Next City

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The Future of Human Transit May 08, 2024

Show notes

If you're in the world of urban planning and transit systems, there's a good chance you're familiar with veteran transportation planner Jarrett Walker and his classic book 2011, “Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives.
”We recently published an excerpt from the newly updated edition of the book – catch that here. And back in February, we hosted a popular webinar with Walker, in conversation with Steven Higashide, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Clean Transportation program.
In this episode of the Next City podcast, we talk to Walker and Higashide about how our individualistic culture – driven both by the elite class as well as American notions of freedom more broadly – in turns breeds a pernicious car culture, and how we can turn that on its head to achieve successful public transit systems that will enrich our communities.

What If Your City Gave You Money for Transit? May 01, 2024

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In Los Angeles, there’s a transportation experiment underway. In this episode, Maylin Tu, Next City's Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Social Impact Design who lives in LA describes the stress of owning a car there coupled with the difficulty of navigating the city without a car. But in a sprawling city like LA, people have to have some way to get around.
Last May, the LA Department of Transportation and LA Metro launched its “mobility wallet,” the biggest Universal Basic Mobility experiment ever attempted in the U.S. Tu reported that in the first phase of the pilot, the agencies gave 1,000 South Los Angeles residents a debit card that comes with $150 per month to spend on transportation. The funds can be used to take the bus, ride the train, rent a shared e-scooter, take micro-transit, rent a car-share, take an Uber or Lyft, or purchase an e-bike.
“I think the big thing that this project is transportation affordability. It’s actually something that we don’t talk about a lot. We talk about housing affordability,” says Madeline Brozen, deputy director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. “We use a lot of the tools of giving people income supports in other industries but we don’t think about it in transportation.” To learn more about lessons learned from the pilot so far and how cities and transit agencies can launch their own UBM programs, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

Why We Need More Real Estate Developers of Color Apr 24, 2024

Show notes

Gina Merritt, head of Northern Real Estate Ventures, didn’t set out to become a developer. But when she landed an interview for a job with the affordable housing development arm of a construction company, she fell in love with the field. Merritt who grew up in affordable housing showed up on her first day and knew it was where she was supposed to be.
“The only thing I saw [on site] was a bulldozer and I just was in my car, crying really, and trembling and realizing then that this is what has been chasing me my whole life,” she says. Merritt is part of the 5% of real estate developers who are people of color — and an even smaller group who are women of color.
After more than 27 years in the field, she’s also part of Growing Diverse Housing Developers, which has directed $40 million to several community development financial institutions across the country to deploy to minority developers. Their goal is “to increase the number of minority real estate developers in the U.S. business and spurring the development and preservation of affordable housing.”
Merritt also sees providing affordable housing as a tool to build generational wealth. “What I know about affordable housing is that when most people move in, they don’t move out,” she says. “And I decided with my platform that I created, Project Community Capital, that I wanted to do better than that. I have this holistic approach to community development, which means we help people with all of the things that they need around economic development.”
This episode is based on an article that's part of our series, CDFI Futures, which explores the community development finance industry through the lenses of equity, public policy and inclusive community development. The series is generously supported by Partners for the Common Good. Sign up for PCG’s CapNexus newsletter at capnexus.org.

The Future of Chinatown Mar 27, 2024

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Today, we will hear from multiple Chinatown organizers who are fighting to ensure their neighborhoods remain for generations to come.

A City Where Mental Health Isn’t for Policing Mar 20, 2024

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Cities too often respond to a person experiencing a mental health crisis with carceral systems. Toronto’s Gerstein Crisis Centre provides an alternative and proves that when people have access to care, they’ll reach out when they need help. Increased access can lead to more opportunities for problem-solving and less crises and punishment.
Next City Reporter Maylin Tu first reported this story and says that the center is doing things differently by respecting people’s autonomy and acknowledging the power dynamics at play when responding to people’s needs. Tu adds that, in some ways, the programs offered at Gerstein act as an intervention that helps to reduce people experiencing crises.
In this episode, we also hear from Susan Davis, the center’s executive director, and Olivia Ensign, senior advocate and researcher for the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch, which published a case study that outlined the success of the Gerstein Centre’s work. Upon publication, HRW noted that it hopes the document “inspires action among and across mental health service providers, service users, policymakers, and human rights and mental health advocates on providing community-based and rights-respecting support to people experiencing mental health crises.”
What the Gerstein Centre is doing provides a model for what’s possible. Davis says that one of the most essential cores of what they do is listen.
“Unfortunately, right now, when people are reaching out for mental health care, they cannot access the services that they need, either in a timely fashion or the correct services that they need,” Davis says. “One of the things that is important about that is that people need to be trusted about what it is that’s going on for them. And when they reach out for care, they need to be believed.”
To learn more about the Gerstein Crisis Centre’s non-coercive, person-centered approach to addressing mental health, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

Revisiting: The Black Barber Who Launched A Credit Union Mar 13, 2024

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In light of the Academy Awards ceremony, we're re-highlighting our episode featuring Arlo Washington, the Black barber-turned-visionary behind People Trust Community Federal Credit Union and the central figure of the Oscar-nominated short documentary, "The Barber of Little Rock."
When neighbors started coming to his Little Rock barbershop to borrow money, Arlo Washington went a step further and chartered Arkansas’ newest credit union.

