a sprawling industrial site on the Brooklyn waterfront, into a high-end retail and office complex – or, as some residents put it, a “mall.” They were there when Sunset Park residents protested that the Industry City complex, if it won rezoning, would accelerate gentrification and displacement in a neighborhood where about 70% of households are renters. They were there for some 200 days of public meetings.

Philadelphia’s Pyramid Club Reborn Through Art and Afrofuturism Oct 29, 2025

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Join Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta and artist Shawn Theodore for PYRAMID CLUB: 1937—2035, a reimagining of the legendary North Philadelphia social club as a blueprint for today’s North Broad renaissance. Together, they’ll explore how Afrofuturist and arts-driven approaches can turn scarcity into abundance while centering Black joy and cultural heritage.

Designing for Childhood: How Cities Are Ending Playspace Inequity Oct 22, 2025

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So much depends on your ZIP code, even children’s access to play. But an effort is growing to ensure the playground is where all kids can have fun, learn and heal.
“It's where they learn, it's where they build connection, it's where they really establish their identity as a human being in this world,” says Lysa Ratliff, CEO for KABOOM! “And yet, there's extreme disparities in our parks and our schools and our cities and who has access to what.”
In this sponsored episode, Ratliff explains how KABOOM! is working in cities such as Baltimore, Oakland and Uvalde in Texas to safeguard a generation’s childhood and sense of belonging.
KABOOM! is a national nonprofit known for nearly 30 years of building thousands of playgrounds where they are needed most. Today, the organization is scaling up public-private partnerships to end playspace inequity and close the “nature gap” that leaves millions of kids, especially in communities of color, without access to safe, quality green spaces.
Ratliff highlights how data, partnerships and community-led design can end inequity.“We're trying to answer a very big question,” says Ratliff. “How can we make sure that every single kid in this country has a chance to grow up in a world that sees them, that values them, that gives them a sense of freedom and belonging and ultimately protects their childhood by any means?”

City-Building with Culture at the Core Oct 01, 2025

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Culture is often treated as a niche area but is actually integral to the successful design and adoption of other areas of urban planning and policy. Hear how cities like Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Baltimore are embedding cultural approaches into planning, policy, and recovery efforts.

How Your Nonprofit Can Use Research to Strengthen Impact Sep 24, 2025

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Nonprofits often struggle to prove their impact, but the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) is showing how a rigorous research partnership can help grassroots programs scale and win support.
This sponsored episode explores examples of nonprofits and city governments collaborating with LEO researchers at the University of Notre Dame to identify what works, why it works, and how they used new evidence to make the case for growth.
Like many nonprofit executive directors, Shana Berkeley already had a menu of anecdotes showing that her organization, Nashville's Corner to Corner, made a difference. By teaming up with LEO at Notre Dame, Corner to Corner is measuring the ripple effects of its program, as well as identifying what works and how to make it even more effective.“Research helps us to really understand what about those makes them not a unicorn, right?” says Berkeley. “But it's something that we can make more predictable and understand what's necessary for the foundations of entrepreneurship.
”From LEO, the episode features researcher Patrick Turner, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and Fran Gallagher, who leads project development. They share insights from working with the Goodwill Excel Center and Destination: Home, both of which expanded their fight against poverty — in workforce education and homelessness prevention, respectively — as a result of research partnerships.
To learn more about how to partner, visit PartnerWithLEO.org.

A Federal Freeze Won’t Stop Green Progress Sep 17, 2025

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Even as billions in federal clean energy funding sit trapped in legal limbo, community lenders are determined to keep the green transition alive.
This episode of Next City explores how to press forward with the clean-energy transition despite a federal freeze on the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
Next City’s senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello speaks with Neda Arabshahi, executive vice president of the Inclusiv Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy; Amir Kirkwood, CEO of the Justice Climate Fund; and Beth Bafford, CEO of Climate United. Together, they explain how local institutions like credit unions and CDFIs are funding solar projects, energy-efficiency upgrades, and resilience hubs even without federal dollars. According to these leaders, the clean energy movement isn’t waiting on Washington.
“The clean energy transition is happening. But who is benefiting from that transition is unequal,” says Bafford. She argues it’s now the responsibility of changemakers to ensure resources still flow to “people, places, and communities across the country that otherwise were going to be kind of in the back of the line in terms of clean energy adoption and really should be at the front.”
This episode is based on a Next City webinar, a recording of which can be viewed in our library.

Alternative Models For Funding and Supporting Cultural Spaces and Workers Aug 28, 2025

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Communities need spaces for art; you can't support art without supporting artists. We're talking with three leaders working on alternative models for sustainability.

The Fight for Freedom of Mobility in Black America Aug 21, 2025

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Charles T. Brown, author of "Arrested Mobility," discusses why mobility is not afforded in the same way to everyone – and the dire cost of this inequity.

Heroic Oysters Are ‘Holding Back the Tide’ Aug 13, 2025

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New York was once the world’s oyster capital. The director of a new feature-length impressionist hybrid documentary, "Holding Back the Tide," traces the city’s many life cycles with the oyster as her main character. Emily Packer follows environmentalists restoring oysters to the harbor, while examining the oyster not only as entangled with nature, but also as a queer icon, with much to teach about our society’s continued survival. Packer is interviewed by fellow New Yorker, Eliana Perozo, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Anti-Displacement Strategies.

Razing Liberty Square: On Writing the Playbook to Fight Gentrification Aug 06, 2025

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The documentary "Razing Liberty Square” shows what happens in Miami as sea levels rise and the rich move inland, encroaching on residents of the Liberty Square public housing project. The film tells the story of a historically Black community faced with a $300-million-dollar “revitalization” of their neighborhood. In this episode, hear from a resident and climate activist, Valencia Gunder, who says she’s fighting a new form of racial injustice: climate gentrification.

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