In this episode of Booked on Planning, we dive into a conversation with Zahra Ebrahim, author of 'Messy Cities: Why We Can't Plan Everything.' Ibrahim discusses the inspiration and collaborative effort behind her book, a collection of 42 essays that challenge the traditional notions of urban order and highlight the benefits of urban 'messiness'. The episode explores themes such as ecological benefits, social infrastructure, cultural heritage, and the dynamic interactions that define city living. Listeners can expect a thought-provoking discussion on re-evaluating what makes cities livable, resilient, and vibrant, emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives and inclusive urban planning.

Show Notes:

• Recommended Reading: 
  • Is a River Alive? by Robert McFarlane
  • Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It  by Craig Taylor
  • The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book and any others on your reading list through our Bookshop page at https://bookshop.org/shop/bookedonplanning.
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/

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A road that was never built still managed to hollow out a neighborhood. We sit down with historian Emily Lieb to unpack how Baltimore’s “Road to Nowhere” took shape on paper, and why that was enough to destabilize Rosemont—a Black middle-class community of sturdy daylight rowhouses—through years of uncertainty, disinvestment, and policy misfires.

This conversation isn’t just about Baltimore. It’s about how plans, incentives, and vague labels shape markets and lives long before construction begins. We dig into the human toll of being told you’re “elected to be the sacrificers,” the choice to protect a cemetery over living homeowners, and the core question planners must face: is a city a place to live or a corridor to drive through? If we want the former, we have to align dollars, definitions, and decisions with the people already there.

If this episode moved you, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who cares about housing, transportation, and urban justice. Your support helps more listeners find these stories and join the conversation.

Show Notes:

• Author Recommended Reads: 
  • Crime novels are a good way to understand cities (ex: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett)
  • Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book or any of the recommended readings through our Bookshop page at https://bookshop.org/shop/bookedonplanning or get a copy through your local bookstore!
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Streets can be good friends or quiet bullies. We talk with author and planner Bruce Appleyard about Livable Streets 2.0 and how design choices—lane widths, speeds, buffers, sidewalks, and bike protection—shape safety, community bonds, and the energy we feel the moment our feet touch the curb. Bruce shares the personal story behind the book’s legacy and why traffic’s “invisible harms” still fracture neighborhoods, then maps a clear path to build streets that give back.

We dig into cognitive mapping and what children’s drawings reveal about freedom, learning, and place. When kids can walk and bike, their mental maps grow richer, their confidence rises, and schools benefit from more alert, active students. Bruce connects these human-scale wins to economic outcomes, explaining how the “street slum” effect drains main streets and how people-first redesigns boost sales and foot traffic. Slower is safer—and also better for business.

Enjoy the stories, borrow the tactics, and help your city trade throughput for life. If this resonated, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with a friend who’s ready to rethink their block.

Show Notes:

• Author Recommended Reading: 
  • Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter Norton
  • The U.S. Traffic Calming Manual by Reid Ewing
  • Anything written by Dan Burton 
  • Walkable City Rules by Jeff Speck
  • Right of Way:Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America by Angie Schmidt
  • Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement by Charles T. Brown
  • Great Streets by Allan Jacobs
  • Killed by a Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall
  • Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town by Chuck Marohn
  • Streets and the Shaping of Towns and cities by Michael southworth and Eran Ben Joseph
  • End of the Road: Reimagining the Street as the Heart of the City by Billy Riggs
  • Life After Cars By Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon
• Bruce’s website which features more information on the topic: https://rethinkingstreets.com/
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Bookshop page at https://bookshop.org/shop/bookedonplanning or get a copy through your local bookstore!

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What if city design could prevent harm before it happens—and even lift our sense of purpose? We sat down with architect and planner Phillip Tabb to explore spiritual wellness as a practical, universal lens for shaping healthier streets, homes, and public spaces. Phill draws a clear line between spirituality and religion to focus on experiences we all share: safety, serenity, awe, belonging, and meaning. We unpack the wellness pillars—physical, mental, emotional, social, environmental, spiritual, and financial—and why social connection may be the strongest longevity factor. That insight reframes planning choices: front porches close to sidewalks, paths that prioritize pedestrians, and public squares that can hold both quiet lunches and electric festivals. Housing rounds out the conversation with a hard truth: bigger isn’t better if it separates us and prices out workers. If design is preventative care, then spiritually healthy places are ones that help us breathe, connect, and find purpose every day.

Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe, rate, and share the show—and tell us what design move would bring more serenity or awe to your neighborhood.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: 
  • The Findhorn Garden: Pioneering a New Vision of Man and Nature in Cooperation by The Finhorn Community
  • Journal of Biophilic Design by Vanessa Champion 
  • Nature and the Cities by Fritz Steiner
  • Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Bookshop page at https://bookshop.org/shop/bookedonplanning or get a copy through your local bookstore!
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Climate action isn’t only written in federal legislation or international agreements. It’s shaped block by block through local land use law—where homes are built, how streets connect, what landscapes we preserve, and which energy systems we permit. In this episode, we chatted with Professor John Nolan to unpack the “land use wedge,” a practical way cities can influence up to 75 percent of CO2 emissions through buildings, transportation, sequestration, distributed energy, and renewables. Along the way, we trace how zoning leapfrogged planning a century ago, why that history still shapes our neighborhoods, and how a course correction can deliver compact, walkable, climate resilient places.

Professor Nolan shares case studies, court-tested approaches, and leadership insights from training thousands of local officials. We talk specific tools—clustering and infill, adaptive reuse, green roofs and tree canopies, solar-ready codes, and transit-supportive density—that reduce emissions and protect public health. We close with a look at a student-led workshop and a model framework for climate resilient development designed to help planners, attorneys, and elected leaders move from plan to ordinance to impact.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: 
  • Zoning the American Dream: Promises Still to Keep by Charles Haar and Jerold Kayden
  • Land Use in American by Henry Diamond, Patrick Noonan, and Laurance Rockefeller
  • The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t by Alexander Garden
• Death of Dillon’s Rule article: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/1208/
• Climate Resilient Development Workshop: https://www.pace.edu/law/centers-and-institutes/land-use-law-center/publications-and-resources/climate-resilient
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Bookshop page at https://bookshop.org/shop/bookedonplanning or get a copy through your local bookstore!
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Forget the shiny renderings—our path to climate-ready cities starts with what already stands. We talked with architect and preservationist Carl Elefante, author of Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future, to explore how City 3.0 can emerge by reusing buildings, redesigning streets, and resetting our standards of care. Carl breaks down Modern City 1.0 and 2.0, then lays out a hopeful, practical framework for what comes next: reconnecting with community, earth, and place while cutting carbon fast.
From Yemen’s wind-wise streets to a D.C. school’s revived induction system, the examples are concrete and transferable. We examine whole-life carbon accounting and why London’s reuse-first policy is a pivotal shift, forcing teams to compare demolition against reuse and reuse-plus-addition. The conversation contrasts durable, maintainable assemblies with fragile, all-glass facades—and explains why the greenest building is usually the one we already have.
If you care about sustainable architecture, urban design, adaptive reuse, missing-middle housing, passive strategies, and whole-life carbon, this conversation offers a clear map forward. Enjoy it, share it with a colleague, and tell us what your city should do next. Subscribe, leave a review, and pass this along to someone shaping the built environment today.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: 
  • If the past teaches what does the future learn? Ancient Urban Regions and the Durable Future by John Murphy
  • Architecture From Prehistory to Climate Emergency by Barnabus Calder
  • Main Street: How a City’s Heart Connects Us All by Mindy Thopsom Fullilove
  • Triumph of the City by Ed Glaeser 
  • Sustainable Nation: Urban Design Patterns for the Future by Doug Farr
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Bookshop page at https://bookshop.org/shop/bookedonplanning or get a copy through your local bookstore!
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/

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What if the United States didn’t just build too many highways—but built a funding machine that makes it hard to stop? We sit down with Erick Guerra, author of Overbuilt: The High Costs and Low Rewards of U.S. Highway Construction, to unpack why capacity keeps growing, congestion doesn’t ease, and budgets bend under the weight of perpetual reconstruction.

We trace the policy DNA from ISTEA through IIJA, showing how well-meaning multimodal language coexists with incentives that still favor widening. Erick explains how “maintenance” often balloons into bigger lanes and interchanges, why induced demand is only part of the congestion story, and how common modeling practices overstate time savings while sidelining external costs like displacement, emissions, and stormwater. The result: urban highways that are wider, costlier, and less effective than promised.

