Shows / Building Better Cities
Building Better Cities
Cities don't just happen. They're shaped by the choices we make about housing, transportation, infrastructure, public spaces, and the communities we want to become.
Yet too often, the systems we rely on make it difficult to build the places people need.
Building Better Cities with Dr. Kate Gasparro goes behind the scenes with the leaders, builders, thinkers, and innovators reimagining how cities grow. Each episode explores the ideas and solutions helping create more sustainable, equitable, and…
Episodes
Building Better CitiesBeyond the Power Grid: Buiding Detroit's Resilience Network with Briana DuBose
During a summer storm in Detroit, one small food pantry and soup kitchen stayed open while others in its network lost power. Solar and battery storage kept the…
Building Better CitiesPaying for the Past, Building for the Future with Mayor Todd Gloria
Mayors today inherit decades of decisions they didn’t make: deferred city infrastructure maintenance, underfunded pensions, and land use policies that limited…
Building Better CitiesFrom Research to Action: Turning Evidence into Better Cities with Robert Puentes
We have more data and research about cities than ever before—but is it actually leading to better decisions? In this episode of Building Better Cities, Kate…
Building Better CitiesShared Equity and a New Dream of Homeownership with Tony Pickett
Homeownership has long been sold as a single path with a single set of rules — but what happens when that path stops working for most people? In this episode…
Building Better CitiesCan Opportunity Zones Reverse Neighborhood Disinvestment? (with Jimmy Atkinson)
Neighborhoods have experienced dramatically different economic trajectories. Decades of redlining, discrimination, and disinvestment has shaped where capital…
Building Better CitiesHow Cities Shape Us: The Psychology of Place with Dr. Leidy Klotz
What if the cities we build are also building something within us? In this episode of Building Better Cities, Kate Gasparro sits down with behavioral scientist…
Building Better CitiesThe Holy Grail of Urbanism: Land Value Tax with Greg Miller
What if the biggest obstacle to building more housing and creating more sustainable urban development isn't zoning or financing — it's how we tax land? In this…
Building Better CitiesThe Hidden Reason Families Are Leaving Cities with Alicia Pederson
Walk through any major American city and notice what's missing. Not coffee shops or co-working spaces — those are everywhere. What you won't see much of are…
Building Better CitiesWhen Impact is the Asset: Transforming Forgotten Spaces with Lindsey Scannapieco
In 2014, the Philadelphia school district auctioned off a shuttered vocational school in South Philly — 340,000 square feet, built like a bomb shelter. Seven…
Building Better CitiesCan Impact Investing Redefine Urban Development? (with Brian Murray)
What does it actually take to invest in a neighborhood — not just a building — and get it right? In this episode, Brian Murray, CEO and co-founder of SHIFT…
Building Better CitiesBuilding Codes Are Political. We Just Don't Talk About Them. (with Ed Mendoza)
The zoning debate is about what we build and for whom. The building code is supposed to be about how we build it. But the "how" has a way of quietly dictating…
Building Better CitiesWhy Local Developers Matter More Than Ever with Jim Heid
For generations, cities were built by the people who lived in them. That's why so many of our most beloved neighborhoods feel like quilted fabrics of…
- Building Better Cities
How San Diego rewired California housing incentives with Colin Parent
For generations, California has approached housing growth through a familiar playbook: long planning processes, neighborhood-by-neighborhood debates, and major…
- Building Better Cities
What makes a better city? Inside LEED’s urban framework with Dr. Vatsal Bhatt
How do you measure whether a city is actually getting better? Most people know LEED as the gold standard for green buildings. But cities are more than…
- Building Better Cities
Funding city infrastructure at the ballot box: what Nashville got right with Amanda Wall Vandegrift
Transit ballot measures are often seen as a long shot — especially when affordability is top of mind and voters are being asked to raise their own taxes. But…
- Building Better Cities
Part 1: Why zoning reform isn't solving the housing crisis with Yonah Freemark
Upzoning is often pitched as the silver bullet for the housing crisis — change the rules, let developers build, and supply will bring prices down. But the…
- Building Better Cities
Part 2: Why transit investment is really a city building decision with Yonah Freemark and Sam Sklar
You pay rent or a mortgage every month and you know exactly what that costs. But how much are you spending just to get where you need to go? For a lot of…
- Building Better Cities
Why mayors can't solve the housing crisis alone with Michael Tubbs
Building better cities requires getting the relationship between cities, counties, and the state right. And few people understand that dynamic better than…
- Building Better Cities
From extraction to regeneration: place-based development in Appalachia with Steven Baumgartner
For decades, communities across Appalachia have watched jobs disappear, resources drain, and local wealth flow outward. But in Morganton, North Carolina, a…
- Building Better Cities
The climate goals are clear. The infrastructure spending isn't. (with Adie Tomer and Ben Swedberg)
California has record levels of federal infrastructure funding and some of the most ambitious climate goals in the country. But why are transportation…
- Building Better Cities
Overcoming friction to build regenerative cities with Eric Corey Freed
If we know how to build healthier, more sustainable and regenerative buildings, why do so few of them actually get built? This conversation focuses on the…
- Building Better Cities
What it really takes to save a downtown with Mayor White of Greenville, SC
Downtowns across the country are struggling after COVID — with empty storefronts, declining foot traffic, and major uncertainty about the future of office…
- Building Better Cities
Replay: Can rebuilding for resilience make insurance affordable? (with Alisa Valderrama)
One year ago, the Los Angeles wildfires made one thing unmistakably clear: climate risk is no longer peripheral to urban life — it is a defining condition for…
- Building Better Cities
How mission-driven development pencils on Chicago’s South Side — with Byron Brazier
How do you make mission-driven development pencil in a neighborhood shaped by decades of disinvestment? In this episode of Building Better Cities, host Kate…