Cars Are the Problem. She Wrote A Manifesto On It Mar 06, 2024

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In this episode of the podcast, civil engineer and transportation researcher Veronica O. Davis talks about her new book, “Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities,” how choices made in the 1950s and '60s have left neighbors effectively cut off from public transportation, and what it means for cities to give their citizens the right to connection.
Davis, a city planner based in Houston, says American have an unhealthy love affair with cars – but this dependency is destroying American urban life.It begins with advertising, she says, but there's a bigger problem.
“We have set up our cities in a way that you need a car,” she says. “It's one of those self-fulfilling prophecies, as well. So even if someone wants to opt to be car-lite or car-free, we don't make it easy for them.” In part, Davis argues, that's linked to a long history of racism in city planning that is shackling our cities environmentally and economically. For more, read more in our excerpt from “Inclusive Transportation.”
We're also joined by Next City's managing editor Aysha Khan, who's got some experience with car-free living in addition to covering the growing movement for pedestrianized public spaces. The problem, she says, is less with cars and car ownership and more with the “overwhelming” assumption in American urban planning that cars are and will always be the primary mode of transportation.“
Anything other than car travel is less than and isn't a priority to enable, let alone support and promote,” Khan says. “We see cars prioritized in transportation spending, in maintenance, in other sorts of infrastructure investment – rather than public transportation solutions, even walking, biking, rolling by other means.”
While all of these solutions are more efficient and go a long way to help cities achieve public health, economic equity and climate change mitigation goals, they are neglected in favor of entrenching car-centric development and culture, she argues. That's slowly beginning to change with the adoption of open streets, car-free streets and pedestrian-friendly public spaces, a movement accelerated by the pandemic.
To learn more about how cities can develop equitable transportation systems and repair the harm done through decades of racist and car-centric planning, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

What We Can Learn From ‘Ghost Rivers’ Feb 28, 2024

Show notes

When Baltimore built a new sewer system a century ago, it tried to control nature by diverting the city’s waterways, like many other American cities in the 19th and 20th century. In many cases, cities turned these rivers into part of the underground sewer system by turning them into underground pipes and concrete culverts.
Through a recently launched public art installation, “Ghost Rivers,” many residents of Baltimore Remington neighborhood are visualizing for the first time the waterways buried below their feet.
But with millions of miles of streams, rivers and creeks buried in asphalt across the country, often to build highways, houses, factories, roads and real estate development, it's inevitable that these waterways are increasingly disrupting our urban ecologies.
As University of Michigan professor Jacob Napieralski explains, these “ghost rivers” are disproportionately affecting formerly redlined neighborhoods, a significant but often forgotten contributor to urban flooding. “Flood risk is very intricately linked to history, and by ignoring history we may be missing some clues that help us move forward,” he explains.Now, cities around the U.S. – and, indeed, the world – are working toward “daylighting” these buried bodies of water.
To learn more about the impact of waterway burial on low-income neighborhoods and how cities are now responding through “daylighting” them, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

One Tiny Credit Union Is Powering Brooklyn’s Economy Feb 14, 2024

Show notes

Take a guess. Which of these banks is making more small-business loans in Brooklyn: Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America or Brooklyn Cooperative Federal Credit Union, a small financial institution that has only about $50 million in assets?
That's a mere rounding error compared to the major players, or even many other community banks. But, as our economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello explored a two-part series late last year, Brooklyn Coop punches above its weight through lending to Brooklyn's Black and Brown small business owners.
“This one tiny credit union has done more SBA loans in Brooklyn than Citi, Wells Fargo and Bank of America combined over the past 10 years, he says. Their strategy? While other highly-ranked Small Business Administration-guaranteed lenders are making loans that average about $120,000 in size. But Brooklyn Coop's average loans sit at around $24,000.
In this episode, we chat with Brooklyn Coop CEO Samira Rajan about its human approach to lending – and why getting megabanks to fund more Black and Brown communities and small businesses isn't the answer to powering our economy.
“I think banks are designed to say no,” Rajan says. But Brooklyn Coop and other community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, have another approach. “Throw open the gates. It's OK if these people get access to bank accounts. It's OK if they get credits. We'll all be better off in the long run.”
To learn more about Brooklyn Coop and its alternative model for small business lending, listen to this episode and subscribe to Next City.

Countering Extreme Heat Requires All of Us Feb 08, 2024

Show notes

Rising temperatures have ripple effects on our health, our economy and more. So to deal with the problem of extreme heat, we need to bust out of our silos and embrace collaboration.
And as high as the stakes are, we know the solutions to address the problems. Nature-based solutions, solar reflective surfaces and shade, among other lessons we can glean from the communities that have long dealt with heat, are all on the table.
“We have most of these tools available to us now,” says Kurt Shickman, the director of Extreme Heat Initiatives at the Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and former executive director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance. “We're not in a challenge of innovation here. We're in a challenge of access.”
On this episode of the podcast, we explore the evidence-based solutions to curbing extreme heat, the reasons why these haven't been implemented at scale, and what's at stake for our cities' most vulnerable communities.

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