If you care about traffic, climate, safety, or the fiscal health of your city, this conversation offers a clear map for change. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves a good policy debate, and leave a review to help more planners and curious listeners find the show.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: 
  • Killed by a Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall 
  • The Drive for Dollars by Brian Taylor, Jeff Morris, and Jeffery Brown
  • Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar
  • City Limits by Megan Kimble
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/

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What if the biggest public space in your city isn’t a park—it’s the street right outside your door? We sit down with author and planner‑geographer David Prytherch to rethink roads as social infrastructure and unpack why “complete streets” is only the starting line. From the rapid legal and engineering turn that handed streets to cars a century ago to the community‑led experiments that reclaimed asphalt during the pandemic, this conversation traces the power dynamics that shape everyday mobility—and how to change them.

We dig into mobility justice in plain language: not just bikes versus cars, but who feels safe, who gets heard, and where public money actually lands. David lays out how pop‑ups, parklets, and open streets create a cognitive shift that policy can lock in, and why “messy shared space” often calms traffic better than paint and signs. You’ll hear practical, scalable ideas—default speed humps, daylighted intersections, neighborhood greenways, curb‑level plazas—and a frank look at bottom‑up versus top‑down delivery. Boston’s standardized traffic calming and Queens’ 34th Avenue transformation show two paths to lasting change, each grounded in data, culture, and community stewardship.

If you care about safer streets, small business vitality, public health, or equitable access, this episode offers a toolkit and a mindset. We share a reading list—from Peter Norton’s Fighting Traffic to Mimi Sheller’s Mobility Justice—and outline how cities can move from car hegemony to people‑first design without breaking budgets. Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend or colleague who plans, pedals, or simply walks their city.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading:
  • Fighting Traffic: the Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter Norton 
  • Mobility Justice: the Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes by Mimi Sheller
  • Justice in the Interstates: The Racist Truth about Urban Highways by Ryan Reft, Amanda Phillips de Lucas, Rebecca Retzlaff 
  • Cyclescapes of the Uneven City: Bicycle Infrastructure and Uneven Development by John G. Stehlin
  • Law, Engineering, and The American Right-of-Way by David Prytherch (free download here).
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/

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Ever wonder why a “simple” parking spot can decide what gets built on your block, how long your commute takes, or whether your favorite cafe survives? We sit down with Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, for a live episode recording that reveals how curb space, parking minimums, and meter policy quietly shape housing, transit, local business, and city budgets. Henry takes us from the horse‑and‑wagon era to modern dynamic pricing, connecting the dots between what seems like a technical detail and the urban life we all experience.

If you care about vibrant neighborhoods, small business turnover, housing options, or safer, greener travel, this is a candid, myth‑busting look at the hidden system running beneath every city. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend who swears there’s “never any parking”—then tell us how your city should use one block of curb.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: 
  • Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City by Jorge Almazán, Joe McReynolds
  • Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age by Lizabeth Cohen
  • Shade: the Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource by Sam Bloch
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/

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What happens when cities eliminate parking requirements? When curbside parking is priced at market rates? When parking revenue stays in the neighborhood instead of disappearing into general funds? These questions form the core of Donald Shoup's revolutionary approach to urban parking policy, explored in depth through Daniel Baldwin Hess's new book "The Shoup Doctrine."

Bringing together 37 contributors across 33 chapters, this festschrift celebrates the man who transformed parking from a mundane topic into one of urban planning's most dynamic areas of reform. As Hess explains, Shoup's background as an economist led him to view every parking instance as an economic transaction with hidden costs that profoundly shape our cities.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: 
  • Sandrush: The Rival of the Beach in 20th Century Los Angeles by Elsa Devienne
• Get a copy of the book from the publisher: https://www.routledge.com/The-Shoup-Doctrine-Essays-Celebrating-Donald-Shoup-and-Parking-Reforms/Hess/p/book/9781032733920?srsltid=AfmBOor_oOVeYjVfiRDJhUR961ekHH5bzYi6Ug7GvS1gf_6n8CFpvqwE 
• Check out our episode where we interviewed Donald Shoup on The High Cost of Free Parking back in year 1: https://www.bookedonplanning.com/podcast/episode/79419c03/the-high-cost-of-free-parking 
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/ 

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