Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast

Clifton Lemon and Steve Lawton of LightPlace Advisors join me this week to talk about how lighting is going to change in cities with the advent of the LED.

Christof Spieler joins me again to chat about Houston.  This time we chat transportation and all the great things Houston is working on. 

This week on the Talking Headways Podcast I’m joined by Joe Cortright of City Observatory to nerd out on employment data and discuss their most recent report Surging City Center Job Growth.We learn how employment cores for many cities are growing and why this looks like a longer term shift in growth. 

This week on the podcast I’m joined by Dr. Mariela Alfonzo to discuss walkability in China.  We talk about her recent paper, Walkability, obesity and urban design in Chinese neighborhoods in the journal Preventative Medicine as well as the lack of data availability for researchers, the obstacles to walking such as poles and poorly designed ramps, and the huge issue of air quality indoors and out.

This week Ann Cheng of the California Transportation Advocacy Group Transform joins me to talk about their Green Trip program.   Ann, a planner, the former Mayor of El Cerrito California, as well as one of San Francisco Business Times “40 Under Forty” in 2014 discusses how housing developers can build less parking and more housing by giving residents better travel options through Green Trip Certification.

Mariia Zimmerman of MZ Strategies joins me to chat about her new report on local advocacy for transportation reform called Transportation Transformation.   Mariia, former Deputy Director for the Office of Sustainable Communities at HUD as well as former Chief of Staff to Congressman Earl Blumenauer, spent a year probing the local transportation advocacy landscape to see what issues people were working on, which regions were the most innovative, and case studies that look at the San Francisco Bay Area and the Washington DC region.  

Guest host Randy Simes, Headline writer for the Streetsblog Ohio Network Blog and owner of UrbanCincy.com, joins me from South Korea to give his thoughts on his current home in the Gangnam district of Seoul and his previous one in Atlanta.  We cover Keith Parker’s turnaround of Atlanta’s transit agency MARTA, talk about the belt line and the types of people that won’t leave the cozy boundary it creates,  and Randy shares the best place to get southern hospitality in town.   From there we swerve from a discussion about Al Gore’s $90T plan to remake cities without cars into a chat about America’s crumbling infrastructure.  Or splintering.  Depends on what material the pipes are made from.    And for the final few minutes there is a celebration of Denver’s 10 year anniversary of the Fastracks vote.  Regionalism and light rail on freight rights-of-way is debated and the locals might know what Randy means when he mentions Biker Jim.       All that and more on this week’s Talking Headway Podcast