There are more than 80 million podcast listeners in the US and with forecasts suggesting that number to double by 2025, the choices are getting more and more difficult.
We have selected some of our favorite podcast episodes to get you started in 2021! From transportation policy to urban education to citizen action, these episodes will get you thinking about what it means to live in (and maybe plan) cities.
Dan Stevenson has lived in Oakland’s Eastlake neighborhood for 40 years. He says crime has been an issue for as long as he can remember, but he isn’t one to call the police on drug dealers or sex workers. He’s a pretty “live and let live” kind of guy. Or he was. Before he finally got fed up and took matters into his own hands.
2. Where We Buy: Retail Real Estate with James Cook “The Digital Equivalent of Walking the Mall”
Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton worked together on Target's store of the future project and now they're co-CEOs of Omni Talk & Third Haus. They talk about the latest innovations in friction-free commerce, including computer vision and scan-and-go technology. They also discuss the perils and opportunities for malls and retailers in social media ecommerce. James Cook is the director of retail research in the Americas for JLL.
3. The New York Times “Nice White Parents”
If you want to understand what’s wrong with our public schools, you have to look at what is arguably the most powerful force in shaping them: white parents.
Art can not only make a space more unique and inviting, there’s actually a business case for it. Martha Weidmann, CEO of NINE dot ARTS, talks about the value of art in commercial real estate and how to turn your property into a one-of-a-kind experience.
5. 99% Invisible “Guerrilla Public Service Redux”
At some point in your life you’ve probably encountered a problem in the built world where the fix was obvious to you. Maybe a door that opened the wrong way, or poorly painted marker on the road. Mostly, when we see these things, we grumble on the inside, and then do nothing. But not Richard Ankrom.
6. Planet Money “Why Did The Job Cross The Road?”
States across the country are at war right now. A war over jobs. They are competing with each other to get companies to move within their borders. Politicians love to call this "job creation." States dangle incentives like tax breaks, training programs, freshly paved roads. According to one study, states all over the country are spending $70 billion a year to "create" jobs. But is it really creating a job if it came from a few miles away across the state border?
7. Freakonomics “If Mayors Ruled the World”
The episode expands on an idea from political theorist Benjamin Barber, whose latest book is called If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities. Barber argues that cities are paragons of good governance – compared at least to nation-states – and that is largely due to their mayors. Mayors, Barber argues, are can-do people who inevitably cut through the inertia and partisanship that can plague state and federal governments. To that end, Barber would like to see a global “Parliament of Mayors,” to help solve the kind of big, borderless problems that national leaders aren’t so good at solving.
8. This American Life “Not It!”
Stories of people, cities, and commonwealths touching their noses and proclaiming, "not it!" Including the story of how one city used a rocking chair to take retribution against a late-night TV show host, and an island that takes people it doesn't want to deal with and ships them away.