- Building Better Cities
The housing system is broken- can upzoning save it? (with Ben Metcalf)
Why is housing so expensive — and what are states doing about it? Well... California has passed SB 79 to spur transit-oriented development. This upzoning will…
- Building Better Cities
Replay: How urban design fosters stronger communities with Dr. Andrew Sonta
When the Building Better Cities podcast launched just over a year ago, we set out to explore how we design and deliver the infrastructure and buildings that…
- Building Better Cities
Tulsa's bold model for restorative development with Ashley Philippsen and Dr. Lana Turner-Addison
More than a century after the Tulsa Race Massacre devastated Black Wall Street, the land where that thriving community once stood is again shaping Tulsa’s…
- Building Better Cities
The battle over Penn Station's redevelopment with Claire Read
Penn Station has long been more than just a transit hub — it’s a mirror of New York itself: ambitious, messy, and perpetually under construction. Decades after…
- Building Better Cities
Building a net-zero neighborhood for the future with Matt Grocoff
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a bold experiment in community building is underway. Veridian at County Farm is a 14-acre net-zero neighborhood redefining what…
- Building Better Cities
From vacancy to vertical village and beyond with Todd Richardson
In 2017, a long-vacant Sears distribution center on Cleveland Street in Memphis was reborn as Crosstown Concourse—a “vertical urban village.” The 1.5 million…
- Building Better Cities
Shaping vibrant neighborhoods with infill development with Shruti Shankar and Roberto Jenkins
Big visions for our cities often start with ambitious master plans—20-acre sites, sweeping infrastructure, and promises of transformation. But as exciting as…
- Building Better Cities
The public realm and the resistance of placemaking with Aaron Paley
What happens when you close off miles of city streets to cars—and open them up to people instead? In Los Angeles, that question gave rise to CicLAvia, a…
- Building Better Cities
Who rebuilds LA? Planning post-fire recovery with Dr. Minjee Kim
When disaster strikes, it reveals not just the vulnerabilities in our built environment—but also the opportunity to rebuild with more intention. In the wake of…
- Building Better Cities
How purple states foster consensus and build with Brian Regli
Abundance is about the promise of building more, more effectively. But getting there requires more than big laws—it takes local capacity, political will, and…
- Building Better Cities
The Implementation Era: building beyond the big bills with Zach Kolodin
Between 2021 and 2024, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act approved nearly $2 trillion in public investments…
- Building Better Cities
Detroit's new model for scaling urban innovation with Kevin Mull
Many high-profile smart city projects have missed the mark—not because the technology didn’t work, but because the process left people behind. That’s why a new…
- Building Better Cities
Scaling value and resilience through district utility systems with Daniel Hansen
What if entire neighborhoods shared integrated infrastructure—cutting costs, boosting performance, and unlocking real climate resilience? That’s the promise of…
- Building Better Cities
Catalyzing urban change through institutional impact with Alex Feldman
How do you turn institutional ambition into a catalyst for community change? This week on Building Better Cities, host Kate Gasparro sits down with Alex…
- Building Better Cities
Placemaking to build (upon) pride and participation with Carol Coletta
If you’ve spent any time in the world of placemaking, chances are you've been influenced—directly or indirectly—by the work of Carol Coletta. From her early…
- Building Better Cities
Infrastructure projects in a shifting federal policy landscape with Chris Livingstone
Federal funding can make or break an infrastructure project—but what happens when the rules change overnight? In this episode, Kate Gasparro is joined by Chris…
- Building Better Cities
Crowdfunding public good and the future of community-backed projects with Brian Ross
Have you ever wondered how you could truly invest in your community—not just symbolically, but with real equity? This week on Building Better Cities, Kate…
- Building Better Cities
How addressing embodied carbon can strengthen U.S. manufacturing with Anish Tilak
Buildings contribute nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, with a significant share coming from embodied carbon—the hidden emissions in the materials we use…
- Building Better Cities
The role of public finance in driving transformative developments with Ken Kalynchuk
How do you close the financial gap between ambition and execution in urban development? In this episode of Building Better Cities, Kate Gasparro sits down with…
- Building Better Cities
FutureProof-ing cities and pricing climate risk with Alisa Valderrama
In 2023, national insurance companies pulled out of Florida and California, citing escalating climate risks. Since then, natural disasters have only…
- Building Better Cities
Neighborhood Trusts and how they prevent community displacement with David Kemper
Neighborhoods in the path of growth often attract investment, bringing new jobs and amenities—but they also create conditions ripe for gentrification and…
- Building Better Cities
Taking LA's housing projects from permits to construction with Jenna Hornstock
While the housing crisis may seem like the topic du jour, Los Angeles has spent decades grappling with this problem: too many people, too few homes. In this…
- Building Better Cities
Trends in urban mobility and the TDM advantage with Lauren Mattern
In this episode of Building Better Cities, host Kate Gasparro interviews Lauren Mattern, a leader in Travel Demand Management (TDM) with two decades of…
- Building Better Cities
Better blueprints for mega urban developments with Adam Friedberg
In this episode of Building Better Cities, host Kate Gasparro talks with Adam Friedberg about the core dynamics behind mega urban development projects. With…
- Building Better Cities
Easing the energy burden throughout the Midwest with Ben Dueweke
In this episode of Building Better Cities, we’re taking a deep dive into rising household energy costs. Host Kate Gasparro revisits a 2022 conversation with…
Building Better CitiesHow urban design fosters stronger communities with Dr. Andrew Sonta
In this inaugural episode of Building Better Cities, host Kate Gasparro chats with Dr. Andrew Sonta, about how urban design shapes social interactions. From…